Traducido por L Boogie y Parce

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La siguiente entrada representa una parte de un proyecto mayor sobre la teoría comunista y organización revolucionaria que se inició el verano pasado. Es un proyecto en curso que no sólo fue diseñado para proporcionar un esquema de referencia para nuestra propia agrupación. En términos más amplios, está destinado a ser una contribución a las discusiones en curso y debates sobre la teoría y práctica comunista, que, en nuestro momento histórico, no puede y no será el producto de cualquier grupo individual.

La totalidad del proyecto está dividida en tres partes principales 1) Una síntesis parcial de Marx 2) Una crítica de la historia de la organización revolucionaria 3) Pensamientos provisionales sobre la necesidad de organización hoy en día. Estamos actualmente en el proceso de escribir el borrador de la segunda parte, pero queríamos empezar a publicar la primera parte ahora, que será serializado durante los próximos meses.

El borrador sobre Marx no pretende ser un folleto introductorio popular. En cambio, está destinado para un público con un conocimiento básico de Marx. En nuestra propia práctica lo usamos como un complemento a los grupos de estudio y discusión en curso sobre Marx, así como la teoría revolucionaria en general.

Es importante decir algo acerca del concepto de comunismo que destaca esta serie. Nosotros entendemos comunismo en el sentido que Marx escribió en La Ideología Alemana:

Para nosotros, el comunismo no es un estado que debe implantarse, un ideal al que ha de sujetarse la realidad. Nosotros llamamos comunismo al movimiento real que anula y supera al estado de cosas actual. Las condiciones de este movimiento se desprenden de la premisa actualmente existente.

Este pasaje contiene todo un mundo de pensamiento y experiencia histórica que debe ser desenredado y recompuesto de nuevo. Sin embargo, lo que es importante acerca de la obra de Marx, incluyendo, crucialmente, El Capital, es que lo coloca la viviente actividad humana en el centro del concepto de comunismo. Comunismo es la lucha necesaria y permanente de la humanidad para lograr libertad – para liberarse de su propia existencia enajenada.

Hay un gran número de pensadores y tendencias políticas que han tomado el manto y han influido el desarrollo de nuestro propio pensamiento. Sin embargo, no reclamamos ninguna adherencia específica a ellos. Mientras que pueden haber hecho contribuciones importantes, no somos obligados por sus limitaciones que surgieron de sus experiencias históricas particulares. En cambio, necesitamos una  nueva síntesis que surge de las realidades sociales de hoy.

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La Teoría Comunista De Marx

La historia de organización comunista no puede ser separada de la historia del marxismo como una crítica de su propia historia. Dado que la crisis de la izquierda revolucionaria es, en parte, una crisis de la teoría revolucionaria nos debemos, hasta un cierto punto, empezar de nuevo volviendo a Marx. La historia de la teoría revolucionaria en sí está marcada por tales retornos en que los revolucionarios intentaron de entender su sociedad estudiando las ideas y luchas del pasado. Esto ha sido una parte fundamental y necesaria de la teoría y la práctica comunista históricamente.

Dado que hoy nos enfrentamos de nuevo a un impasse definido por una falta del conocimiento categórico y análisis nos debemos luchar de nuevo para encontrar un terreno sobre el cual pararnos. Sólo con claridad podemos llegar a una fundación más sólida para el trabajo revolucionario.

El entendimiento de la organización revolucionaria debe tener sus raíces en un enfoque categórico y es por esta razón que intentamos a sintetizar unas de las premisas fundamentales del pensamiento de Marx. El objetivo en este caso es un poco limitado. En el momento no tenemos el espacio ni el tiempo para repasar la suma del pensamiento de Marx. Esto incluye su crítica de la totalidad de la sociedad capitalista, incluyendo los volúmenes críticos dos y tres de El Capital. En cambio, esperamos concentrar en el esquema básico de su punto de vista sobre la humanidad y sus relaciones en la sociedad capitalista.

Lo que sigue es una presentación un poco abstracto. Está destinado a funcionar como una fundación para el desarrollo posterior de la teoría, investigación, estrategia y tácticas. El logro del conocimiento categórico y metodología es absolutamente necesario para evitar los perspectivos empíricos, pragmáticos y economicistas que ronda la izquierda Estadounidense – síntomas de su propio decaimiento. Lo que sigue está destinado proporcionar la base para la investigación concreta de lo actual real, y moviendo sociedad. Sin categorías y metodología claras, estrategia y tácticas se vuelven cada vez más desligadas de nada concreto, y por lo tanto reificadas en su abstracción.

El Trabajo y La Auto-Actividad

Ya que los seres humanos están en el centro de la obra de Marx debemos empezar allí. De un punto de vista Marx considera a la humanidad en su esencia, o, para decirlo en otra manera, lo que es común a la humanidad a través del tiempo y el lugar. De otro punto de vista Marx considera los seres humanos en su existencia actual en momentos históricos particulares.

Marx distingue la esencia humana en términos de trabajo. “El trabajo,” escribe él en El Capital, “es una condición de vida del hombre, y condición independiente de todas las formas de sociedad, una necesidad perenne y natural que media el metabolismo entre el hombre y la naturaleza, y por consiguiente la vida humana misma” (10**). El trabajo es clave para su entendimiento de los seres humanos. Sin embargo, lo que entiende Marx por trabajo no es evidente dadas las condiciones de trabajo en la sociedad capitalista. Por consiguiente el concepto de Marx necesita un poco de interpretación.

¿Qué es El Trabajo?

La idea que el trabajo “media el metabolismo entre el hombre y la naturaleza, y por consiguiente la vida humana misma” es presentado por Marx en Los Manuscritos Económicos y filosóficos de 1844. En el ensayo, El Trabajo Enajenado, escribe Marx que la humanidad es “parte de la naturaleza” y sólo puede ser entendido como en “proceso continuo” con ella. Al mismo tiempo, argumenta Marx, los seres humanos están separados del mundo físico, o la naturaleza. Como dice él, la humanidad no es “inmediatamente uno con su actividad vital” en el mundo físico, pero, en cambio “tiene actividad vital consciente” dentro de este mundo. Marx usa este concepto de metabolismo para entender la esencia humana como la relación dialéctica entre su continuo corporal  con, y conocimiento del mundo físico. Usando el concepto de metabolismo, sugiere Marx el dinamismo involucrado en el mantenimiento o reproducción de vida. Para Marx en su esencia la vida humana está caracterizada por un proceso energético de creación. Es una síntesis de sustancia por lo tanto el alquímico transformación del mundo físico a una nueva sustancia.

Marx llama trabajo el proceso de creación, transformación y síntesis. Cómo el trabajo media el metabolismo entre los seres humanos y el mundo físico nos da una mayor comprensión de su concepto. En El Trabajo Enajenado, escribe Marx:

Pues, en primer término, el trabajo, la actividad vital, la vida productiva misma, aparece ante el hombre sólo como un medio para la satisfacción de una necesidad, de la necesidad de mantener la existencia física. La vida productiva es, sin embargo, la vida genérica. Es la vida que crea vida. En la forma de la actividad vital reside el carácter dado de una especie, su carácter genérico, y la actividad libre, consciente, es el carácter genérico del hombre. La vida misma aparece sólo como medio de vida.

La existencia humana se depende de la satisfacción de necesidades en una base diaria. En la sociedad de clases las necesidades humanas están reducidas a una mera supervivencia que el trabajo debe satisfacer. Sin embargo, argumenta Marx, en esencia el trabajo es más que lo “aparece” y, de un punto de vista de esencia, en cambio debe ser visto como “actividad libre, consciente.”

Para Marx el trabajo debe ser definido más ampliamente como “actividad.” La actividad de producir los medios para satisfacer necesidades es el trabajo, pero el trabajo no es sólo lo que hace la gente en un empleo. Es la gama entera de necesidades y “actividad vital” – todo que constituye un ser humano – y la satisfacción de necesidades a través de actividad es una interacción en curso entre el trabajo y el mundo físico. Actividad es un proceso de satisfacer necesidades – ambos físico y como objetos de la imaginación y el deseo. Por consiguiente, Marx tiene algo más en mente que la mera “trabajo,” tal como existe en la sociedad capitalista.

La clave para la comprensión de Marx del trabajo es que es “libre consciente actividad.” Por esta idea no se refiere que el mundo físico es simplemente un objeto que el trabajo actúa sobre. Implícito en la comprensión de Marx es que la humanidad es dialécticamente constituida por la realidad material y su propia subjetividad que surge de y altera esta realidad. Entonces, el mundo físico es el medio de vida para el trabajo en que el trabajo sólo se manifiesta por actuar sobre ese mundo. Como dice él en El Trabajo Enajenado, el mundo “aparece como su obra y realidad.” Marx subraya, por tanto, el carácter auto-reflexivo del trabajo, o su auto-actividad. Más tarde discutiremos cómo esta auto-actividad aparece históricamente como una forma específica de la sociedad.

Por el momento, es importante enfocar en el camino completamente nuevo que descubrió Marx con su concepto de trabajo. Escribe él, “El objeto del trabajo es por eso la objetivación de la vida genérica del hombre, pues éste se desdobla no sólo intelectualmente, como en la conciencia, sino activa y realmente, y se contempla a sí mismo en un mundo creado por él.” (El Trabajo Enajenado) Si el mundo físico es el medio por el cual se realiza el trabajo y está dentro de este mundo que contempla y actúa la humanidad, luego el mundo físico es un objeto por trabajo humano a través de que se materializa, o “se objetiva” en el mundo. En otras palabras, la sustancia, o el contenido, de las necesidades humanas se produce y reproduce como formas particulares de estas necesidades.

No es correcto decir que para Marx el mundo es simplemente sujeto a cambios. En cambio el mundo es una extensión de la actividad humana y, en un sentido, se convierte a su “cuerpo.” El mundo físico, como un objeto, se convierte a una parte internalizada de la actividad humana, cuyo contenido como necesidades se externaliza como formas de existencia. Como auto-actividad, el trabajo es actividad humana actuando sobre sí mismo “en un mundo creado por él.” En su relación metabólica con la naturaleza los seres humanos objetivan a sí mismos, creando un segundo mundo de relaciones sociales. A través de este proceso constante la humanidad crea y transforma a sí mismo como “la vida que crea vida.”

Para Marx, entonces, la humanidad es un objeto para sí mismo y, críticamente, un fin en sí mismo. Ya que la auto-actividad es auto-determinada, en su esencia el trabajo humano es universal. Es universal en dos maneras interrelacionadas. Primero, la totalidad del mundo físico puede ser un objeto para el trabajo e internalizado como parte de la actividad humana. Segundo, la humanidad produce más allá de las necesidades de una subsistencia física mínima y, con la capacidad de controlar la forma de su actividad, reproduce a sí mismo en un número ilimitado de formas. Por consiguiente, considerado como una totalidad, esta producción universal, o auto-actividad, da lugar a potencialmente infinitas formas de trabajo. Los seres humanos no son criaturas finitas, realizando sólo un número limitado de necesidades en un número limitado de formas. La humanidad no puede ser considerada una sustancia dada en una determinación dada. Al final, su contenido sólo puede ser entendido como la calidad de auto-creación, más bien que una cantidad finita de atributos inmutables. Como Marx dice en El Trabajo Enajenado, la humanidad “se relaciona consigo mismo como el género actual, viviente, porque se relaciona consigo mismo como un ser universal y por eso libre.” (El Trabajo Enajenado)

Para Marx, la libertad es un proceso continuo de objetivación en el cual no hay obstáculos entre la intención consciente y sus resultados. La creación humana es libre cuando su contenido – sus necesidades – se realiza a sí mismo en las formas de su propia elección como un fin en sí mismo. En la opinión de Marx, para decirlo en una manera más abstracta, la libertad es un proceso de auto-actividad en unidad inmediata con sí mismo. La auto-actividad en su estado ideal, desenfrenada por cualquier forma que no corresponde a su esencia, es el estado de libertad. El criterio de libertad para humanidad debe ser, Marx deduce en El Trabajo Enajenado, que “El hombre hace de su actividad vital misma objeto de su voluntad y de su conciencia. Tiene actividad vital consciente…es su propia vida objeto para él, porque es un ser genérico. Sólo por ello es su actividad libre.” (El Trabajo Enajenado) Sólo entonces corresponde la esencia a la existencia.

Una Ruptura Radical

La ruptura radical filosófica de Marx se resume en El Tesis sobre Feuerbach.  Allí él identificó el materialismo y el idealismo como dos tendencias generales en la filosofía occidental. El problema con la tradición materialista, argumenta Marx, “es que sólo concibe las cosas, la realidad, la sensoriedad, bajo la forma de objeto o de contemplación, pero no como actividad sensorial humana, no como práctica, no de un modo subjetivo.” En particular, Marx tenía en mente aquí los pensadores materialistas del Siglo de las Luces. Estos filósofos vieron el mundo como externo, algo que sólo debe ser observado y analizado. Sin embargo, ellos despejaron el camino para la idea que la sociedad fue un desarrollo de la historia y por lo tanto sujeto a cambios. Pensaban que la sociedad humana fue determinada por leyes naturales, más bien que un orden divino, y al entender estas leyes la sociedad podría ser alterado.

La otra tradición general que Marx identificó fue el idealismo, por la tradición de Kant, la cual enfocaba en cómo la mente da forma al mundo, en lugar de lo contrario. La figura más importante que Marx consideró fue Hegel. Hegel enfocaba en un sujeto auto-trascendente en lo cual el pensamiento existe y se determine sobre y contra el mundo objetivo. Al hacerlo, él reafirmó una dualidad de la historia del idealismo entre los seres humanos y la naturaleza, el sujeto y el objeto. Si bien reafirmó Hegel el concepto del sujeto auto-determinado, Marx argumentó que este “lado activo fuese desarrollado por el idealismo, por oposición al materialismo, pero sólo de un modo abstracto”, independiente de sus condiciones objetivas, y por eso “no conoce la actividad real, sensorial, como tal.” (El Tesis sobre Feuerbach)

Para Marx el problema de ambos materialismo e idealismo actuales fue que eran de naturaleza especulativa. Si la realidad determina subjetividad como dice materialismo o, como dice idealismo, subjetividad determina la realidad, Marx argumentó que ambos métodos terminan en el mismo lugar: una vista unidimensional de los seres humanos. Contra estos métodos, Marx avanzó la idea que el objeto y el sujeto no son separados, sino que forman una unidad. Su método se resume en una crítica extendida de Feuerbach en La Ideología Alemana:

Es cierto que Feuerbach les lleva a los materialistas “puros” la gran ventaja de que estima que también el hombre es un “objeto sensorio”; pero, aun aparte de que sólo lo ve como “objeto sensorio” y no como “actividad sensoria”, manteniéndose también en esto dentro de la teoría, sin concebir los hombres dentro de su conexión social dada, bajo las condiciones de vida existentes que han hecho de ellos lo que son, no llega nunca, por ello mismo, hasta el hombre realmente existente, hasta el hombre activo, sino que se detiene en el concepto abstracto “el hombre”…No consigue nunca, por tanto, concebir el mundo sensorial como la actividad sensoria y viva total de los individuos que lo forman.

La humanidad, según Marx, es “objeto sensorio” y también “actividad sensoria.” Otra vez encontramos la dialéctica de auto-actividad en la cual los seres son ambos el objeto y el sujeto. Por consiguiente, como Marx escribe en otro lugar, “objetos sensorios” no son “realmente distintos de los objetos conceptuales.” En cambio es necesario “[concebir] la propia actividad humana como una actividad objetiva.” (El Tesis)  Los seres humanos crean el mundo objetivo y, en cambio, se determinan por este mundo. Donde Marx planteó una unidad de intención consciente y la realidad material, ambos materialismo e idealismo los separaron. Como resultado, últimamente la humanidad tuvo que acomodarse a un mundo predeterminado y dado, externo a sí mismo.

La alternativa propuesta por Marx tiene implicaciones metodológicas importantes. Porque la filosofía actual concibió el mundo como externo a la humanidad, como algo que la enfrentaba como una realidad preexistente, la humanidad sólo puede existir como una idea desconectada del mundo. Al establecer una relación interna entre la idea de humanidad y los seres humanos “realmente existente”, Marx enfatiza una dialéctica de esencia y existencia, el abstracto y el concreto, el contenido y la forma. En El Tesis, Marx argumenta, “la esencia humana no es algo abstracto inherente a cada individuo.” Él contrasta esta idea contra la de toda filosofía previa, en la cual “la esencia humana sólo puede concebirse como ‘género’, como una generalidad interna, muda, que se limita a unir naturalmente los muchos individuos.” Los seres humanos se crean a sí mismos y su mundo, no son dados.

Como vimos en El Trabajo Enajenado el carácter del producto del trabajo – los objetos que producen los seres humanos – expresa la esencia de la relación del trabajo a sí mismo – los seres humanos relacionando a ellos mismos. El producto del trabajo es la forma materializada de esta esencia. Lo que produce la actividad es una expresión de la forma de esta actividad, y lo que produce la actividad también lo hace de sí mismo. El carácter del producto del trabajo corresponde a la forma del trabajo que lo produjo. Como veremos, en la sociedad capitalista la relación de la capitalista al trabajador y la separación del trabajo de los medios de trabajo son la forma de la relación de trabajo a sí mismo.

Por el momento, lo que es importante es el punto metodológico de Marx sobre la relación entre el sujeto y el objeto. La objetividad del trabajo viviente significa que la actividad crea sus propias formas de existencia. La actividad entonces se media a sí misma en el mundo. Desde este punto de vista, no es posible concebir la forma externa al sujeto. Inmediatamente la esencia llega a ser como existencia y por tanto el contenido de actividad es actual solamente en su forma. Así el trabajo se relaciona a sí mismo en una forma inmanente. Sus formas son inherentes e intrínsecas a su contenido. Al contrario, el método dualista lleva a uno considerar los dos lados en simple oposición, con sólo una relación externo a uno al otro.

Marx subsumió la crítica materialista e idealista en una nueva síntesis. En esta síntesis el sujeto y el objeto ya no se plantean uno contra el otro, sino que forman una relación interna en la cual cada uno es constitutivo del otro. Al hacerlo así, Marx preservó el concepto idealista de un infinitamente y universalmente sujeto auto-determinado, también el concepto materialista que la subjetividad es determinada objetivamente, subsumiendo los dos en una nueva unidad. Para Marx, el pensamiento y la realidad ya no son separados, sino que existen como una unidad de actividad y pensamiento, la cual Marx llama la actividad “práctico-crítica.” (El Tesis)

Por lo tanto, Marx logra una ruptura epistemológica y decisiva con toda la filosofía anterior. El conocimiento, él contiende, no emerge independientemente de la realidad, o como observación de los objetos externos o sólo del mente. Más bien, como él escribe en El Tesis, el conocimiento es “un problema práctico. Es en la práctica donde el hombre tiene que demostrar la verdad, es decir, la realidad y el poderío, la terrenalidad de su pensamiento.” Como afirma el concepto “la actividad práctico-crítica,” pensar no puede ser “aislado” de la actividad sensual, o la práctica. Las categorías de pensar se explican por el movimiento objetivo de actividad. Teoría sólo puede ser realizado en “la práctica humana y en la comprensión de esa práctica.”

Marx disputa la idea que había una separación o dualidad natural entre el pensamiento y el mundo. Tal división sólo apareció surgir de la naturaleza como había pensado toda filosofía anterior. En cambio, él argumentó, esta separación se explica como una condición histórica, como una consecuencia de la sociedad de clases. Nos volvemos a continuación cómo Marx llegó a esta conclusión.

Próximamente: La Historia y Las Formas Sociales de Existencia

The current discussion on unions is welcomed, but has so far mostly focused on strategy and tactics around existing unions. Of course, these immediate issues are critical and necessary, including in our own work. However, we want to focus here on mapping out the shape of the terrain.

There are a few broader considerations we need to keep in mind:

1) Clarify in a categorical sense what we mean by a union 2) Consider the past conditions from which the existing unions arose 3) Move toward an understanding of the current period in which the old unions have been transformed and have created a new strategic and tactical necessity 4) Finally, we have to get a sense of a way forward regarding the union question

What follows is a series of notes on these issues.

What are Unions?

We have to start by thinking categorically about the union form. Only with this in mind is it possible to establish a foundation by which to examine the historical and contemporary developments of unions. Further, only with a categorical foundation can we begin to assess the current strategic terrain without falling into empirical and subjective responses around the union question.

Labor and Labor Power

It is critical to think about unions in terms of the relationship between labor and labor power.

In capitalist society the existence and category of labor are completely split between labor and labor power. In a dialectical sense, the workers are both labor and labor power. This division arises because labor is completely separated from the means of labor, or means of production.

Labor power is the ability to labor that must be exchanged with the capitalist in order to get access to the uses needed to survive and satisfy needs. The worker gets money in the form of a wage to get those uses. In return the capitalist gets labor, which comes alive when fused with the means of production. Because the capitalist controls the means of production, he appropriates or keeps the product of the worker, or object produced, for himself.

The split between labor and labor power expresses the relation between necessary and surplus labor. The worker gets back only the necessary subsistence to reproduce herself for that day. But the worker creates much more than the necessary subsistence in a day. The worker creates not only what is necessary to survive that day, but a surplus.

The relationship between necessary and surplus labor has governed all of human history. In capitalist society this relationship takes the form of value. The worker produces surplus value, but only gets back the value of necessary labor. This amount is the value of the worker’s labor power and not labor. Therefore, once again, the worker does not get back the surplus value she has created, but only what was necessary to reproduce her labor power for another day.

The value of labor power is its price, and this is the wage received at the end of the week. The so-called price of labor, the wage of the worker, is actually the value of labor power, which is only necessary labor. Meanwhile, the surplus labor as value goes to the capitalist. The worker receives the value of labor power, which is its price, but not the surplus value the worker created through her labor. The split between labor and labor power, therefore, takes on an additional form in the separation of value and price.

The wage extinguishes the division between necessary and surplus labor. It seems as if the worker exchanges with the capitalist a day’s work for a day’s pay. However, this is not the case. Given the social relations of production, the worker can never get back the total of what she created. The terms of exchange will always be “unequal” because the capitalist is able to appropriate the surplus.

A Contradiction Internal to the Class

By definition the split between labor and labor power is internal to the class or else there would be no class at all. There is a working class because there are a group of people who have nothing but their labor power to exchange with the capitalist to get access to the uses they need. The worker gets subsistence through the wage and capital accumulates the surplus to expand itself. The class relation between the worker and the capitalist is an external expression of an internal split between labor and labor power.

Unions arise from the objective condition of the class and are integral to the relations of labor in capitalist society. They arise as a result of an internal contradiction in the class between labor and labor power. Unions are not external to the class, but an objective expression of its existence. Unions are an organizational expression of the class that come about from the collective struggle over common conditions. However, the union form is the result of the internal contradiction of the class between labor and labor power.

First, unions emerge as the workers combine in an attempt to increase the price of their labor power. In doing so the workers collectively struggle to increase their subsistence. However, considered from this standpoint alone they do not challenge the form of production, but simply the distribution of the surplus.

Second, capitalism brings into being the collective worker, a new form of cooperative labor. Since production is a social process involving many different kinds of workers due to the division of labor, the union is a form of association that represents both potential mastery over the entire production process, as well as their potential ability to collectively shut down production. However, as the union potentially combines the many different types of workers involved in the production process, it becomes the form of organization of the collective worker whose increasing cooperation develops in the production process. The union is therefore also the organization of the collective worker at the point of production.

The relationship between the struggle to increase the price of labor power and the latent cooperation of labor involves a profound contradiction. Do the workers combine to bargain for the terms of sale of their labor power or do they combine as collective producers who can seize the means of production? Do they merely reproduce their labor power and therefore the capital and labor relation? Or do they combine in an organization that represents their latent cooperative labor, which can serve as the foundation for a rupture with the value relation?

Both sides of this contradiction are at play in the union form. As unions developed the workers increased the price of their labor power. However, this did not break with the capital and labor relation. It instead reproduced the split between labor and labor power. On one side of the contradiction of the union form there is a tendency to reproduce labor power and therefore class. On the other there is the tendency of the union to give organizational expression to the latent unity of cooperative labor. This inherent unity is the basis for restructuring production during the rupture with capital. Although this unity is mediated by the capitalist it must be positively realized in new relations of production during the destruction of the value form in the transition to communism.

Unions in the ‘Golden Age of Capitalism’

Unions were transformed in the 20th century from organizations to increase the price of labor power and unify the collective worker into organs of labor discipline within the production process. This change marked the transition from absolute to relative surplus value.

Unions and the Working Day

In the 19th century workers’ struggles, with the important exception of the Paris Commune, were centered around the shortening of the working day. Workers attempted to overcome the contradiction between labor and labor-power by challenging the hold of the capitalist on the surplus.

During much of the 19th century the accumulation of capital was characterized by the production of absolute surplus value. Absolute surplus value is production of surplus that is tied to the length of the work day: the longer the working day, the greater the amount of surplus value. The struggle of the workers arose because the capitalists were lengthening the working day in order to increase the production of surplus value. The struggle over the working day called into question the part of the workday in which the worker produced surplus for the capitalist, which was the very means by which capital sought to reproduce itself and expand.

Even at that time, however, the production of absolute surplus-value was becoming less and less a means by which capital accumulated. As the workers began to achieve a shortening of the working day through unionization and legislation, capital had to find new ways to create surplus value. Capital increased the constant capital in the form of machines in the production process. With the generalization of the use of machinery, the expansion of capital was accomplished through the production of relative surplus value. Relative surplus value is characterized by the dramatic increase in productivity and exploitation of labor. More use values are created in less time.

With this shift in the production of surplus value, the struggle for the shortening of the working day no longer corresponded to the era of relative surplus value. As the productivity of labor increased with the application of machines, a potentially minimum working day was already being established and the struggle for an eight hour day lost meaning. It was no longer a struggle that corresponded to the objective development of capital and labor. The task of the workers shifted to seizing the means of production to socially realize a society of minimum labor time whose potential now already existed.

This background is necessary to understand how unions changed in the first half of the 20th century.

Unions and Relative Surplus Value

Many of the existing unions formed in the early part of the 20th century when relative surplus value matured as the general mode by which capital produced surplus value. As a result, this period, known as the ‘golden age of capitalism, was one in which labor power received a marginally greater share, and also, given the immense growing productivity of labor, a relatively diminishing share of the surplus. This was accomplished through increasing the intensity of the work – for example speed up, etc. in addition to the development of the productive forces through the application of science and technology to the production process resulting in the development of machinery, and a profound increase in constant capital.

These developments of the productive forces corresponded to the labor revolts that birthed the CIO, the origins of today’s unions. The workers of the CIO were what have been labeled “mass,” or semi-skilled, workers. These workers worked in the newly mechanized factories being built that largely relied on the employment of machines in the production process. The development of machinery, as a further extension of the division of labor, gave rise to this new class composition that became the objective basis of this labor upsurge. At that time the AFL, home to skilled workers and craftsmen, withheld their support from this revolt by the semi-skilled worker because the expansion of machinery took away work from these skilled craftsmen, and made many of their trades obsolete. It was the revolt of the soon-to-be CIO, however, that called into question the conditions of work that accompanied these developments of the productive forces.

At the same time, the unions mediated an increase in the total social wage in exchange for increasing labor productivity. This included, in addition to higher wages, the expansion of “democratic” rights and increased social investment on the part of the capitalist through the state. While the price of labor power increased, the exploitation of labor deepened as the quantity of goods increased and their prices fell.

In concrete terms, the dynamic of labor productivity and labor power meant things like the growth of the one paycheck household, company pensions, rapidly expanding cheap and high quality higher education, and the post-war housing boom. Of course, we need to be very clear that this was not the case for all labor power. For example, many, many millions were racially left outside looking in – something that conditioned the powerful and vanguard black struggle from the 1940s into the 1970s. It was a similar case with the women’s movement.

All this also meant that the unions changed along with the overall political conditions of the workers’ struggle. The workers as labor power could be absorbed ‘politically’ and ‘economically’ because labor productivity grew dramatically. The exponential growth in the productive forces expressed in growing surpluses meant a growth in the marginal share the workers received. But while the price of labor power increased, its overall value decreased as the increased productivity of labor meant that the portion of the workday needed to reproduce the wages of the worker decreased in relation to the portion of the workday in which surplus was produced for the capitalist.

Incidentally, as higher productivity and higher wages could only be guaranteed with the introduction of new science, technology, and production methods, capital required a higher level of rationalization and control over the production process. The increased “democratic” rights guaranteed by the state that included the legalization of unions, at the same time subjected them to new modes of rationalization within the production process. With the massive investments into constant capital, capital required the guarantee of a return on these investments through uninterrupted production. Through their legalization the union officialdom reciprocated by forfeiting basic strategies such as the right to strike and the tactic of the sympathy strike.

Furthermore, unions gave up struggles over the conditions of work, such as pace, intensity, health and safety conditions, and a say over the introduction of further extensions of the division of labor. This meant that, while unions continued to struggle over labor power in the form of wages, the abandonment over the conditions of labor meant that the official unions no longer expressed the resistance of living labor in the process of production itself.

All of these new conditions were guaranteed through union contracts by the state, and, further, this intervention by the state into the production process, an evolution of the class relationship between capital and labor, became the objective basis for the existence of the union bureaucracy. Thereafter every revolt against these new conditions in the production process was also a political challenge to the state, and thus posed the question of workers power against capital.

Finally, against the guarantee of uninterrupted production embedded in the union contract, every revolt by the working class put them at odds with the new terms of the union form itself. In this period unions no longer embodied the contradiction between labor and labor power, and instead relegated struggle to the price of labor power. This shift corresponded to a new relationship between the worker and the union whereby the union became a social service agency and a higher level of atomization of the working class was achieved within the union form. Unions, then, no longer expressed the potential of the collective worker at the point of production.

Unions in the Age of ‘Neo-Liberal’ Crisis

We encounter today a deepening crisis in the social reproduction of labor as the capitalists seek to lower the subsistence levels of labor power. What is reproduction and why is it important? Labor power must be daily reproduced in order for the worker to recreate, expand and circulate capital. Without this, there could be no capital. The capitalists must regulate the consumption of the workers to what is necessary to get them to work, but nothing more. Anything beyond that is considered unproductive for the capitalist. Capital is therefore not only carrying out a massive austerity in the formerly advanced economies, but lengthening the working day by lowering wages, transferring the social costs of reproduction to the individual worker and increasing precarious work.

Capitalist Attack on the Total Social Wage

Today the terms of sale of labor power are fundamentally changed as the capitalists have been confronting a long, unfolding crisis over the last 40 years. Unlike the previous period, capital aims at driving down the costs of the total social wage. Once again, the total social wage goes well beyond the paycheck the worker gets every week, and includes social investment by the capitalists through the state or other entities like foundations, non-profits and companies, in education, healthcare, and public infrastructure.

The struggle against the reduction of subsistence levels of labor power, or living standards, profoundly conditions the resistance to capital in the crisis. Whereas this resistance has characterized decades of fight back in the crisis-ridden Western countries, opposition was more often than not confined to particular companies and industries. However, in recent years, as we have seen, a critical dynamic has developed in which alongside ongoing specific sector action, often involving unions, there has emerged a more generalized form of resistance speaking to the crisis of reproduction. This has been most dramatic in the rebellions in Egypt and Europe. The United States has obviously also experienced this dynamic, although to a lesser extent.

Despite the loss of density in the U.S., the existing unions are deeply involved in the struggle over the total social wage. Although they are decaying remnants of the previous period, the existing unions have been transformed into something new.

In the ‘golden age of capitalism’ the existing unions were predicated on “full” employment and increases in the social wage exchanged for labor discipline and productivity. Today capital achieves labor discipline and productivity in new ways, developing  a regime of precarious, casualized and “flexible” work, as well as permanent and structured unemployment. Further, it is the police and prisons that have equally become the institutions and sadist faces of labor discipline.

Today the old unions mediate the capitalist attack on the total wage. These unions adopt the employment conditions, wage scales, and work rules of the precarious, casualized and flexible workplace. Further, the old unions are transformed into the means by which the social costs of pensions and healthcare are shifted to the individual worker.

In the current period, the majority of the existing unions have moved towards a service model. These unions seek individual “partnerships” with companies and consumer relationships with their members. They function as labor contractors for employers and customer unions for employees. They increase the atomization on the job and turn their members into mere numbers at empty union rallies. These unions have become company shareholders, either directly, as in the UAW, or indirectly in the number of union pensions invested in the stockmarket.

Further, and importantly, because the existing unions are a consequence of labor relations law, they cannot organize cross sector strikes, nevermind class-wide action. The unions have backed federal law that limits employer action during card check union elections. Besides the fact that it has no possibility of passing the Congress given the current balance of class forces, the law would have no effect on the attack on labor power given that it is not union density that is the key to the struggle, but the ability to organize strikes. Effective class action builds “density”, not the other way around.

Since these unions have so far largely failed to develop a presence in the South, the employment conditions of the South have migrated to the North. The most recent concessionary contract of the UAW around the auto bankruptcies makes that all too clear. The ongoing organizing drives and political offensives the unions and the Democratic Party are carrying out in the South is a failing attempt to reverse this trend.

New Ruling Class Policy on the Unions 

The old unions have been weakened to such a degree that the capitalists have seized the political terrain in a “counter-revolutionary” wave that has swept through Republican controlled state legislatures since 2008. The Republican Party has passed so-called “right to work” laws in many states, bypassing at times parliamentary procedures to do so, as was the case in Michigan. This “southern solution” to the union question has two aims. The first is to remove the old unions as a “grassroots” force for the Democratic Party. The second is to remove union pay scales and job protections, which continue to set the standard for unskilled and semi-skilled work as a whole in particular regions of the country.

It is not only the Republican offensive that is forcing the working class to confront its political conditions. For the first time the Democratic Party has had to contemplate confronting the union question as an executive power at the federal level in the era of ‘neo-liberal’ crisis. For example, the Obama administration and the Democrats used the bankruptcy of the auto companies to work with the UAW to force through a massive concessionary contract that reduced wages and compensation to new minimum levels.

The Wisconsin protests confronted the national Democratic Party with a different problem. As the leading edge of capitalist austerity, the Republicans seek to break altogether with the promises of the social contract established under the “golden age”. The Right has made a final break with the legal existence of unions. On the other hand, the centrists, now gathered in the Democratic Party, by and large tolerate unions as labor contractors, “get out the vote” machines, and propagandists against Republicans.

While there is unity among the ruling class and the two parties around the attack on the total social wage, political polarization in the United States has so far obscured the class content of austerity. Unlike the some parts of the Middle East or Europe, polarization in the United States has been largely deflected through the two political parties.

The Union Today: Which Way Forward? 

The preceding theoretical and historical background now raises the question of what orientation revolutionaries should take towards the union form. We make the following points: 1) Revolutionaries must work with the rank and file of existing unions 2) Support the formation of new unions when objectively possible 3) Help build minority or vanguard workers organizations

A New Communist Analysis of Unions?

To some extent we have inherited a communist critique of unions that arose in the previous period. That analysis developed from the new forms of workers activity in the 1930s to the 1970s. These forms included everything from absenteeism and sabotage, wildcat strikes, to workplace committees and councils. Such forms emerged as a negation of the unions, superseding them as labor sought to confront capital as “workers power”.

The ultra-left view of the unions as reformist institutions, absorbed into the production process and functioning as organizations of labor discipline, expressed the reality and needs of the previous period in capitalism. There is a tendency today, in the use of this framework, to view unions as external to the class. This analysis of the unions was understandable in the past given that worker struggles sprang up against the form of production itself and less so the terms of sale of labor power. The wave of wildcat struggles and shop floor militancy in the late 1960s and 1970s were as much about the alienation and speed up of the machines – and the unions that regulated discipline to them – as they were about pay raises to keep up with inflation.

Faced with the limits of its own reproduction in the 1970s, capital destroyed the old role of the union in the production process. As a result, the existing unions have lost their objective existence as a mediation of capital and labor, except in particular industries. However, even there the tendency is that competitive pressures between capitals are eroding the power of those unions. Any rising demands of labor power can no longer be met by capital and the tendency has been towards the liquidation of the unions as institutions of worker discipline.

What disciplines workers today is precarious, casualized work, structural unemployment, labor law and the prisons. And the tendency toward precarious work is by no means limited to the working poor and “proletarianized” white collar workers. Precarious work – the lengthening of the work day, the attack on the social wage, and speed up – are increasingly a feature of all job classifications: transportation, heavy and light industry, education, healthcare, and services, etc. The “democratic rights” once extended to the workplace have been, and continue to be systematically eroded and destroyed. There is a widespread and successful dismantling of the existing legal structure of labor relations that was established in the 1930s and 1940s.

A new situation has arisen, qualitatively different from the previous period. As the capitalists attack the total social wage, struggles over labor power face the question of political power much more directly than before. Struggles over labor power can no longer be incorporated into the development of capital as they were in the 19th century, or superseded as they were for many branches of industry in much of the 20th century by the development of machines and dramatic reduction of necessary labor time that resulted. During the “golden age” the demands of labor power and the struggle of labor against capital tended to be antagonistic to each other. Today this is not the case. The attack on the total social wage increasingly raises the impossibility of the social reproduction of labor power and labor.

What are the implications? The form of production, or the “political” question is more directly confronting the working class and the oppressed on the terrain of labor power. Crucially, this dynamic means that defensive, or so called “economic” battles can leap into confrontations on the “political” terrain. More precisely, the separation of labor and labor power tends to close as capital reduces the subsistence levels of labor power. Increasingly, humanity as labor and labor power cannot reproduce itself relative to the massive productive forces and social wealth it has created in the form of capital.

Such a reality means three things. First, struggles around the wage – including health, pension and job rights, if any – can be the basis for real breaks with the existing unions and political forces arrayed in the state. Second, the objective conditions can arise for new unions to sprout up in industries with or without existing unions. The conditions exist now for a greater number of new worker militants to appear on the scene and the appropriate organizational forms must be found to cohere them.

Lessons from Wisconsin

A clear example of the first point, and the kind of leap we have in mind, is what happened in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin showed how a union struggle over an attack on the social wage goes over to a class wide movement, discovering tactics, in this case a kind of occupation, which began to embrace the whole class. The struggle in Wisconsin quickly established the limits of the existing unions and came up against the objective reality that the capitalists and the ruling class have no choice but to attack the total social wage. The generalization of these struggles opens up the possibility for a broader agitation in which the workers confront more directly the political situation of the working class and carry out class wide action. Wisconsin showed how the gap between labor power and labor is closing in the era of austerity

Again, to use an older set of terms, these workers were in the process of moving from the “economic” to the “political” level. With the continued unfolding of the crisis such mobilizations have ruptured at various moments onto the national stage. Just as the capitalists carried out a naked class offensive in Wisconsin, so unionized workers had to move from a company or industry specific fight, to class-wide struggle. Just like Occupy or the Trayvon Martin protests became a touchstone for discontent around the country, touching places with undeveloped traditions of protest, these union fights clearly raised more directly the political situation facing the working class for all to see.

These struggles are not simply “defensive” or “economic” struggles. They are also not simply struggles of a “privileged” sector of the working class. They are the conditions of struggle for unionized workers in particular industries for their own radicalization. It is the condition for the deepening of their own understanding of the “political” level. This is the case because the capitalists can no longer provide the “American Dream” to the working class. The attack on labor power arises objectively from the crisis of the capital-labor relation today. Defensive struggles can function as “schools of communism” today.

There have been no clear, semi-permanent political alternatives that have emerged during the current crisis in the U.S. Since no alternative has arisen, the working class, in particular semi-skilled and skilled, tend to think within the framework of the “golden age”. This has given a merely defensive character to many of the struggles and individual strikes that have appeared during the crisis. Despite the capitalist offensive, the working class has yet to fully grasp the class nature of the state and the bankruptcy of bourgeois democracy. They have so far resisted the new regime within the framework of the old. An appeal to the promise of the “American Dream” – the ideological bedrock of trade unionism – has no power in the face of a unified enemy that has no intention of raising standards of living.

We need new forms of worker organization that can establish that alternative new union. Broadly speaking, the ultra-left tends to consider the question of labor power from only one side. If the demands of labor power can longer be met by capital, so the argument goes, then necessity dictates seizing the means of production, abolishing value, and reconquering uses for human needs and not capital. Of course, this is true, but it doesn’t explain the overall character of worker protest. Regarded from the other side of the contradiction, then, the demands of labor power cannot be ignored. In response to the crisis of the reproduction of labor and capital, workers will just as likely struggle around the demands of labor power. Again, the contradiction here arises from the objective existence of the class

In fact, the struggle against austerity, which deeply conditions the fight back today, is equally tied to the demands of labor power. Yet these demands continue to be monopolized by the existing and decaying unions. If the domain of labor power is subsistence, then this struggle is mediated by the division of labor, which in turn is mediated by competition. And this takes concrete form in mutual competition between the workers. Competition is across industries and their individual branches and departments. The existing unions reproduce the division of labor and are not the basis for class-wide organizations – organizations of the collective worker.

It would be formalistic and external to the class to fail to engage with the union form. Since precarity is the general condition of the working class today, struggles around labor power are part of the objective movement of the class. The struggles against austerity have not negated the union form, but demand new kinds of unions as worker activity ruptures with the existing unions. The existing unions need to be superseded by the formation of new unions.

Since the tendency is toward the destruction of the legal framework for labor relations, new unions will likely emerge in a semi-illegal existence. This means that there would be a less direct tension between permanent and semi-permanent forms of class organization. Without the institutionalization of labor law and the acceptance of employers, new unions will exist as more porous and flexible, morphing into industry-wide offensive that have the possibility of equally negating the division of labor and becoming the organization of the collective worker.

New unions will resemble less the bureaucratic, professionally staffed institutions we are familiar with today, and more semi-permanent unions of the past whose “contracts” were merely temporary truces in an ongoing struggle. Once again, even as the union form reproduces the commodified form of labor, while being the organization of the collective worker, the gap between the two lessens.

However, since unions are mass organizations, the objective conditions do not exist at this time for them to emerge.

Minority Class Organizations

If new unions are not yet possible, other forms of organization are absolutely necessary. Revolutionaries should assist in building minority worker organizations. New unions will not emerge in a linear way, nor are they enough to constitute the political independence of the class. Instead, we need to build minority organizations to both assist in laying the foundation for new unionism, as well as cohere and intervene to help develop worker militants who will play a leading role in new struggles and organizational forms that go beyond unions – class-wide organizations – that can begin to pose alternatives to the current order. These new militants are critical to establishing the scaffolding for both the “economic” and “political” organization and action of the class.

Why are minority forms of organization necessary? Once again, Wisconsin illustrates the point.  While tens of thousands of workers moved, challenging in their activity the existing array of political forces in the state, this movement was enclosed and appropriated by the organizational power of the union bureaucracy and Democratic Party. Despite the important work of individual militants in Wisconsin – in particular the agitation for a general strike – revolutionaries have yet to organize themselves to fully intervene in such ruptures. This involves organizational ability and capacity – neither of which we have yet to fully achieve, in particular the latter.

More radical mass organizations – like unions – are not sustainable today given the overall development of political conditions. However, what is possible today is the creation of networks composed of a layer or nucleus of more radical workers. The growth of our organizational ability and capacity depends on the emergence of a layer or advanced sector of the class that can act as a pole within ruptures like Wisconsin as well as smaller localized struggles. These poles must serve as a counterweight and an alternative to bureaucratic and statist forces. The focus for revolutionaries should be to not only actively build and support the appearance of these layers or nodes of radical workers, but also aim towards their unification in specific networks – including industry specific – and linked around a common internet presence sharing information and perspectives. Our comrades at Recomposition have already gone a long way in thinking about this and we all should listen.

At this historical moment we have to distinguish between the revolutionary propaganda groups that populate the revolutionary Left today and potential networks of worker militants. However, these forces will obviously overlap. The relationship between the two can act as a conjuncture, which will establish a new foundation for revolutionary organization that goes beyond propaganda groups. This is particularly the case as such networks bring together knowledge about the specific workings and contours of particular industries. Revolutionary programs become more concrete based on this knowledge.

Besides radical worker networks, what forms of organization should be advocated? Minority or vanguard forms of organization emerge differently, depending on the specific situation.

In some of the existing unions there has been significant rank-and-file unrest. The SEIU and UAW come immediately to mind. This discontent has typically taken the form of union reform caucuses. Reform caucuses will not be able to escape the confines and logic of labor law, which structure these unions. However, to the extent that reform caucuses have rank-and-file support among a dissident membership, revolutionaries should try to win these workers over to alternative political perspectives, strategies, and tactics.

In existing unions the focus should be on the formation of workplace groups. These groups can be the basis for the agitation for rank and file committees that run parallel to the official union structure. These groups, and later committees, should advocate direct action, flying pickets, workers control and the formation of mixed locals. Revolutionaries must advocate class-wide unity and organizational forms that lay the foundation for the breakdown of the division of labor. Committees should be the basis to advocate tactics that break with legality and unite the class by incorporating demands and needs of all sectors. Ultimately, committees should agitate for the strike, in particular against the limited and broken up show strikes of the existing unions. Finally, as our comrades in Advance the Struggle have already pointed the way forward, we need to agitate for classwide committees clustered around specific industries. These tactics and organizational forms are the expression of the collective worker.

Here is where we need to distinguish what it means to “defend the unions”. We cannot defend the structure of the existing unions and their legal straight-jacket. However, in attacking the existing unions, the capitalists are creating the political conditions for the non-reproduction of the working class and the oppressed. In the fight back the existing unions are not an adequate terrain for a counter-offensive against capital.  It is not possible to alter the form of the existing unions by changing their leadership.

Like all organizational forms under capitalism, unions express objective contradictions that cannot be willed away. As Marx argued about capitalism in general, the problem of form is key. We cannot simply substitute one organizational form for another and be guaranteed the results we want. We must always be alive to the dialectic of form and content. However, at this time we can be certain about the types of organizations we need and must advocate.

In an effort to deepen and expand this conversation, we offer Raymond Williams’ essay, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory” (pdf). In this essay (later expanded into a whole book) Williams takes up the common ways in which the categories of base and superstructure are used, and challenges his readers to, instead of considering isolated objects — in this case objects of art since Williams was a cultural critic — investigate the objective parameters and social relations of the activity behind the production of those objects. Part of this challenge requires us to consider the interrelation of all social practices (their “totality”) as opposed to considering one set, whether deemed “political” or “economic”, a part from another, and even more, to do so would require us to understand each of these particular sets as different forms of an active (or “moving”) social process.

This contribution to the discussion shares important features with Marx’s explanation of the fetish, which he begins in chapter one of the first volume of Capital. There, Marx demonstrates that modes of thought which treat objects in isolation of their historical development are a product of the organization of capitalist society. In this way, capitalist society understands itself to be timeless — a natural condition of the human race. One of the important contributions of Marx, then, is that he provided a critical theory that pierced through capital’s veneer of being natural, allowing us to understand the ways in which our activities and those of the rest of the working class can be equally critical, destroying capital in practice as well as in theory. As a new generation of communists, we must continue to wrestle with the difficult tasks of theory and method in order to play our part in creating a better world.

-Mazin

Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory

by Raymond Williams

Any modern approach to a Marxist theory of culture must begin by considering the proposition of a determining base and a determined superstructure. From a strictly theoretical point of view this is not, in fact, where we might choose to begin.[1] It would be in many ways preferable if we could begin from a proposition which originally was equally central, equally authentic: namely the proposition that social being determines consciousness. It is not that the two propositions necessarily deny each other or are in contradiction. But the proposition of base and superstructure, with its figurative element, with its suggestion of a definite and fixed spatial relationship, constitutes, at least in certain hands, a very specialized and at times unacceptable version of the other proposition. Yet in the transition from Marx to Marxism, and in the development of mainstream Marxism itself, the proposition of the determining base and the determined superstructure has been commonly held to be the key to Marxist cultural analysis.

Now it is important, as we try to analyse this proposition, to be aware that the term of relationship which is involved, that is to say ‘determines’, is of great linguistic and real complexity. The language of determination and even more of determinism was inherited from idealist and especially theological accounts of the world and man. It is significant that it is in one of his familiar inversions, his contradictions of received propositions, that Marx uses the word ‘determines’. He is opposing an ideology that had been insistent on the power of certain forces outside man, or, in its secular version, on an abstract determining consciousness. Marx’s own proposition explicitly denies this, and puts the origin of determination in men’s own activities. Nevertheless, the particular history and continuity of the term serves to remind us that there are, within ordinary use—–and this is true of most of the major European languages—–quite different possible meanings and implications of the word ‘determine’. There is, on the one hand, from its theological inheritance, the notion of an external cause which totally predicts or prefigures, indeed totally controls a subsequent activity. But there is also, from the experience of social practice, a notion of determination as setting limits, exerting pressures.

Now there is clearly a difference between a process of setting limits and exerting pressures, whether by some external force or by the internal laws of a particular development, and that other process in which a subsequent content is essentially prefigured, predicted and controlled by a pre-existing external force. Yet it is fair to say, looking at many applications of Marxist cultural analysis, that it is the second sense, the notion of prefiguration, prediction or control, which has often explicitly or implicitly been used.

Superstructure: Qualifications and Amendments

The term of relationship is then the first thing that we have to examine in this proposition, but we have to do this by going on to look at the related terms themselves. ‘Superstructure’ has had most attention. People commonly speak of ‘the superstructure’, although it is interesting that originally, in Marx’s German, the term is in one important use plural. Other people speak of the different activities ‘inside’ the superstructure or superstructures. Now already in Marx himself, in the later correspondence of Engels, and at many points in the subsequent Marxist tradition, qualifications have been made about the determined character of certain superstructural activities. The first kind of qualification had to do with delays in time, with complications, and with certain indirect or relatively distant relationships. The simplest notion of a superstructure, which is still by no means entirely abandoned, had been the reflection, the imitation or the reproduction of the reality of the base in the superstructure in a more or less direct way. Positivist notions of reflection and reproduction of course directly supported this. But since in many real cultural activities this relationship cannot be found, or cannot be found without effort or even violence to the material or practice being studied, the notion was introduced of delays in time, the famous lags; of various technical complications; and of indirectness, in which certain kinds of activity in the cultural sphere— philosophy, for example — were situated at a greater distance from the primary economic activities. That was the first stage of qualification of the notion of superstructure: in effect, an operational qualification. The second stage was related but more fundamental, in that the process of the relationship itself was more substantially looked at. This was the kind of reconsideration which gave rise to the modern notion of ‘mediation’, in which something more than simple reflection or reproduction — indeed something radically different from either reflection or reproduction — actively occurs. In the later twentieth century there is the notion of ‘homologous structures’, where there may be no direct or easily apparent similarity, and certainly nothing like reflection or reproduction, between the superstructural process and the reality of the base, but in which there is an essential homology or correspondence of structures, which can be discovered by analysis. This is not the same notion as ‘mediation’, but it is the same kind of amendment in that the relationship between the base and the superstructure is not supposed to be direct, nor simply operationally subject to lags and complications and indirectnesses, but that of its nature it is not direct reproduction.

These qualifications and amendments are important. But it seems to me that what has not been looked at with equal care, is the received notion of the base. And indeed I would argue that the base is the more important concept to look at if we are to understand the realities of cultural process. In many uses of the proposition of base and superstructure, as a matter of verbal habit, ‘the base’ has come to be considered virtually as an object, or in less crude cases, it has been considered in essentially uniform and usually static ways. ‘The base’ is the real social existence of man. ‘The base’ is the real relations of production corresponding to a stage of the development of material productive forces. ‘The base’ is a mode of production at a particular stage of its development. We make and repeat propositions of this kind, but the usage is then very different from Marx’s emphasis on productive activities, in particular structural relations, constituting the foundation of all other activities. For while a particular stage of the development of production can be discovered and made precise by analysis, it is never in practice either uniform or static. It is indeed one of the central propositions of Marx’s sense of history that there are deep contradictions in the relationships of production and in the consequent social relationships. There is therefore the continual possibility of the dynamic variation of these forces. Moreover, when these forces are considered, as Marx always considers them, as the specific activities and relationships of real men, they mean something very much more active, more complicated and more contradictory than the developed metaphorical notion of ‘the base’ could possibly allow us to realize.

Base and Productive Forces

So we have to say that when we talk of ‘the base’, we are talking of a process and not a state. And we cannot ascribe to that process certain fixed properties for subsequent deduction to the variable processes of the superstructure. Most people who have wanted to make the ordinary proposition more reasonable have concentrated on refining the notion of superstructure. But I would say that each term of the proposition has to be revalued in a particular direction. We have to revalue ‘determination’ towards the setting of limits and the exertion of pressure, and away from a predicted, prefigured and controlled content. We have to revalue ‘superstructure’ towards a related range of cultural practices, and away from a reflected, reproduced or specifically dependent content. And, crucially, we have to revalue ‘the base’ away from the notion of a fixed economic or technological abstraction, and towards the specific activities of men in real social and economic relationships, containing fundamental contradictions and variations and therefore always in a state of dynamic process.

It is worth observing one further implication behind the customary definitions. ‘The base’ has come to include, especially in certain 20th century developments, a strong and limiting sense of basic industry. The emphasis on heavy industry, even, has played a certain cultural role. And this raises a more general problem, for we find ourselves forced to look again at the ordinary notion of ‘productive forces’. Clearly what we are examining in the base is primary productive forces. Yet some very crucial distinctions have to be made here. It is true that in his analysis of capitalist production Marx considered ‘productive work’ in a very particular and specialized sense corresponding to that mode of production. There is a difficult passage in the Grundrisse in which he argues that while the man who makes a piano is a productive worker, there is a real question whether the man who distributes the piano is also a productive worker; but he probably is, since he contributes to the realization of surplus value. Yet when it comes to the man who plays the piano, whether to himself or to others, there is no question: he is not a productive worker at all. So piano-maker is base, but pianist superstructure. As a way of considering cultural activity, and incidentally the economics of modern cultural activity, this is very clearly a dead-end. But for any theoretical clarification it is crucial to recognize that Marx was there engaged in an analysis of a particular kind of production, that is capitalist commodity production. Within his analysis of that mode, he had to give to the notion of ‘productive labour’ and ‘productive forces’ a specialized sense of primary work on materials in a form which produced commodities. But this has narrowed remarkably, and in a cultural context very damagingly, from his more central notion of productive forces, in which, to give just brief reminders, the most important thing a worker ever produces is himself, himself in the fact of that kind of labour, or the broader historical emphasis of men producing themselves, themselves and their history. Now when we talk of the base, and of primary productive forces, it matters very much whether we are referring, as in one degenerate form of this proposition became habitual, to primary production within the terms of capitalist economic relationships, or to the primary production of society itself, and of men themselves, material production and reproduction of real life. If we have the broad sense of productive forces, we look at the whole question of the base differently, and we are then less tempted to dismiss as superstructural, and in that sense as merely secondary, certain vital productive social forces, which are in the broad sense, from the beginning, basic.

Uses of Totality

Yet, because of the difficulties of the ordinary proposition of base and superstructure, there was an alternative and very important development, an emphasis primarily associated with Lukàcs, on a social ‘totality’. The totality of social practices was opposed to this layered notion of a base and a consequent superstructure. This totality of practices is compatible with the notion of social being determining consciousness, but it does not understand this process in terms of a base and a superstructure. Now the language of totality has become common, and it is indeed in many ways more acceptable than the notion of base and superstructure. But with one very important reservation. It is very easy for the notion of totality to empty of its essential content the original Marxist proposition. For if we come to say that society is composed of a large number of social practices which form a concrete social whole, and if we give to each practice a certain specific recognition, adding only that they interact, relate and combine in very complicated ways, we are at one level much more obviously talking about reality, but we are at another level withdrawing from the claim that there is any process of determination. And this I, for one, would be very unwilling to do. Indeed, the key question to ask about any notion of totality in cultural theory is this: whether the notion of totality includes the notion of intention. For if totality is simply concrete, if it is simply the recognition of a large variety of miscellaneous and contemporaneous practices, then it is essentially empty of any content that could be called Marxist. Intention, the notion of intention, restores the key question, or rather the key emphasis. For while it is true that any society is a complex whole of such practices, it is also true that any society has a specific organization, a specific structure, and that the principles of this organization and structure can be seen as directly related to certain social intentions, intentions by which we define the society, intentions which in all our experience have been the rule of a particular class. One of the unexpected consequences of the crudeness of the base/superstructure model has been the too easy acceptance of models which appear less crude — models of totality or of a complex whole — but which exclude the facts of social intention, the class character of a particular society and so on. And this reminds us of how much we lose if we abandon the superstructural emphasis altogether. Thus I have great difficulty in seeing processes of art and thought as superstructural in the sense of the formula as it is commonly used. But in many areas of social and political thought — certain kinds of ratifying theory, certain kinds of law, certain kinds of institutions, which after all in Marx’s original formulations were very much part of the superstructure — in all that kind of social apparatus, and in a decisive area of political and ideological activity and construction, if we fail to see a superstructural element we fail to recognize reality at all. These laws, constitutions, theories, ideologies, which are claimed as natural, or as having universal validity or significance, simply have to be seen as expressing and ratifying the domination of a particular class. Indeed the difficulty of revising the formula of base and superstructure has had much to do with the perception of many militants — who have to fight such institutions and notions as well as fighting economic battles — that if these institutions and their ideologies are not perceived as having that kind of dependent and ratifying relationship, if their claims to universal validity or legitimacy are not denied and fought, then the class character of the society can no longer be seen. And this has been the effect of some versions of totality as the description of cultural process. Indeed I think that we can properly use the notion of totality only when we combine it with that other crucial Marxist concept of ‘hegemony’.

The Complexity of Hegemony

It is Gramsci’s great contribution to have emphasized hegemony, and also to have understood it at a depth which is, I think, rare. For hegemony supposes the existence of something which is truly total, which is not merely secondary or superstructural, like the weak sense of ideology, but which is lived at such a depth, which saturates the society to such an extent, and which, as Gramsci put it, even constitutes the limit of common sense for most people under its sway, that it corresponds to the reality of social experience very much more clearly than any notions derived from the formula of base and superstructure. For if ideology were merely some abstract imposed notion, if our social and political and cultural ideas and assumptions and habits were merely the result of specific manipulation, of a kind of overt training which might be simply ended or withdrawn, then the society would be very much easier to move and to change than in practice it has ever been or is. This notion of hegemony as deeply saturating the conscious- ness of a society seems to be fundamental. And hegemony has the advantage over general notions of totality, that it at the same time emphasizes the facts of domination.

Yet there are times when I hear discussions of hegemony and feel that it too, as a concept, is being dragged back to the relatively simple, uniform and static notion which ‘superstructure’ in ordinary use had become. Indeed I think that we have to give a very complex account of hegemony if we are talking about any real social formation. Above all we have to give an account which allows for its elements of real and constant change. We have to emphasize that hegemony is not singular; indeed that its own internal structures are highly complex, and have continually to be renewed, recreated and defended; and by the same token, that they can be continually challenged and in certain respects modified. That is why instead of speaking simply of ‘the hegemony’, ‘a hegemony’, I would propose a model which allows for this kind of variation and contradiction, its sets of alternatives and its processes of change.

But one thing that is evident in some of the best Marxist cultural analysis is that it is very much more at home in what one might call epochal questions than in what one has to call historical questions. That is to say, it is usually very much better at distinguishing the large features of different epochs of society, as between feudal and bourgeois, or what might be, than at distinguishing between different phases of bourgeois society, and different moments within the phases: that true historical process which demands a much greater precision and delicacy of analysis than the always striking epochal analysis which is concerned with main lineaments and features.

Now the theoretical model which I have been trying to work with is this. I would say first that in any society, in any particular period, there is a central system of practices, meanings and values, which we can properly call dominant and effective. This implies no presumption about its value. All I am saying is that it is central. Indeed I would call it a corporate system, but this might be confusing, since Gramsci uses ‘corporate’ to mean the subordinate as opposed to the general and dominant elements of hegemony. In any case what I have in mind is the central, effective and dominant system of meanings and values, which are not merely abstract but which are organized and lived. That is why hegemony is not to be understood at the level of mere opinion or mere manipulation. It is a whole body of practices and expectations; our assignments of energy, our ordinary understanding of the nature of man and of his world. It is a set of meanings and values which as they are experienced as practices appear as reciprocally confirming. It thus constitutes a sense of reality for most people in the society, a sense of absolute because experienced reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of the society to move, in most areas of their lives. But this is not, except in the operation of a moment of abstract analysis, in any sense a static system. On the contrary we can only understand an effective and dominant culture if we understand the real social process on which it depends: I mean the process of incorporation. The modes of incorporation are of great social significance, and incidentally in our kind of society have considerable economic significance. The educational institutions are usually the main agencies of the transmission of an effective dominant culture, and this is now a major economic as well as cultural activity; indeed it is both in the same moment. Moreover, at a philosophical level, at the true level of theory and at the level of the history of various practices, there is a process which I call the selective tradition: that which, within the terms of an effective dominant culture, is always passed off as ‘the tradition’, ‘the significant past’. But always the selectivity is the point; the way in which from a whole possible area of past and present, certain meanings and practices are chosen for emphasis, certain other meanings and practices are neglected and excluded. Even more crucially, some of these meanings and practices are reinterpreted, diluted, or put into forms which support or at least do not contradict other elements within the effective dominant culture. The processes of education; the processes of a much wider social training within institutions like the family; the practical definitions and organisation of work; the selective tradition at an intellectual and theoretical level: all these forces are involved in a continual making and remaking of an effective dominant culture, and on them, as experienced, as built into our living, its reality depends. If what we learn there were merely an imposed ideology, or if it were only the isolable meanings and practices of the ruling class, or of a section of the ruling class, which gets imposed on others, occupying merely the top of our minds, it would be — and one would be glad — a very much easier thing to overthrow.

It is not only the depths to which this process reaches, selecting and organizing and interpreting our experience. It is also that it is continually active and adjusting; it isn’t just the past, the dry husks of ideology which we can more easily discard. And this can only be so, in a complex society, if it is something more substantial and more flexible than any abstract imposed ideology. Thus we have to recognize the alternative meanings and values, the alternative opinions and attitudes, even some alternative senses of the world, which can be accommodated and tolerated within a particular effective and dominant culture. This has been much under-emphasized in our notions of a superstructure, and even in some notions of hegemony. And the under-emphasis opens the way for retreat to an indifferent complexity. In the practice of politics, for example, there are certain truly incorporated modes of what are nevertheless, within those terms, real oppositions, that are felt and fought out. Their existence within the incorporation is recognizable by the fact that, whatever the degree of internal conflict or internal variation, they do not in practice go beyond the limits of the central effective and dominant definitions. This is true, for example, of the practice of parliamentary politics, though its internal oppositions are real. It is true about a whole range of practices and arguments, in any real society, which can by no means be reduced to an ideological cover, but which can nevertheless be properly analysed as in my sense corporate, if we find that, whatever the degree of internal controversy and variation, they do not exceed the limits of the central corporate definitions.

But if we are to say this, we have to think again about the sources of that which is not corporate; of those practices, experiences, meanings, values which are not part of the effective dominant culture. We can express this in two ways. There is clearly something that we can call alternative to the effective dominant culture, and there is something else that we can call oppositional, in a true sense. The degree of existence of these alternative and oppositional forms is itself a matter of constant historical variation in real circumstances. In certain societies it is possible to find areas of social life in which quite real alternatives are at least left alone. (If they are made available, of course, they are part of the corporate organization.) The existence of the possibility of opposition, and of its articulation, its degree of openness, and so on, again depends on very precise social and political forces. The facts of alternative and oppositional forms of social life and culture, in relation to the effective and dominant culture, have then to be recognized as subject to historical variation, and as having sources which are very significant, as a fact about the dominant culture itself.

Residual and Emergent Cultures

I have next to introduce a further distinction, between residual and emergent forms, both of alternative and of oppositional culture. By ‘residual’ I mean that some experiences, meanings and values which cannot be verified or cannot be expressed in the terms of the dominant culture, are nevertheless lived and practised on the basis of the residue  — cultural as well as social — of some previous social formation. There is a real case of this in certain religious values, by contrast with the very evident incorporation of most religious meanings and values into the dominant system. The same is true, in a culture like Britain, of certain notions derived from a rural past, which have a very significant popularity. A residual culture is usually at some distance from the effective dominant culture, but one has to recognize that, in real cultural activities, it may get incorporated into it. This is because some part of it, some version of it — and especially if the residue is from some major area of the past — will in many cases have had to be incorporated if the effective dominant culture is to make sense in those areas. It is also because at certain points a dominant culture cannot allow too much of this kind of practice and experience outside itself, at least without risk. Thus the pressures are real, but certain genuinely residual meanings and practices in some important cases survive.

By ‘emergent’ I mean, first, that new meanings and values, new practices, new significances and experiences, are continually being created. But there is then a much earlier attempt to incorporate them, just because they are part — and yet not part — of effective contemporary practice. Indeed it is significant in our own period how very early this attempt is, how alert the dominant culture now is to anything that can be seen as emergent. We have then to see, first, as it were a temporal relation between a dominant culture and on the one hand a residual and on the other hand an emergent culture. But we can only understand this if we can make distinctions, that usually require very precise analysis, between residual-incorporated and residual not incorporated, and between emergent-incorporated and emergent not incorporated. It is an important fact about any particular society, how far it reaches into the whole range of human practices and experiences in an attempt at incorporation. It may be true of some earlier phases of bourgeois society, for example, that there were some areas of experience which it was willing to dispense with, which it was prepared to assign as the sphere of private or artistic life, and as being no particular business of society or the state. This went along with certain kinds of political tolerance, even if the reality of that tolerance was malign neglect. But I am sure it is true of the society that has come into existence since the last war, that progressively, because of developments in the social character of labour, in the social character of communications, and in the social character of decision, it extends much further than ever before in capitalist society into certain hitherto resigned areas of experience and practice and meaning. Thus the effective decision, as to whether a practice is alternative or oppositional, is often now made within a very much narrower scope. There is a simple theoretical distinction between alternative and oppositional, that is to say between someone who simply finds a different way to live and wishes to be left alone with it, and someone who finds a different way to live and wants to change the society in its light. This is usually the difference between individual and small-group solutions to social crisis and those solutions which properly belong to political and ultimately revolutionary practice. But it is often a very narrow line, in reality, between alternative and oppositional. A meaning or a practice may be tolerated as a deviation, and yet still be seen only as another particular way to live. But as the necessary area of effective dominance extends, the same meanings and practices can be seen by the dominant culture, not merely as disregarding or despising it, but as challenging it.

Now it is crucial to any Marxist theory of culture that it can give an adequate explanation of the sources of those practices and meanings. We can understand, from an ordinary historical approach, at least some of the sources of residual meanings and practices. These are the results of earlier social formations, in which certain real meanings and values were generated. In the subsequent default of a particular phase of a dominant culture, there is then a reaching back to those meanings and values which were created in real societies in the past, and which still seem to have some significance because they represent areas of human experience, aspiration and achievement, which the dominant culture under- values or opposes, or even cannot recognise. But our hardest task theoretically, is to find a non-metaphysical and a non-subjectivist ex- planation of emergent cultural practice. Moreover, part of our answer to this question bears on the process of persistence of residual practices.

Class and Human Practice

We do have indeed one source to hand from the central body of Marxist theory. We have the formation of a new class, the coming to consciousness of a new class. This remains, without doubt, quite centrally important. Of course, in itself, this process of formation complicates any simple model of base and superstructure. It also complicates some of the ordinary versions of hegemony, although it was Gramsci’s whole object to see and to create by organization the hegemony of a proletarian kind which is capable of challenging the bourgeois hegemony. We have then one central source of new practice, in the emergence of a new class. But we have also to recognize certain other kinds of source, and in cultural practice some of these are very important. I would say that we can recognize them on the basis of this proposition: that no mode of production, and therefore no dominant society or order of society, and therefore no dominant culture, in reality exhausts human practice, human energy, human intention. Indeed it seems to me that this emphasis is not merely a negative proposition, allowing us to account for certain things which happen outside the dominant mode. On the contrary, it is a fact about the modes of domination that they select from and consequently exclude the full range of human practice. The difficulties of human practice outside or against the dominant mode are, of course, real. It depends very much whether it is in an area in which the dominant class and the dominant culture have an interest and a stake. If the interest and the stake are explicit, many new practices will be reached for, and if possible incorporated, or else extirpated with extraordinary vigour. But in certain areas, there will be in certain periods practices and meanings which are not reached for. There will be areas of practice and meaning which, almost by definition from its own limited character, or in its profound deformation, the dominant culture is unable in any real terms to recognize. This gives us a bearing on the observable difference between, for example, the practices of a capitalist state and a state like the contemporary Soviet Union in relation to writers. Since from the whole Marxist tradition literature was seen as an important activity, indeed a crucial activity, the Soviet state is very much sharper in investigating areas where different versions of practice, different meanings and values, are being attempted and expressed. In capitalist practice, if the thing is not making a profit, or if it is not being widely circulated, then it can for some time be overlooked, at least while it remains alternative. When it becomes oppositional in an explicit way, it does, of course, get approached or attacked.

I am saying then that in relation to the full range of human practice at any one time, the dominant mode is a conscious selection and organization. At least in its fully formed state it is conscious. But there are always sources of real human practice which it neglects or excludes. And these can be different in quality from the developing and articulate interests of a rising class. They can include, for example, alternative perception of others, in immediate personal relationships, or new perceptions of material and media, in art and science, and within certain limits these new perceptions can be practised. The relations between the two kinds of source — the class and the excluded human area — are by no means necessarily contradictory. At times they can be very close, and on the relations between them, much in political practice depends. But culturally and as a matter of theory the areas can be seen as distinct.

Now if we go back to the cultural question in its most usual form — what are the relations between art and society, or literature and society? — in the light of the preceding discussion, we have to say first that there are no relations between literature and society in that abstracted way. The literature is there from the beginning as a practice in the society. Indeed until it and all other practices are present, the society cannot be seen as fully formed. A society is not fully available for analysis until each of its practices is included. But if we make that emphasis we must make a corresponding emphasis: that we cannot separate literature and art from other kinds of social practice, in such a way as to make them subject to quite special and distinct laws. They may have quite specific features as practices, but they cannot be separated from the general social process. Indeed one way of emphasizing this is to say, to insist, that literature is not restricted to operating in any one of the sectors I have been seeking to describe in this model. It would be easy to say, it is a familiar rhetoric, that literature operates in the emergent cultural sector, that it represents the new feelings, the new meanings, the new values. We might persuade ourselves of this theoretically, by abstract argument, but when we read much literature, over the whole range, without the sleight-of-hand of calling Literature only that which we have already selected as embodying certain meanings and values at a certain scale of intensity, we are bound to recognize that the act of writing, the practices of discourse in writing and speech, the making of novels and poems and plays and theories, all this activity takes place in all areas of the culture.

Literature appears by no means only in the emergent sector, which is always, in fact, quite rare. A great deal of writing is of a residual kind, and this has been deeply true of much English literature in the last half-century. Some of its fundamental meanings and values have belonged to the cultural achievements of long-past stages of society. So widespread is this fact, and the habits of mind it supports, that in many minds ‘literature’ and ‘the past’ acquire a certain identity, and it is then said that there is now no literature: all that glory is over. Yet most writing, in any period, including our own, is a form of contribution to the effective dominant culture. Indeed many of the specific qualities of literature, its capacity to embody and enact and perform certain meanings and values, or to create in single particular ways what would be otherwise merely general truths, enable it to fulfil this effective function with great power. To literature, of course, we must add the visual arts and music, and in our own society the powerful arts of film and of broadcasting. But the general theoretical point should be clear. If we are looking for the relations between literature and society, we cannot either separate out this one practice from a formed body of other practices, nor when we have identified the particular practice can we give it a uniform, static and ahistorical relation to some abstract social formation. The arts of writing and the arts of creation and performance, over their whole range, are parts of the cultural process in all the different ways, the different sectors, that I have been seeking to describe. They contribute to the effective dominant culture and are a central articulation of it. They embody residual meanings and values, not all of which are incorporated, though many are. They express also and significantly some emergent practices and meanings, yet some of these may eventually be incorporated, as they reach people and begin to move them. Thus it was very evident in the sixties, in some of the emergent arts of performance, that the dominant culture reached out to trans- form them or seek to transform them. In this process, of course, the dominant culture itself changes, not in its central formation, but in many of its articulated features. But then in a modern society it must always change in this way, if it is to remain dominant, if it is still to be felt as in real ways central in all our many activities and interests.

Critical Theory as Consumption

What then are the implications of this general analysis for the analysis of particular works of art? This is the question towards which most discussion of cultural theory seems to be directed: the discovery of a method, perhaps even a methodology, through which particular works of art can be understood and described. I would not myself agree that this is the central use of cultural theory, but let us for a moment consider it. What seems to me very striking is that nearly all forms of contemporary critical theory are theories of consumption. That is to say, they are concerned with understanding an object in such a way that it can profitably or correctly be consumed. The earliest stage of consumption theory was the theory of ‘taste’, where the link between the practice and the theory was direct in the metaphor. From taste you got the more elevated notion of ‘sensibility’, in which it was the consumption by sensibility of elevated or insightful works that was held to be the essential practice of reading, and critical activity was then a function of this sensibility. There were then more developed theories, in the 1920’s with Richards, and later in New Criticism, in which the effects of consumption were studied directly. The language of the work of art as object then became more overt. ‘What effect does this work (‘‘the poem’’ as it was ordinarily described) have on me?’ Or, ‘what impact does it have on me?’, as it was later to be put in a much wider area of communication studies. Naturally enough, the notion of the work of art as object, as text, as an isolated artifact, became central in all these later consumption theories. It was not only that the practices of production were then overlooked, though this fused with the notion that most important literature anyway was from the past. The real social conditions of production were in any case neglected because they were believed to be at best secondary. The true relationship was always between the taste, the sensibility or the training of the reader and this isolated work, this object ‘in itself as it really is’, as most people commonly put it. But the notion of the work of art as object had a further large theoretical effect. If you ask questions about the work of art seen as object, they may include questions about the components of its production. Now, as it happened, there was a use of the formula of base and superstructure which was precisely in line with this. The components of a work of art were the real activities of the base, and you could study the object to discover these components. Sometimes you even studied the components and then projected the object. But in any case the relationship that was looked for was one between an object and its components. But this was not only true of Marxist suppositions of a base and a superstructure. It was true also of various kinds of psychological theory, whether in the form of archetypes, or the images of the collective unconscious, or the myths and symbols which were seen as the components of particular works of art. Or again there was biography, or psycho-biography and its like, where the components were in the man’s life and the work of art was an object in which components of this kind were discovered. Even in some of the more rigorous forms of new criticism and of structuralist criticism, this essential procedure of regarding the work as an object which has to be reduced to its components, even if later it may be reconstituted, came to persist.

Objects and Practices

Now I think the true crisis in cultural theory, in our own time, is between this view of the work of art as object and the alternative view of art as a practice. Of course it is at once objected that the work of art is an object: that various works have survived from the past, particular sculptures, particular paintings, particular buildings, and these are objects. This is of course true, but the same way of thinking is applied to works which have no such specific material existence. There is no Hamlet, no Brothers Karamazov, no Wuthering Heights, in the sense that there is a particular great painting. There is no Fifth Symphony, there is no work in the whole area of music and dance and performance, which is an object in any way comparable to those works in the visual arts which have survived. And yet the habit of treating all such works as objects has persisted because this is a basic theoretical and practical presupposition. But in literature, especially in drama, in music and in a very wide area of the performing arts, what we have are not objects but notations. These notations have to be interpreted in an active way, according to particular conventions. But indeed this is true over an even wider field. The relationship between the making of a work of art and the reception of a work of art, is always active, and subject to conventions, which in themselves are forms of social organization and relationship, and this is radically different from the production and consumption of an object. It is indeed an activity and a practice, and in its accessible forms, although it may in some arts have the character of a material object, it is still only accessible through active perception and interpretation. This makes the case of notation, in arts like drama and literature and music, only a special case of a much wider truth.

What this can show us here about the practice of analysis is that we have to break from the notion of isolating the object and then discovering its components. On the contrary we have to discover the nature of a practice and then its conditions. Often these two processes may in part resemble each other: in many other cases they are of radically different kinds. And I would conclude with an observation on the way this distinction bears on the Marxist tradition of the relation between primary economic and social practices, and cultural practices. If we suppose that what is produced in cultural practice is a series of objects, we shall, as in most current forms of sociological-critical procedure, set about discovering their components. Within a Marxist emphasis these components will be from what we have been in the habit of calling the base. We shall isolate certain features which we can so to say recognize in component form, or we will ask what processes of transformation or mediation these components have gone through before they arrived in this accessible state. But I am saying that we should look not for the components of a product but for the conditions of a practice. When we find ourselves looking at a particular work, or group of works, often realizing, as we do so, their essential community as well as their irreducible individuality, we should find ourselves attending first to the reality of their practice and the conditions of the practice as it was then executed. And from this I think we ask essentially different questions. Take for example the way in which an object is related to a genre, in orthodox criticism. We identify it by certain leading features, we then assign it to a larger category, the genre, and then we may find the components of the genre in a particular social history (although in some variants of Marxist criticism not even that is done, and the genre is supposed to be some permanent category of the mind). It is not that way of proceeding that seems to be required. The recognition of the relation of a collective mode and an individual project — and these are the only categories that we can initially presume — is a recognition of related practices. That is to say, the irreducibly individual projects that particular works are, may come in experience and in analysis to show resemblances which allow us to group them into collective modes. These are by no means always genres. They may exist as resemblances within and across genres. They may be the practice of a group in a period, rather than the practice of a phase in a genre. But as we discover the nature of a particular practice, and the nature of the relation between an individual project and a collective mode, we find that we are analysing, as two forms of the same process, both its active composition and its conditions of composition, and in either direction this is a complex of extending active relationships. This means, of course, that we have no built-in procedure of the kind which is indicated by the fixed character of an object. We have the principles of the relations of practices, within a discoverably intentional organization, and we have the available hypotheses of dominant, residual and emergent. But what we are actively seeking is the true practice which has been alienated to an object, and the true conditions of practice — whether as literary conventions or as social relationships — which have been alienated to components or to mere background. As a general proposition this is only an emphasis, but it seems to me to suggest at once the point of break and the point of departure, in practical and theoretical work, within an active and self-renewing Marxist cultural tradition.

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Endnotes:

1) Revised text of a lecture given in Montreal, April 1973.

We’re reposting an essay written by a couple members of ¡ella pelea!, a group that organized against budget cuts, cuts to ethnic studies, and for open enrollment at UT-Austin from 2009-2011, on the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.  It fits in with the broader conversations happening now on the union question, feminism, and the content and methodology of liberation.  We did a study of the League together and wrote this essay to draw lessons for communists and other militants today in the fight against capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and the State.  We try to incorporate the best of the League experience while confronting its historical and political weaknesses.

This is the link to the original post.

For reference purposes and to explore past conversations we’ve had here on the League, check out this post from HiFi and the conversation that follows.

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Introduction

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers emerged in Detroit in the late 1960s, a period of growing dissatisfaction with the mainstream integrationist civil rights organizations and the failures of the Democratic Party to address the subjugation of black people in a comprehensive way.  A new movement which came to be known as Black Power or Black Liberation, grew out of these failures and gave birth to a new identity and a number of new mass and revolutionary organizations, one of the most advanced being the Revolutionary Union Movement and the League.

The Black Power movement also conceptualized the oppression of black people domestically within an international context of white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism.  It looked toward and drew inspiration from the national liberation movements that were happening in Cuba, Algeria, and Vietnam as well as the Cultural Revolution in China as a model for what black liberation in the United States could look like.  The League was no exception in this regard.

Catalyzed by the Great Rebellion of 1967, an upheaval of Detroit’s black poor against police brutality, poor living conditions, and limited jobs, the League saw the necessity of organizing black workers.  Formed by a core of organizers who worked in the auto industry, they were also instrumental in organizing the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), in the Dodge Main auto plant and which pushed for addressing atrocious workplace conditions, speed-up, and the extension of the working day as well as their racist implications.  Some DRUM militants were a part of previous civil rights groups but were discontented with the politics and took a more radical political stand that contextualized white supremacy through the framework of capitalist social relations.

The Failed Anti-Racism of the Civil Rights Movement

One of the central critiques of civil rights groups made by black power militants was that it was largely beholden to the Democratic Party and Federal Government for mitigating the conditions of the black southerners.  Certainly, the new mass activity that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) organized around help bring new life to the civil rights struggle as they broke with the conservative politics and organizing approaches of the NAACP.  This was demonstrated by the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 which saw the creation of a completely autonomous and self-organized system of mass transit.  While this was not completely directed from the top, SCLC organizers were a positive force that fused with this self-organization and gave it a more conscious purpose.[1]

In the long-term, they were incapable of safeguarding the self-activity of blacks as they strove to draw all of it under the wing of the SCLC leadership.  Such an orientation is the reason that Ella Baker left the organization and advocated for the wildcat sit-ins of 1960 by black students to remain independent.  She saw the bureaucratizing effect SCLC had played on the movement and the new vitality black students brought to it with the sit-ins.  This led to the formation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which served as an organizational bridge and transition from civil rights to black liberation.[2]

The influence of the federal government precipitated a split in SNCC between desegregation campaigns on the one hand and voter registration on the other.  The Kennedy Administration refused to intervene in the brutal attacks by random whites on black and white freedom riders in 1961 unless SNCC shifted their focus onto voter registration and end their desegregation work.  While the organizing done by SNCC around voter registration was very dynamic, it also served to buttress the Democratic Party who could parlay that organizing into votes for their candidates.[3]

Ultimately, the black power movement saw that organizing in this fashion is not an effective anti-racist strategy in that it hinders the movement from making demands that would challenge white hegemony.

Another major critique of the civil rights movement is that they actively sought out white liberal participation. This hindered the movement largely due to the fact white liberals were more hesitant to address white supremacy outside its Jim Crow manifestations and this sacrificed the more comprehensive ways black folks experienced white supremacy.  This spoke to the  civil rights movement predominately middle class composition.  Organizing black workers around their specific concrete oppressions were not a part of the platform for these groups.  SCLC and CORE viewed black freedom as having suffrage and being integrated in the same school with white folks. The demands that these groups organized around largely benefited just the black middle class who weren’t facing the niggermation of River Rouge.

The Dynamics of Race in 1960s Detroit and Urban Insurrection

The 1965 Watts riot and the rebellions of the late 1960s concretely connected the State’s role in the oppression of black workers at home and abroad and threw open the door on the limitations of civil rights organizations.  These rebellions also spoke to racial tensions among the working class itself and these manifested in an uneven and contradictory way in Detroit.

In Detroit the established Polish community, no doubt having deep class struggle roots, had long been reined in by the Polish patronage apparatus that bargained for access to officialdom in exchange for controlling and stamping out independent rank and file initiative.  They received the better jobs in the factory and were less subjected to the 90 days rotation,[4] though they were exploited just as black workers.  The factories had a policy that it could legally fire an employee anytime before a 90 trial period and black workers more so than other workers were the target for this egregious policy.

In the 1960s, white Appalachians began to immigrate into the Midwest and although these workers were not embraced by the Polish and other established white ethnic groups, they were more tolerated than their black counterparts.  Their contradictory position meant that, on the one hand, they shared the body politics of Polish workers who were more open to association with them than with black workers, and on the other hand, they existed outside the ethnic patronage machine and shared a similar class position with black workers which led to a confusion as to who the enemy was.  At times they fell into the seductive proto-fascism of George Wallace who talked about the rich stealing from the working man in collusion with “the nigger.”  Yet during the Great Rebellion, they took part alongside urban blacks in the destruction and looting of capitalist property.  Some even acted as snipers, shooting the cops who inflicted similar harassment and violent upon them as blacks.

The RUMs’ Challenge to White Supremacy

On May 2, 1968, production workers at Detroit’s Dodge Main facility walked out in protest of the increased speed of the line, without the approval United Auto Workers local leadership.  With the Great Rebellion still fresh on their minds, a group of black workers participating in the mainly black wildcat strike proposed the formation of a new autonomous organization called DRUM, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement. Within a matter of months, similar RUM units proliferated throughout Detroit and reaching as far away as New Jersey.

The experience of the Revolutionary Union Movements provided an effective anti-racist framework in that it organized black workers into autonomous workplace units independent of company and union influence. It challenged the white supremacist model that stratified black workers and kept them in the most dangerous and dirtiest jobs and prevented the safety and health and even advancement of blacks into better positions due to the collusion of union and management and the massive profits generated from this exploitation.

Though the RUMs were preceded by forms of autonomous black working class organization in the 1910s and 20s, the predominance of reformism in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as indicated above, effectively harnessed black workers to the State and to capital. The UAW hierarchy’s support for the work of the SCLC and other mainstream civil rights groups meant that black workers fighting against the racist UAW in the plants found no support from SCLC, whose would have alienated their liberal union benefactors. The influence of the federal government in the organizing strategies of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee meant wedding black organization to the designs of the federal government. Inside the plants, however, the prevalence of black union caucuses were unable to seriously challenge the condition of blacks in the workplace. This was due primarily to two reasons.

One, the company and union were so hostile to black representation, despite their ostensible support for civil rights, that they often resorted to illegal tactics to prevent blacks from occupying official posts in the union.  Two, and most importantly, the historic absorption of trade unions into production meant their collaboration with capital and mediation of rank and file struggles.  The early CIO, for example, turned the autonomous activity of workers who struggled for control over the pace and organization of work into concessions that benefited workers outside the workplace.  Meanwhile, what goes on inside the plant, “the transformation of sweat and blood, literally, into finished products,”[5] continued to be determined by the interests of capital.

The strikes of black workers in the late 1960s were completely outside of and against the trade union structure precisely because they struck at the process of production itself.  This more effectively challenged the racism of management and union and broke the stranglehold of the reformism of caucuses.  The limitations of black union caucuses were in their orientation to the union bureaucracy rather than to the rank and file.  In Detroit’s Eldon Avenue Gear and Axle plant, Jordan Sims, a respected black unionist, pursued such a strategy with little results in the 1960s.

The RUMs were a completely new subjectivity that broke with this form of activity and it substituted the free association of workers over the machinations of the bureaucracy which was restricted to the terms of the contract.  In this way, their anti-racist strategy threw up the limitations of both the civil rights groups which organized outside the workplace and black caucuses that organized from within but confined their demands to the “fruits of labor” rather than self-activity of the workers themselves.

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Pivot of Labor in Anti-Racism

militants from the RUMs and the LRBW

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers rode the wave of black insurgency in the factories set in motion by Detroit’s “Great Rebellion” of 1967. Though League cadre were active years before the Great Rebellion, their radicalism had a new currency with the growing tide of militancy among black workers who constituted the RUM organizations. The Great Rebellion gave a new legitimacy to forms of struggle and confrontation with capitalist property and state power that the civil rights establishment opposed. Additionally, it led to the emergence of a black working class identity that largely stood in the shadow of the middle class in the civil rights era.

Unique to the League’s perspective was the intensity of exploitation of black workers particularly resulting in the immense profits of the “Big Three” auto companies, Ford, GM, and Chrysler. They placed this within a historic narrative that linked the chattel slavery of the antebellum South to the contemporary wage slavery of the industrialized North. The negligible investment into the reproduction of slave labor led to massive returns in the cotton trade which laid the basis for and funded the industrialization of the 19th century. League militants were able to link race and class in a dynamic fashion that neither black nationalists nor white class reductionists could appreciate:

“Black workers have historically been the foundation stone upon which the American industrial empire has been built and sustained. It began with slavery over 400 years ago…That is, the capital which was used to build industry in Europe and America essentially came out of the cotton trade…We’re essential, and key, to the continued operation and continued smooth functioning of a highly industrialized, highly complicated machine.”[6]

The auto companies attributed their increased output in the late 1960s to new, more efficient machinery and automation.  The reality was much different.  The auto manufacturers were merely increasing the pace of the line, while the UAW looked away, a process black workers called “niggermation.”  The League’s forefronting of niggermation put class struggle on an anti-racist basis.

In addition to the League’s perspective on the white supremacy inherent in capitalism, they focused on organizing black industrial workers because of the strategic position they occupied in the economy: heavy industry, transportation, and distribution.  In several plants, blacks were an overwhelming majority as the auto companies saw they could exploit their labor to a higher degree.  A broad organization of black workers independent of the union bureaucracy could cripple the functioning of white supremacist capitalism through a general strike, the on-the-job actions of individual workplaces being a prelude to such a strike.

The role the union bureaucracy played in the capitalist system which ensured the stratification of black workers meant that the struggle had to be independent:“The organization…must be free from political and financial ties to the union hierarchy which prevents independent action of the part of the rank and file.”[7]

This method contrasted then with what was largely an overemphasis in the black power movement on confronting the means of dominating labor (the State) leading to an under appreciation of fighting the means of exploiting labor (capital) upon which the State is based.  While the League leadership tended to vacillate on their orientation to the State, their focus on the centrality of labor better positioned them to fight white supremacy as it manifested in production.  While the Black Panther Party attempted to organize the black lumpen as a paramilitary unit outside the workplace, the League had a more holistic approach to organizing black workers and unemployed that didn’t depend on the adventurism that often plagued the Panthers, valid as their work was.

Yet while the League was able to circumvent such adventurism and the cult of personality of the Panthers, the lack of clarification on the role of the union bureaucracy and the content of the RUMs is what partially facilitated the break-up of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.  Throughout their existence they held a line between trying to capture the union bureaucracy though “revolutionary slates,” on the one hand, and building and strengthening independent black organization on the other.   While such a strategy differed in form from traditional black caucuses due to the anti-capitalist politics of the League, its content was consistent with its emphasis on “bad leadership,” no matter how militant it sounded.

Nevertheless, the League refused to narrow their work to electoralism as they positively oriented to the wildcat strikes, praising them and striving to give them a broad political character.  This manifested, for instance, in linking the war in Vietnam to the war inside in the plants.  They deaths inside the plant due to company negligence, faulty equipment, and speed-up led to more workers dying in the plants every year than in the war itself.

They argued that a pure class struggle is an illusion and that if there’s any hope to displace and destroy capitalist social relationships, the rank and file labor movement had consciously take up and support independent black demands and attack the hierarchy of labor powers in how it set different layers of the working class in competition with each other.

The Failure of the League on the Centrality of Patriarchy

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers’ failed for a number of important reasons, yet one of the most important of these reasons that historians of the League have not sufficiently explained, was their theory and practice as it related to patriarchy.  While the program of the Black Workers Congress, a new organization that appeared in the early 1970s and to which a number of League members belonged, pointed to the sexual harassment many black women faced in the plants, they catastrophically failed to integrate patriarchy into an overarching analysis of value production as well as take serious the development of black women militants and support their independent demands and struggles.  At worst they were guilty of sexual harassment and misogyny in their day-to-day relationships with women workers as the experience of ELRUM, the Eldon Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement, indicated.

John Watson in the introduction to the League’s 1970 documentary, Finally Got the News, was able to dynamically elaborate the historic and contemporary relationship of race and class in America unlike any black nationalist or white socialist.  But the inability to situate patriarchy into that narrative constituted a monumental weak point that the resulting repression and capital offensive coming down on the working class used to their advantage.

How did this collapse to patriarchy spell doom for an effective anti-racism?  For one, it didn’t see  how the oppression of women in general and black women in particular hinged on the continued oppression of black men and women in production.  This evolved historically out of the separation of productive and reproductive labor.  Yet this separation constituted a gendered form, confining women to the production and reproduction of labor power itself.  But what is central about this is that the labor power exploited in service of that purpose was seen as not having value and as such was unwaged.

Chattel slavery was also unwaged but this didn’t prevent the League from seeing the relationship of unwaged labor in the production of value.  While they didn’t fall into class reductionist arguments of orthodox Marxism that American slavery was not capitalist or was at best auxiliary to the struggle of waged workers, they like most other revolutionary men were eluded by the fetishism and hidden nature of women’s reproductive work (cooking, cleaning, laundry, sex, caring work, etc.) which daily provided capital with fresh, rejuvenated labor power to be set in motion another day.  As Selma James argued in Sex, Race, and Class, “the capitalist got two laborers for the price of one.”[8]

Women’s work went beyond confinement to reproduction.  When men went on strike, court injunctions preventing their continued disruption of production saw women doing picket duty and fighting police and company thugs.  They have historically been central not only to men’s ability to continue producing value, but in their concrete workplace struggles that women were seen as alien to.

This theoretical and practical weakness of the League meant their incapacity to integrate the oppression of women more fully into their program and in prioritizing the development of women militants at home and in the workplace. Their dynamic anti-racism was nullified by their failure to fit patriarchy into capitalist social relations. Had they done this, it is possible that the decline of the RUMs due to company repression could have been circumvented by a concerted effort of the League to organize black women at home.

This makes their view that there is no pure class struggle all the more ironic and tragic in that they oriented to women not much different than white labor, socialists, and communists oriented to black workers.  Militants today can draw much inspiration from the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, but it is our task to pay close attention to their pitfalls so as to ensure the success of new movements for liberation in the future.

Endnotes

[1] James, C.L.R., Negro Americans Take the Lead, Facing Reality Press 1963.

[2] Carson, Clayborne, In Struggle, 1984.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Georgakas, Dan and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, p. ?

[5] Watson, John, Finally Got the News, Black Star Productions, 1970

[6] Ibid.

[7] Geschwender, James, Class, Race, and Worker Insurgency, 1977.

[8] James, Selma, Sex, Race, and Class, 1975.

On March 15, Fire Next Time released a phenomenal statement on the role of city councilman Jumaane Williams and the non-profit group Fathers Alive in the Hood (FAITH) in repressing the activity of anti-cop black militants following the murder of Kimani Gray in the East Flatbush area of Brooklyn, NY.  The piece does not just address Williams and FAITH, but also tackles the role of the state and non-profits in general in suppressing revolutionary activity and fostering already present divisions in the class along racial lines. The piece also lays out some of the tasks ahead for the revolutionary left, particularly for the young black left in the poorest areas of the country’s cities. While we are in almost full agreement with FNT’s post, we wanted to draw out a few additional points, particularly around gender and patriarchy.  FNT’s post can be read here, and the following is best understood after reading “The Rebellion Contained: The Empire Strikes Back”.

This past Thursday in Flatbush Brooklyn we witnessed the events which Will describes in his excellent piece, and find his account to be consistent and the analysis superb. We have a few assorted thoughts to add and will try not to overlap Will’s account. Our piece assumes familiarity’s with Will’s, and the latter should be read first.

First, although this is absolutely implicit in Will’s piece, we wanted to point out that the activities of FAITH (Fathers Alive In The Hood) and Williams were the result of the loss of the ideological battle by Williams and by the peace-loving non-profits in general. Because Williams so clearly lost the ideological battle against anti-cop militancy, he had to resort to physical force, distraction, and intimidation to disrupt the activity–and still he was not successful in getting people to stop marching. Since they were defeated in the ideological battle, FAITH and Williams used their enormous bodies, bull horns, and aggression to literally drown out the voices of anti-cop militants, primarily women. FAITH aggressively tried to get people to stop the march to the precinct and literally commanded people to get into the church. Jumaane and FAITH were there to give the white media something to cling to, NOT to support the black militants and everyday people who are pursuing freedom.

This somewhat successful use of tactical force seems like a defeat for us but really it is a victory. Finally the non profits and politicians cannot hide their structural role and their relationship to the cops. Jumaane Williams had to resort to using physical force to try to stop people from fighting the cops. He has forever showed his role, and the hope is the antagonism between politicians/non profits and the working class has shown itself strongly enough to spread to other arenas of struggle. As Will so eloquently said, the enemy is bigger than the NYPD.

What this belies is a much larger break with the forms of organization that have held back militant political activity, especially among black and brown militants, for the last few decades. There is an emerging coalition around this issue and general anti-NYPD and hopefully anti-capitalist themes, with which many of our comrades desire to link up. How last night played out is forcing us to confront our obvious deficiencies in organizing, and our more general racial homogeneity. Many were frustrated by this experience because of the obstacles it presented, but these obstacles of course didn’t arise last week, and they point to concrete tasks facing NYC revolutionaries.

Though by no means a monolithic white crowd, the anarchists/communists Will describes were very much “the white people”. This is due in part to the severe segregation in Southeast Brooklyn, under which any white faces are very remarkable. By the time the story was written on the event’s Facebook page, all the non-black participants had just become “Occupy Wall St” and we were being lambasted for a variety of idiotic things said and done at Zuccotti Park. But it is also due to the literally centuries worth of work that has gone into creating the myth that the revolutionary class struggle and the black struggle are divergent. Despite the numbers of both black and non-black revolutionaries who have made it their work to undo this myth and to instead reveal the intrinsic nature of the class struggle and struggle against white supremacy, the history and remnants of slavery and Jim Crow; the institutionalism of radicalism in the mostly white and white-washed university; the billions of dollars spent on incarceration and harassment of mostly black and immigrant men; and the enormous pressure to work several jobs AND work at home for black, latina, asian, and poor white women has done much to serve the still present divide. On top of the institutional forces that attempt to create a separation between the struggle against white supremacy, the struggle against patriarchy, and the struggle against capitalism, these objective elements of the capitalist state take on subjective and interpersonal expressions, which make unity and class-wide struggle all the more difficult and at times downright awkward.

Finally, on a tactical level, this divide was also due in no small part to the fetishism of transparency, a definite hangover from Occupy, resulting in about two dozen cameras trained on the crowd at all times, including several live-streams. Some of the very same kids who had been engaging in street battles with the cops the previous night now found cameras pointed at them from every direction by ordinary people in the crowd. If they live in the projects or go to New York public schools, for example, surveillance is a constant and hostile experience, no doubt causing a markedly different association than the illusion of safety or civic responsibility that inspires white “citizen journalists” to stick cameras up in peoples faces when they’re about to break the law. This needs to be addressed.

Additionally, in a tantrum that seemed to be staged in advance, Sgt Thomas was incredibly physical with a small woman who allegedly yelled “kill the pigs” (which, if she even said it, she was hardly introducing this fantasy into anyone’s mind for the first time). When a white man came to her aid, Thomas instantly made it a racial issue, making for what you can imagine to be a very uncomfortable situation for white militants trying to walk softly but nonetheless intercede in a violent act against a woman comrade. The gender dynamic was completely obscured by the race-baiting discourse which Jumaane Williams had been setting in place all day regarding “outsiders”, and the aggressive men he brought in only reinforced this. This is the kind of thing we have to be more prepared for, uncomfortable though it may be.

Another issue we must point out, and which we feel is related to the minor success FAITH and Thomas had in distracting from political issues through race-baiting, is the casual homophobia and misogyny among organizers and participants. It was “faggot” this and “bitch” that, especially with regards to those who they most hated: the cops in general, but primarily Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. (We find this objectionable for a number of reasons, never mind that of the two lines we heard, “Ray Kelly, you’re a racist, and your son is a rapist!” flows much more naturally than “Ray Kelly you’re a faggot and your son is a rapist!”)

We are not shocked or morally outraged to hear this kind of talk from young working class people of any color. However it represents a serious practical issue which the struggle has to face. Instead of being able to confront the patriarchy inherent in the city government and police, organizers passively contributed to this atmosphere. Instead of being able to call out FAITH for being patriarchal and very homophobic as well as heteronormative (their m.o. is preserving “family values” and the male head of household), organizers are left with only calling them out for being not militant enough. Non-profits such as FAITH are then able to strike back by saying “we’re from the neighborhood, these (both white and non-white anarchists/communists) are not (regardless of whether they are)”.  A more powerful analysis, and also basis for bringing together the class, would be to show how patriarchy, white supremacy, the institution of the police, capitalism, and heteronormativity are in fact deeply connected.

We are not trying to simply be language police; the reality is equating the most hated individuals in the city with “faggots” in an otherwise militant speech itself can cause unnecessary division. Queer people and women, especially black and latinx, face intense police harassment based on gender and gender expression and furthermore have literally been leading the battle against the police not just in the last week, but historically. Therefore, the attitudes described above are not inherent to the working class but represent a division under capitalism which must be overcome in our praxis.

These are a few thoughts toward what will hopefully be a dialogue in the coming weeks. A few comrades are trying to set up a discussion forum about last night, and we’re reaching out to the organizers to engage on questions of strategy, ideology, finding common ground, etc. If you’re local and you’re interested, get in touch.

-Jocelyn Cohn and James Frey

Recently, Nat Winn, a member of Fire Next Time and Kasama weighed in on a discussion of Marxist-Feminism begun on the FNT blog originally by Ba Jin and ZoRa B’Al Sk’a and with a response by Eve Mitchell of Unity and Struggle.  We welcome the energetic engagement by all parties including those commenting on the Kasama blog on what remains one of the most critical questions of our time: the content and forms of women’s liberation.

The scope of Eve’s response did not go beyond clarifying the relationship between Federici and James, and discussing broadly the Marxist-Feminist methodology, including the Wages for Housework campaign.  Nat has challenged the practical implications of Wages for Housework which is supposedly linked to the political failings of Marxist-Feminism.

What may at first sight appear in Nat’s response as merely strategic difference (for instance, whether or not there should be an emphasis on intervention in struggles around reproductive freedom versus that over domestic and reproductive work), belying it is the crucial question of method that must be unpacked.

In Nat’s comments, we observe an unnecessary antagonism being drawn between two completely valid arenas of struggle; the content and form of reproductive labor on the one side and reproductive freedom on the other (there is no coincidence in the double use of “reproduction” here which we’ll expound further down).  The origin of this antagonism is located between a splitting of the subject and object.  This is done through a dualistic reading of  ”economics” and “politics,” or, to use the terms Marx employed in the “Preface” to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, “base” and “superstructure.”  But there is an immanent unity between subject and object as well as between base and superstructure and what Marxism represents is precisely the unification of these categories.  The tragedy of orthodox Marxism is that it represents a reification of them; that is, regarding an abstract duality of the subject and object as a real thing that plays out in the real world in terms of forms of organizing and concrete political orientations.

We’d like to say a little bit about the importance of Marx’s conception of labor and unity of subject-object.  Only then will the political divergences with Nat come into relief.

Marx’s conception of labor and the unity of the subject-object.

Marx’s early philosophical texts directly fleshed out his conception of self-, or life-activity, which later in works like Capital, he discussed simply as “labor.”  In “Estranged Labour,” Marx writes,

“For in the first place labour, life-activity, productive life itself, appears to man merely as a means to satisfying a need — the need to maintain the physical existence.  Yet the productive life is the life of the species.  It is life-engendering life.  The whole character of a species — its species character — is contained in the character of its life activity; and free conscious activity is man’s species character.  Life itself appears only as a means to life.” (76)

Self-activity, or labor, is universal; meaning it exists in all modes of production.  Further, it is defines our humanity. It is the ever-expanding process of satisfying our needs, introducing new needs, and developing new ways of fulfilling our needs.  Labor encompasses everything from our jobs under capitalism to tilling the land under feudalism to creating art and poetry to having sex and raising children.

But labor is not just what we do; it is our ability to choose, reflect upon, and change our labor process.  Labor is our process of changing the external world and our internal selves.  Later in “Estranged Labor,” Marx writes,

“It is just in the working-up of the objective world, therefore, that man first really proves himself to be a species being.  This production is his active species life.  Through and because of this production, nature appears as his work and his reality.  The object of labour is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he contemplates himself in a world that he has created.  In tearing away from man the object of his production, therefore, estranged labour tears from him his species life, his real species objectivity, and transforms his advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him.” (77)

Here Marx’s conception of the subject-object becomes clear.  The external physical world is acted upon by humans, (labor is subjective), but the physical world is also an objectification of human labor, or self-activity (labor is objective).

Marx restated this concept in a polemic against the German “materialist” Ludwig Feuerbach.  In the “Theses on Feuerbach,” Marx argues that sensuousness  is not something merely subjective, perceptive, and one-sided, as Feuerbach postulated.  It is also objective and used toward the transformation of the external world.  Human beings are both thinking subjects of the world but also objects of their own creation through labor.  This is what Marx calls the metabolic relationship between man and nature.

While the subject-object dialectic is universal–meaning it exists in all modes of production–under capitalism, this process is interrupted.  Our self-activity is no longer unified with our conscious will, and the subjectivity of our self-activity is turned against us.  We do not produce for use, and do not have access to our multi-sided needs and corresponding activity; the world we have created is not our own but alien to us, or estranged from us.  In contrast, communism is the movement toward uniting the subject and object, or the completely free state of conscious self-activity in which we produce for use; as Marx states in “Estranged Labour,” we make our life-activity itself the object of our will and consciousness (76).  A lot more can be said about this.  For more elaboration, see the Unity and Struggle post, “The Communist Theory of Marx.”

Politics and economics, a duality or a totality?

The base/superstructure concept adapted by orthodox Marxism has reified the subject-object split.  It sees the “base,” or economy, in a structuralist/sociological manner that exists independently of human initiative and which determines all activity and thinking.  So capital, wages, and money are mere objects.  On the other hand, “superstructure,” or politics, is understood as subjective and confined to ideas or an abstract kind of activity that isn’t metabolic with nature but divorced from it and determined by the base.

Marx never had a dualistic understanding of these categories and posited quite conversely that “economic categories are only the theoretical expressions, the abstractions of the social relations of production.” (Poverty of Philosophy, MECW 6, 165)  For Marx, capital, wages and money are the various phenomenological forms of alienated labor; they are subjective and objective social relations in disguise, not ahistoric things as political economy conceives.  The economy and politics, or capital, wages and money can only be separated logically because concretely and in the real world they exist as a social and dialectical whole.

A dualistic conception of economy and politics ignores Marx’s emphasis on living labor and fails to understand the unity of subject-object.

The splitting of the intrinsic unity of the subject-object and the dualistic reading of base/superstructure creates a dynamic where struggles around work are seen as narrow and economistic.

Struggles that emerge broadly around the wage, and which are not always simply about getting higher wages for a small group of workers, are not automatically economistic.  And struggles that take place outside workplaces are not automatically political.  For example, it was precisely the “economist” types who sought women’s liberation through selling their labor-power during second wave feminism.  Such a strategy was predicated on capital’s fundamental social relations and confined gendered alienation to a question of receiving “equal wages for equal work.”

This economism is typified precisely by a disconnect between the struggle to maintain access to abortion and the struggle against the gendered division of labor.  This typically looks like mass protests that emerge to keep abortion legal without consideration not only for what sections of the class have access to sexual/reproductive healthcare but why there’s a contradiction between many white women who are oftentimes coerced into keeping children and black women who face forced sterilization.

Economism refuses to challenge the racial and other important divisions within the class and which allow it to be recuperated by the movement’s “official” leaders, by capital, the State, and the value-form.  This also implicates various problematic forms to combat the encroaching hand of the State over women’s bodies whether it be by petitioning, lobbying, symbolic protests, etc.  Demands against the State are just as easily absorbed by the ruling class into new forms of rationality as demands for higher wages directed to employers, and many forms wind up acquiescing the fight before one actually begins.

When we enter the factory gate, or the domicile kitchen, we don’t leave the political world behind us.  Likewise, when we exit, we don’t leave the realm of economics.  There are manifold “political” dynamics that manifest at work, that implicate race and gender, from the wage scale, to the division of labor, to sexual harassment.  Such factors not only undercut the specific, local, or sectoral interests of workers engaged in that workplace but become generalized features of class life institutionalized by the State.  Similarly, outside of work, in the streets where women are fighting to maintain access to abortion have all kinds of economic implications.

Given this, the abstractions “economics” and “politics” cannot be separated.  Our sense is that it is partly the job of communists to tease out the political implications of various spontaneous struggles that emerge, whether they take form at work or in the streets.

Marxist-Feminism, production and reproduction, labor and capital: finite or universal?

The methodology of orthodox Marxism, whereby the subject and object are split into a determining base (object) and a determined superstructure (subject), necessarily has consequences for how the content of women’s liberation is to be understood.  And this framework is exactly why reproductive labor and reproductive freedom are counterposed.  For Nat,

“women’s liberation from a communist point of view has to do with unleashing the capacity for every woman to be able to reach her full human potential in a society where human knowledge and technology along with natural resources are shared in common.”

However,

“women’s liberation [is]…far beyond a discussion about waged and unwaged labor and an economic struggle for wages for housework.”

If, then, women’s liberation goes beyond labor, what we are dealing with is a framework that is ahistorical.  Patriarchy is not something that statically exists separate from the mode of production; under capitalism patriarchy takes the form of gendered alienation, the gendered division of labor, etc.  We cannot understand patriarchy without a critique of political economy and vice-versa.  Furthermore, the form of reproductive labor under capitalism, which is gendered, exists in a unity with controlling our bodies as a means of production, and determining what kind of labor-power capital needs.  This coincides with a racial division of labor which we’ve discussed above.

There can be no “reproductive freedom” if reproductive workers aren’t freed from the gendered division of labor, i.e. unless there is a coordinated attack against the multifarious forms of alienated labor.  Under the capitalist gendered division of labor, women’s uteri and women’s bodies are both means of production of labor-power that they are radically separated from.  This condition is reinforced by the State in many forms, from limiting women’s access to abortion and forced sterilization, to austerity measures that force women to increasingly bear the burden of caring for young, elderly, and disabled members of the class.

In relegating the gendered division of labor into an objective “base,” and similarly assigning reproductive freedom to subjective “superstructure,” Nat sets up a false dichotomy that can have devastating practical consequences.  According to Nat,

“There has been an aversion to [the fight over reproductive freedom] in Marxist Feminism, perhaps because it is not a strictly ‘working class’ struggle. But this to me is a rigid type of Marxism which narrows everything down to the relation between labor and capital. To me this is a mistake. A revolution isn’t a narrow economic act, it is a complex struggle involving real world alignments, consciousness, and political struggles. When we ignore real politics we stay isolated.”

Again, labor/self-activity/production is posed as either objective economics on the one hand or subjective politics on the other.  Further, this rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of Marx’s conception of “labor.”  In contrast to this dualistic framework, we can return to Wages for Housework and the Marxist-Feminist methodology.

Wages for Housework emerged out of very real struggles of women in the post-war period and departed from the theory of the role of reproductive labor as a whole, struggles that find their historic origin in the split between productive and reproductive labor.  The split of these two was necessary toward the development of the capitalist division of labor (which had a visible gendered content).  In previous modes of production, reproductive labor was not so distinct, and individuals were not radically separated from the means of production and confined to a single sphere of work.  This passage from Mariarosa Dalla Costa’s and Selma James’ “The Power Women and the Subversion of the Community” is not only illuminating but quite emphatic:

“In the same way as women are robbed of the possibility of developing their creative capacity, they are robbed of their sexual life which has been transformed into a function for reproducing labor power: the same observations which we made on the technological level of domestic services apply to birth control (and, by the way, to the whole field of gynaecology), research into which until recently has been continually neglected, while women have been forced to have children and were forbidden the right to have abortions when, as was to be expected, the most primitive techniques of birth control failed.” (30)

Here, Dalla Costa and James confirm that labor and capital aren’t narrow, they are universal categories.  Certainly they’ve been narrowed in the orthodox Marxist tradition from Kautsky to Althusser, both in their theoretical scope and in their practical conclusions.  But labor isn’t just wage labor and capital isn’t just factories.  Labor and capital express the universal antagonistic movement between living labor and dead labor which is capital.  This dynamic is one where things control us rather than us controlling things, between monotonous, one-sided work in the division of labor and the social relations between things we make.  This is the picture Marx gives us from “Estranged Labour” to the “Critique of the Gotha Programme” and nowhere does he see labor and capital as reductive by any stretch.

Reproduction constitutes all those various labors that are essential to maintaining human beings and which are also historically developed; where the “nature” of humans change as they deepen their consciousness and many-sided labors, as opposed to a narrow naturalist and fixed conception of reproduction (babymaking).

We are told by Nat that “the discussion was suffocated in its scope because of its confinement within in a certain ‘workerist’ conception of how to look at women, sexuality, reproduction, and liberation.”  Nat counterposes and unnecessarily polarizes defending abortion versus struggles over reproductive labor and this is done precisely with the dualistic understanding of “base” and “superstructure” rooted, again, in the split of the subject-object.  This also has bodily implications: where a woman’ hands are concerned, it is economic, where it concerns her uterus, it is political.

Nat points out that Wages for Housework was not relevant in the 60s and 70s (and is still not relevant today) because it has never had popular currency with women engaged in struggle.  Nat writes:

“Ultimately I think that women’s liberation from a communist point of view has to do with unleashing the capacity for every woman to be able to reach her full human potential in a society where human knowledge and technology along with natural resources are shared in common.

To do that there needs to be a break away from the traditional role of women, namely traditional roles of giving birth to and raising children and other domestic roles.

Now due to the development of global capitalism since the 1970s, but also due to the fight of women at that time against traditional relations, there has been a break away from tradition.

The Wages for Housework tendency was correct in stating that a break from the home in and of itself would not liberate women or destroy capitalism. However, it was wrong politically to not unite with what was correct. We need to recognize the necessity of such a demand when placed within an overall communist vision of women’s liberation.”

We agree with Nat that women needed to break the isolation of the home in order to develop their communist potential, and that Wages for Housework never caught on.  We also agree that revolutionaries should develop a strategy that both understands the current conditions and is informed by the self-activity of the class.  But our approach is distinguished specifically by Marx’s subject-object dialectic.

The Marxist Feminists understood the relationship between the objective conditions of society and the subjective self-activity of the class.   They used this understanding to develop a programmatic strategy that would resolve contradictions within the class in favor of revolution (and abolition of gendered value relations):

This was a time in which capitalism was in crisis, and needed a strategy to overcome crisis (which later materialized in strategic shift from Keynesianism to neoliberalism). Entering into the workforce and receiving higher wages there would only allow capital to subsume increased labor-power, which would solve the crisis in the interest of capital. Wages for Housework would have caused increased devastation to capital by forcing capital to concede profits for unwaged domestic labor. In other words, the Marxist-Feminists argued that equality politics would add labor to women’s plates instead of forcing capital to relinquish profits for work already being done.  On top of this, Wages for Housework would have broken the isolation of the home and the patriarchy of the wage.  Again, this strategy is based on the subject-object dialectic.

In contrast, Nat’s arguments against Wages for Housework (and for engaging in reproductive rights struggles) is based on the assumption that when a programmatic strategy is not popular, it is not relevant and should be abandoned: “In fact, the ideas of Marxist Feminism have never caught on among large sections of women outside activist circles.”

Are things valid only to the extent that masses of people say they are?  Is Marxist-Feminism invalid because it has not been a banner waived or slogan employed by millions of women? We don’t think Nat is implying this, but in its logical extension are found a host of problems, including working within the various trade union bureaucracies or the Democratic Party, or that revolutionaries should fight for all sorts of things just because they are popular. In any case, it seems that here Nat is conflating the subject and object, arguing that the current activity of the class, whatever the form, is the objective conditions of capitalism.  The practical implications of this methodology is to “meet the class where they are at…and leave them there,” meaning the current activity of the class dictates the program, strategies and tactics, instead of dialectically informing them.

Marxist-Feminism, like Marxism itself, is the distillation of the experiences of working class women.  Where else does theory come from but those experiences?  What was Marxism if not the logical content of the working class movement considered in its totality?

Programmatic strategies for women’s liberation today

As stated in “Marxist-Feminism vs. Subjectivism: A Response to Fire Next Time”, there is no problem in asking if Wages for Housework is relevant today.  However, this must be done through grappling with the subject-object dialectic.

On the one hand, we must look at the objective conditions of capitalism and how that manifests in a gendered way today.  One side of this Nat explains, including recent legislative and right-wing attacks against women’s access to abortion.  In the comments to Nat’s post, commenter Liam Wright adds to this to include street harassment, rape and gendered assault.  To this we would add super-exploitation in feminized workplaces, from nonprofits and schools to street sex work/prostitution and maquiladoras.  We have explained above how these issues are at once both economic and political.

We would also include unwaged reproductive labor in the home (the majority of housework is still done by women in the home).  However, the character of labor in the home is different today than it was in the 60s and 70s.  A contradictory result of second wave feminism was that many of the things that women traditionally did in the home have been broadened out and entered into the circulation of capital.  For example, the introduction and expansion of the fast food industry has on the one hand offered some relief to women but on the other, established a new sector of highly exploitative workplaces.  This is both a win and a loss for women and therefore the class.  It is also relevant that many more women are in the workforce these days; according the the U.S. Census, in 1960, only 15% of women worked full time, and in 2010 this number was up to 43%.  This is not to say that struggles around unwaged, reproductive labor are irrelevant, but that workplace issues are far more relevant for women today.

The other side of the subject-object dialectic includes looking at the subjective activity of the class.  Nat points toward mobilizations to defend abortion/women’s health clinics.  While these struggles are absolutely worth paying attention to, they are simply not representative of a generalized activity of the class.  A large majority of the class is not mobilized at this time.

These expressions in content are a small sector of the class engaging in liberal methods to stop anti-abortion bills and restore funding to nonprofits.  This strategy does not illuminate the State’s interest in capital and patriarchy.  Instead, it relies on the State to be women’s protector, and ensures women’s exploitation and eroded communist potential through protecting women’s “right” to sell labor-power in nonprofits.

In the comments, Liam Wright points to Slut Walk as another strata of women’s self-activity.  While Slut Walk was a bit more broad, it was a series of permitted marches that culminated in open mics where people shared stories about being raped, sexually assaulted, stalked etc.  There was no confrontation with the State or capital.  In some ways, Slut Walk sought to break down the public/private split (women’s bodies and sexuality is reserved for the private reproductive sphere), yet it did so only to rebuild women and reaffirm their subjectivity.  This is important work that is necessary in building up women’s ability to stand up to patriarchy and in developing a social fabric woven from the objective conditions of gendered alienation.  This consciousness-raising activity, a historical carryover from the strategies of the 60s and 70s, is a hugely important aspect of our work as organizers and revolutionaries.  However, consciousness-raising does not substitute for direct confrontation with patriarchy, and therefore capital and the State.

To be clear, we are not arguing for political abstention from liberal or reformist struggles, or consciousness-raising circles, when they are expressions of the self-activity of the class.  However, a principled intervention would not be to participate in legislative reform but to argue for a strategies that would seek to damage capital, break down gendered antagonisms within the class, and forefront the demands of women.  This is precisely what the Marxist-Feminists did during second wave feminism.

This gets back to Nat’s fundamental question:   what forms of activity should we practically engage in today?

Based on the analysis above, we would argue that Wages for Housework does not seem like a relevant strategy today.  Instead, here are some examples of concrete areas of struggle that speak to the objective experience of women in the U.S. today:

• Grassroots clinic defense takeovers and/or nonprofit worker committees/unions that build solidarity across worker-”client” lines.  This model would build on the work of the Jane Collective, socializing the skills women need to control their own bodies while taking advantage of the de-skilled advances of capital (for example, in general everyone who works in an abortion clinic, right up to the front desk girl, knows how to perform a manual abortion and there are no specialized skills needed for a large majority of medical abortions).  This model could be broadened out to things like hormone therapy, HIV and STI treatment, and health care in general for the class.

• Neighborhood groups engaged in tenant struggles with the capacity to deal directly with violence against women in the community.

• Parent, teacher, and student alliances that struggle against school closures/privatization and for transforming schools to more accurately reflect the needs of children and parents, for example on-site childcare, directly democratic classrooms and districts, smaller class sizes, etc.

• Sex worker collectives that protect women from abusive Johns and other community members, and build democratically women- and queer-run brothels with safe working conditions.

• Workplace organizations in feminized workplaces like nonprofits, the service industry, pink collar manufacturing, etc., or worker centers that specialize in feminized workplaces and take up issues and challenges specific to women.

Having said all of this, we want to stress again that any strategies we call for are premature, given the lack of generalized movement among working class women today.  Of course, it is still important to struggle in ways that we see as best given the circumstances.  However, it is impossible to know whether these activities are the best strategy for today without collective self-activity in opposition to gendered value relations.  We raise this to say that it is actually possible that wages for housework is a relevant demand.  Only the self-activity of the class will clarify this for us.  It is not the task of communists, as Marx once famously said, to write recipes for the cookshops of the future.

Authors’ Note: This piece represents one perspective in Unity and Struggle, and is intended to be part of the ongoing discussion on unions, particularly in response to Advance the Struggle. The authors are concerned with the role of revolutionaries in unions. A second piece will be released by two other Unity and Struggle members in the next week that may represent divergent views from this piece. By posting both pieces, we are hoping to clarify our own positions as well as contribute to the ongoing discussion outside of our organization.

Introduction

As communist workplace organizers serious about praxis, the authors find ourselves debating the strategic importance and political composition of trade unions in the United States. We find what could be called “the union question” to be in fact a number of questions surrounding the composition of capital in general, capital in its in its present incarnation, as well as the composition of trade unions and their relationship to capital and the state. Most immediate to our investigation is the question of how this arrangement can be interpreted by revolutionaries, in the workplace and outside of it. After engaging these questions it is our finding that working explicitly within the existing trade union structure to defend, change, or strengthen them is not a compliment to working toward consolidating class-wide organizations capable of effective revolutionary struggle, but rather that these two objectives stand in irreducible antagonism.

I. The Historical Context

The use of rebellion, for the purpose of developing capital with ‘renewed energy and vitality’ is not new and not confined to women.  For capitalism to co-opt every aspect of struggle, to renew itself with our energy and our vitality, and with the active help of a minority of the exploited, is central to its nature.

Selma James, “Women, the Unions, and Work” 1972

We understand that this debate is re-emerging from the relative torpor it has enjoyed since the 1970s due to the ongoing transformation of the processes of production and reproduction in the United States. This shift is alternatively referred to as “neoliberalism” and “austerity”, but these terms are emblematic of a deep-seated shift in the relations of production, the novelty of which is done no justice by comfortable buzzwords which claim its content as already definable.

Historically speaking, we find the roots of the transformation which comprises our present epoch in the 1950s and 1960s. In this period the state took on the role of regulating the value of labor power through public welfare and unemployment programs which kept unemployed people from uniting with the rest of the working class and allowed for a flexible workforce that could work seasonally and in many jobs, as well as through certain wage and benefit protections provided through Collective Bargaining Agreements and shifts in labor law, which simultaneously coerced workers into de-skilled, repetitive, and unrewarding factory jobs,  and kept a caste of workers slightly above another while styming at least some labor unrest. Most importantly, it kept worker activity contained by union bosses at least as much as by company bosses.

These provisions were possible, as all welfare state policies, due to a high rate of exploitation and the enjoyment of massive profits by the bourgeoisie which contributed to a steady tax flow and mass of surplus value for the state to work with.

While this arrangement doubtless improved the material situation for many workers and surely angered many bosses, these effects were only incidental to the primary necessities of capital: a stable market for the purchase of the commodities produced by capitalists engaged in production of means of consumption, and the guarantee of a stable supply of labor-powers at relatively low costs to individual capitals. The state was to carry the cost of this investment in the means of consumption, but as is typical of the the social democratic dream, not only was the well being of the working class secondary to the interest of optimizing its role in capital, but this relative prosperity was only a temporary lacunae from the raging storm of the anarchic cycle of crisis which perennially looms on the horizon.

Additionally, these benefits served primarily a rising class of white working class men and a much smaller number of the black working class; this provided enough symbolic shifts in the racial division of labor for the ruling class to claim victory in civil rights, further dividing and exploiting the majority of the people of color working class. Women were mostly employed in non-union workplaces or working unwaged at home; and in fact their transition into trade unions by the 1980s and ‘90s represented a huge step backwards for the revolutionary feminist tendency of the 1960s and 70s, especially since this transition had little to no effect on patriarchy as a whole. The division of labor in workplaces was mimicked and enforced by division of rights in unions, which allowed new workers into the same shops at varying rates and benefits, or kept some workers out of unions while still working in the same workplaces. Splits along race and gender that still exist in the working class today were entrenched in these moments.

The social welfare programs that emerged in this period were deliberately formulated against the menace of US communist labor organizing that had its heyday in the 1930s. We can understand the struggle of certain communists, black militants, and feminists against the trade unions in the 1960s as a response to this attempt to alleviate the inherent contradictions between labor and capital, and combat the patriarchal and white supremacist aspects of capitalism that remained strong throughout the “Golden Age” of capital. From the perspective of the capitalist state, it was clear that the mediating role of these institutions so instrumental to rescuing American capitalism in the preceding decades was not assured when workers began to strike back against the welfare state and unions.

To this period we can trace the faint murmurings of the present moment, when capital began to transform itself to new forms of exploitation and new forms of production in response to these uprisings, as well as in the general pursuit of its necessity to expand in more creative and brutal ways.

More broadly, over the last fifty years heavy industry and production of means of consumption have increasingly left the US to be produced more cheaply by highly exploited labor overseas, the conditions of which are maintained by large international finance apparatuses and ongoing wars (allowing for a decrease in the value of labor-power here as well). Likewise commodity production in the US occurs more and more in the category of luxury goods and services for the capitalist class, within which the process of production looks very different from the large scale industry that dominated the mid-20th Century. Additionally, capital increasingly finds new forms of accumulation in those industries previously monopolized by the state, perhaps typified in the massive non-profit complex, in which private capitalists compete to provide services previously incumbent on the welfare state, and capture many well-meaning crusaders for “social justice” in the mechanisms of capitalist social reproduction.

This change in the composition and mode of domination of capital has lead to the subsumption of prior forms of maintenance of the working class, including trade unions and the welfare state, to new forms such as increased policing and imprisonment.

Despite the role of trade unions in managing the sale and purchase of labor power, the role of the welfare state in driving down wages, and the role they share in neutralizing collective struggles, the loss of these institutions certainly concerns the US working class.

Because of the near monopoly by unions on halfway decent working conditions and healthcare (largely unavailable to non-unionized workers then and now), non-unionized workplaces face harsher conditions and are ground zero for new strategies to devalue labor-power. Because unions were are not class struggle organizations, but organizations for the protection of some workers over others, the loss of those unionized positions and of the unions themselves means the loss of the promise of job protections and healthcare for many in the working class, who relate to unions merely as the possible agents of improving their individual material situation.

This is especially the case since through their divisive nature, these same trade unions helped prevent the kinds of broad-based struggle throughout the working class which is now being called upon to save them. It is the very limits of the trade unions to begin with, their structural incapacity to perform any function other than capitalist protectionism of certain workers, which has led to their destruction in the face of a rapidly changing social relations of production.

The loss of unionized workplaces and the general weakening of legal protections for workers, as well as the strengthening of the disciplinary aspects of welfare provisions for the class, have undoubtedly caused a general decrease in the living conditions for the class, and a corresponding decrease in the value of labor power for the capitalists. The working class as a whole, and revolutionaries in particular certainly are left asking: “What is to be done?”

II. What Is Meant By “Exploitation”? What Is The Contradiction Inherent In Capitalist Society?

In order to understand the historic and contemporary role of unions, as well as the current composition of capital today, we must begin by laying out a clear understanding of the relationship between labor and capital.

The relationship between labor and capital is a contradictory one. Naturally the capitalist class seeks to minimize pay and maximize the use of labor power, and the working class seeks the opposite. However, the capitalist class also needs the working class to constantly reproduce itself, in order to repeat its role in the process of production. And what’s more, the consumption of the working class is required to circulate capital, outside the narrow realm of luxury commodities. Although the health, welfare, and wages of workers may be opposed to the interests of individual capitalists, it is necessary for the movement of capitalism itself. Contradictions between the ruling class and the reproduction of capitalism itself are a historical mainstay of the capitalist mode of production.

This contradiction plays itself out every day in capitalism: The capitalist needs to produce a use-value that is also an exchange value; therefore he needs labor-power which has a use-value, but one that has as low an exchange value as is possible. It is not in the capitalist’s best interest to reduce to nothing the capacity of the use-value of labor power in the interest of increasing its exchange value, although they attempt to do so, through mechanization and so forth. Nor is it in the capitalist’s interest to spurn forth disruptive strike actions unnecessarily. The union form was seen as a resolution to this. Just like the struggle for the working day was a struggle between the classes that allowed for capitalism to continue at the same time that it materially improved the lives of workers, the struggle to keep workers organized in unions with collective bargaining agreements allowed for a period of relatively peaceful harmonization between workers and bosses in some sectors. But this is not necessarily the same as creating harmony between labor and capital.

“Capital” is not simply the actions of its individual personification in the form of a capitalist. Instead, capital dominates the capitalist. This is a point Marx makes consistently throughout the volumes Capital and is a methodological point without which the texts are misunderstood. Capital describes the alienated form of labor in all its stages of production and exchange. Capital encompasses labor power itself and all institutions which aim at the regulation or negotiation of its sale, if they are not oriented toward eradicating its alienated form and ending the extraction of surplus value. Adjusting the terms of the sale of labor power is perfectly consistent with capital. And negotiating with the capitalist over the terms of this sale is not inherently anti-capitalist, although it has its place in the class struggle.

Capital is powerful because it is reproduced daily through workers’ activity. The more we work, the more we are enslaved. This is the basis of the capitalist mode of production. At times control over capital in the form of means of production and the ability to purchase labor power has been spread out more or less among the classes over time, but the fundamental fact that capital in the form of dead labor dominates living labor has not changed. Selling labor for a higher wage or lower wage does not impact this fact.

Like any commodity, the value of labor power is determined by the amount of labor time it takes to produce—this includes the labor-power embodied in all the commodities that workers consume to go back to work, which also include services like care, cleaning, sex, and childbirth (the cost of which is constantly driven down by the assumption that this work should be done for free and is “natural”).

Like any other commodity, capitalists are forced to pay more or less the value for the commodity labor-power; but this always evens out, as with any other commodity, either through social measures, steps taken by employers’ organizations or the state, or steps taken by employees’ organizations. The source of exploitation is not that labor-power is paid for at less than it is worth, but that the competitive nature of capitalism and the necessity for capital to expand constantly drives down the value of labor power. This is accomplished in two ways: 1) by driving down the actual value of means of subsistence by forcing workers to produce more value in less time by changing the process of production and 2) by driving down the quality of life for workers and increasing divisions within the class.

The former is accomplished through a variety of changes in the production process itself, and ranges from Taylorization, to mechanization, to isolation, and while the latter is similarly done in a variety of ways, it is particularly maintained through white supremacy, patriarchy, policing, imprisonment, and the general degradation of the working class on a social level.

Therefore, we see the site of struggle in the process of production and reproduction of labor power itself. Capitalism itself is comprised of the struggle between the classes. Attempts to continue to force capitalists to pay workers the ever-diminishing value of their labor-power are not fighting exploitation, whether they come from the union, the state, or from the forces of crisis of falling rates of profit. They are another day in the life of capitalism. We must not confuse the contradiction between different poles of the ruling class, or the contradiction between bosses and workers with the contradiction between labor and capital.

It is for these reasons that we reject the notion supported by free-trade economists, presidents, and at times our own comrades that “Rising tides lift all ships”. It is not those at the top of the working class (for example, the somewhat mythologized “unionized public sector worker”) who determine the value of labor-power for the rest of us, but rather the other way around. The standard for the lives of the working class will consistently be driven down to meet those at the lowest level of subsistence, and the level of subsistence will continually be driven down. Today, as in previous generations those at the lowest level of subsistence remain women, black and brown people, and undocumented immigrants. They include women of all races performing unwaged reproductive labor at home and then doing it for a low wage for someone else in the same day; undocumented immigrants working construction, textiles, agriculture or in restaurants at rates half the legal wage; low-waged disposal workers on “unionized” job sites doing the jobs that nobody else will touch; college students working for free in “internships”, and even paying for the pleasure.

The role of revolutionaries, then, is to develop themselves in the class to seize on contradictions and expand them to a level where control of political power can be grasped by the working class, especially the parts of the class that face the most serious depression of conditions. Our role is not to celebrate every move that allows for the harmonious march of capitalism for one more day; there are entire paid institutions, non-profits, think tanks, and union staffs to do this!

III. The Structure And Role Of Unions

It is declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self- organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.

National Labor Relations Act Section 1.[§151.]

Over the more than 100 years of debates over the role of unions in revolutionary struggles, or the role of revolutionaries in union struggles, there has been much focus on the role of the union bureaucracy in stifling worker struggles, and the possibility of dismantling this bureaucracy. Attempts to “democratize” trade unions have been at the center of left organizing, especially by certain Trotskyist groups, as well as by independent workers. While these are good-hearted attempts which accurately acknowledge the repressive nature of the structure of unions toward effective class struggle, efforts to change these structures from within represent a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between the form of unions and the political content through which they developed and are maintained.

We must understand that contemporary trade unions, defined as those that are recognized by the NLRB, have the explicit purpose of restricting worker organizing that if left unchecked, can lead to obstructions in commerce. Legally speaking, these unions are steam valves for class struggle, and they allow the contradictions between labor and capital space in which they can move without rupturing violently. Collective activity is limited in favor of individualized, legalistic, and representative mitigation of any interruption to the process of creation of surplus value through the exploitation of waged and non-waged workers. The goal of every union struggle, whether “won” or “lost”, is for the workers to go back to work.

The NLRA recognizes this as such:

The denial by some employers of the right of employees to organize and the refusal by some employers to accept the procedure of collective bargaining lead to strikes and other forms of industrial strife or unrest, which have the intent or the necessary effect of burdening or obstructing commerce by (a) impairing the efficiency, safety, or operation of the instrumentalities of commerce; (b) occurring in the current of commerce; (c) materially affecting, restraining, or controlling the flow of raw materials or manufactured or processed goods from or into the channels of commerce, or the prices of such materials or goods in commerce; or (d) causing diminution of employment and wages in such volume as substantially to impair or disrupt the market for goods flowing from or into the channels of commerce.

The role of unions is therefore to ensure the circulation of commodities, especially the commodity of labor power and the social reproduction it requires: health care, wages enough to purchase means of subsistence, and time.

In fact, unions are not collective organs of struggle at all, but instead are the institutions that maintain legal agreements between workers and bosses. Unions do not exist on a social basis, nor do they form “fighting organization” against bosses. They are instead the representative force that maintains equilibrium between workers and bosses, necessary for the continuation of capital. They exist to maintain the conditions defined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), most often through closed door negotiations, and sometimes through strikes, the goal of which is always make sure the CBA remains intact and workers go back to work.

Throughout their history, unions have existed as companies in and of themselves, with investment interests, employees, and a necessity to produce value through the exploitation of their own workers and the workers they “represent”, who pay a significant amount of their wages in union dues. These interests far out way concerns over actual workers who make up the shop, and this is proven by any close investigation into the changes in union structure organized workshops over time (a great example being the expansion of the UAW to organize academic and legal labor following the shuttering of much of the auto industry).

The development of unions as companies in and for themselves that are run through bureaucratic mechanisms is not due to subjective failures on the parts of those individuals building unions, but rather due the structural development inherent in the union form itself. Well-meaning organizers who attempt to change these mechanisms through the sheer force of their personal commitment to revolutionary struggle will discover, like countless others before them, the more they work to change the union, the more the union will work to change them.

As stated in the first section of this piece, unions are institutions that emerged historically to protect certain workers in either individual workplaces or specific trades. In the US, three different basic kinds of unions emerged in the early 20th century: craft unions, the role of which was to protect skilled work from being de-skilled and therefore comprised a smaller number of iron workers, textile workers, masons, and others; industrial unions which organized workers in the growing factory and large industrial workplaces of the early 20th century into the same union, regardless of skill level but based on industry; and class-wide unions of the IWW for example, which attempted to organize the entire class into one organization, but which after internal debates eventually abandoned openly pushing communist politics.

The CIO was the largest workers’ organization in the US that attempted to struggle on the basis of production, rather than consumption. Early actions fought againstlegal formalization and long labor contracts, working instead for control of production by workers themselves, the logical conclusion of which would be a subversion of the capitalist system of domination as living labor took control over dead labor. However, capital outpaced the struggles of the CIO, and by the 1950’s, the AFL-CIO had merged, communists were purged from the institution, and the focus of the institution became purely the consumption of the working class: wages, benefits, pensions, education. With the triumph of the new phase of capitalist production, Fordism, over its corollary of struggle in the working class, the trade unions developed with the grain of capitalist accumulation instead of against it, and became thoroughly enmeshed in capital.

The meaning of all this for revolutionaries seeking organize in unionized shops is twofold: First, because unions themselves are institutions that work under a certain set of agreements with the state, and have a structure that reflects this (shops or “chapters” are part of locals, locals function as parts of large international unions, internationals are parts of federations…and so on), attempting to change the form of individual shops, locals, or even unions to something more “democratic” is impossible and those activities will be subsumed either through direct discipline of the union bosses, or through the capitalist structure of unions themselves which would not allow anything diverging from the above structure to exist as a union.

Second, because unions act as the representative agents for provisions of certain means of subsistence for some workers in some workplaces, they are not organs of struggle themselves, and in fact serve to divide the working class, especially in this period of their demise. By maintaining a competition with the rest of the working class, unions are able to ensure some basic means of subsistence for some of the workers they represent; but this is only at the expense of others. The call to expand unions is similarly a faulty argument. Revolutionaries struggling for the benefits of unionized workers, and to preserve industries and workplaces that are unionized, will find themselves necessarily in competition with the rest of the class.

To reiterate, the divisions which unions instill within the class emanate from within their very structures. According to a 2008 report, twenty-five percent of unions in the United States operate on a two-tiered pay structure, which fosters an underclass within a workplace. The bottom tier languishes in a sort of purgatory, receiving lower wages and awaiting benefits while after watching contract after contract (if they work at the company long enough) they only see their ranks increasing, their dues piling up, and their wages and benefits diminishing.

While this is quite common in the private sector, and perhaps most reported in the auto industry (see Insurgent Notes: “The Sky is Always Darkest Just Before Dawn” for the 2011 agreement between UAW and Chrystler-GM), it also occurs in the much lauded “public sector”, which faces the same if not even more intense repression of value. A widespread example of this is adjunct professors in public colleges, who make up well over 60% of teaching faculty, and are either outside of faculty unions or are the lower tier in these unions.

The same is true for many workers in the American Federation of State and County Municipal Employees (AFSCME), where, for example, mostly immigrant custodians are in the same local as mostly white skilled trades but have drastically lowered rates. It is also the case for health care workers organized by shop but divided by gender, education, race, and job. And as the “bottom rung” of two-tiered labor is pressed down further and further, new standards for treatment of workers emerge, and the total value of labor power decreases—usually on the shoulders of people of color, immigrants, and women.

IV. How Do We Organize In Unionized Shops

There are many who argue that the best way to organize in a unionized shop is to defend the union, and work to change its structure, or that working independently of the union and within the union are not contradictory. But given our above findings, it is clear that any threat to the hierarchical, alienating, and bureaucratic structure of unions is a threat to unions as a whole, whether it is from the “right” or the “left”. Their political content—as counter-revolutionary, representative, and liberal—is indistinct from their form, and no amount of goodwill, ink spilled, or cries for democracy will change this.

Workers attempting to take over power with caucuses will find themselves defeated, or if they win, repeating more or less the activities of the old union bureaucracy, or at least caught in the same exact contract negotiations, in a matter of months. For those trying to both reform the union from within, and change their conditions from without, they will find their activity inside co-opted, and their activity outside squashed; they will either be alienated by the union officials they thought were their friends, or see their own literature and slogans being used to make concessions with management while appeasing the agitated shop members. We cannot emphasize enough that this is in no way a subjective failure of union officials, or of the militants attempting change. This is inherent in the union structure, and their political content can only be adjusted by small degrees and never broken in the union form.

The contradiction faced by the union form is that the very benefits they seek to defend have in fact primarily been won by fights that often occur outside their jurisdiction: wildcat strikes, illegal slowdowns, direct action against bosses that bypasses the union. In these situations, unions have to make the choice to co-opt and calm down the independent worker activity, full-out put an end to it, or most often some combination of the two. As they continue to restrain working class activity, the basis for their existence disappears.

Those of us who have attempted to organize in our unionized workplaces, whether through the mechanism of the union or without it, have had these points driven home to us again and again. Any attempt to fight collectively against management with other workers, without going through a lengthy and alienating grievance process or seeking out mediation, is met with at best indifference and at worst admonishment. Meanwhile union officials, paid and “voluntary”, negotiate “for” us without us ever knowing, putting our jobs in danger without our knowledge or consent.

We have found that to organize in unionized shops we must build workplace groups that focus on the most highly exploited members of our shop, and if we are in a multi-shop workplace (or one with both unionized and non-unionized workers), we must build organizations that include as equal and full members of our organizations others not in our shop. We must create demands that go beyond our contract (which is not difficult to do, since the demands we need most are most often not included in our contracts) both in terms of scope, and job description. We must be able to act autonomously against management, even if management is in the same union as us.

We must do this by taking direct action: slowing down work, work stoppages, occupations, and activities that build camaraderie, analysis, and capacity. We must always assert our autonomy, even if we demand legal protection from our union (which we are entitled to, even if organizing independently from them). We can, if its prudent, make demands on the union; to take control of the capital we invested in it, because it is our own. This may mean taking over the union hall, taking back our strike funds, and/or taking over closed door negotiations. But we must never be alluded by the power this might afford us. Our activity must lead to our continued independence, or we will just repeat the politics we are fighting against.

The primary goal of unions and CBAs is to maintain peaceable relationships between bosses and workers through legal means, and since the law is developed as a mechanism to exploit and coerce people into alienating their labor power, any negotiations made through a union will only be within these parameters. As the dynamic between labor and capital continually forces changes in the relationship between workers and bosses, the processes of production, and especially reproduction, the form and content of unions is no longer acceptable. Their failure is not that they are not strong enough or lack the right members in rank in file or leadership, but is encompassed within their very form.

Capitalism will expand, dissolving institutions which are no longer useful to it, and thus setting the grounds for the new terrain of class struggle. We must recognize this new terrain and struggle accordingly.

V. Labor In The Present

Once industrial development has attained its highest possible point and capitalism has entered its descending phase on the world market, the trade-union struggle will become doubly difficult… Trade union action is reduced of necessity to the simple defense of already realized gains, and even that is becoming more and more difficult.  

Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution

The antagonism between labor and capital is nonetheless the relationship between a total social process, capital, and one of its components, the labor-power of the proletariat. To understand labor as standing against capital with no remainder is to imagine the revolution accomplished. In the present, however, the two are necessarily intertwined, and the possibilities for revolutionary activity on the part of labor are found precisely within process of capital—in which the contradictions between labor and capital, the motor for capitalist development, are given relative space to move. This is the terrain on which we fight.

We find statistical data to be a problematic form of representation of knowledge due to its inability to understand the nuances of social relations contained in its own figures, and often force us to rely on the bourgeois state or private companies for our information. However, we found the following recent numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics striking:

While 14 million people in the United States are members of unions, 20 million are reported unemployed (unreported unemployment estimates are around twice that).

While 13.5 percent of black people are unionized, as opposed to 11.3 percent of white people, only 2 million black people are unionized as opposed to 11 million whites. Furthermore the unemployment rate for black people is 14.4 percent, and the number of black people not in the labor force is over 11 million, not including incarcerated people.

In 2012 there were 102 million full time workers and 24 million (documented) part time employed people. Of these, 12 million full time workers were union members while only 1.4 million part time workers were union members. Both of these numbers have decreased since 2011. This means while approximately 1/5 of all workers are part time, only 1/12 of these workers are union members.

In the preceding decades, with the transition from welfare state policies to what is called “neoliberalism”, and vast deskilling of many trades in the United States, capital has won many victories in the battle to remake the labor force in its own image. Driven by the abstraction from all particularities in the name of general exchangeability, capital bristles impatiently when confronted with skilled labor-power, even more so the laborer in a position to bargain, and not just because of the strategic power this affords to workers who can not be immediately and seamlessly replaced should they begin to agitate. To ensure the optimum circulation of capital, labor should be as abstract and exchangeable as exchange value itself, and though this has yet to be accomplished in practice, it is a principle of operation that bears on labor like a patient daily tide, slowly but incessantly smoothing its particularities.

This is by no means a new process. It echoes the destruction of the guilds and the transition to large-scale industry and agriculture. Just as then, the political task facing the working class is not to cling to old forms, demanding the protection of forms of production fast becoming archaic, and waging defensive battles vainly against the tide of history. We find that the disappearing trade union form does not correspond to the nature of labor in the present, and still less does it correspond to the direction in which labor is heading. Against this claim will be sounded the rally cries of defensive struggles, but in these we hear only denials of the reality in which we must struggle.

Capitalism has reached a stage where it no longer needs to regulate the activity of workers through unions. The coercive nature of capital is strong enough that worker organizing is at an extreme low, and capital can maintain order in other ways: prison, immigration laws, the limiting of health care, and repression of access reproductive options for women to name a few. The discipline that made welfare necessary is similarly carried out in other forms and institutions that can more deftly accumulate capital than the state: non profits, churches, and charities specifically.

Understood in this way, it is no mystery that we are facing the demise of unions all over the world. As they consistently move within capital, they disappear as they become unnecessary. Since they explicitly limit the activity of the workers who may be capable of defending the benefits provided by them, they also work towards their own destruction. Institutions outside the class but supposedly for it will always fail in this way to do anything other than push the march of capital forward.

As it continues to decline and its very structure prevents it from becoming general to the class, the trade union form is increasingly inconceivable for a growing number of Americans forced to juggle multiple part time jobs which make each other difficult or impossible, work on a freelance basis with no job security, return to school or stay in school indefinitely due to a dismal job market, cobble together public assistance programs to make ends meet, depend on their parents as un/deremployed adult children, work unwaged as interns in the off chance of landing wage labor, or otherwise provide unwaged labor toward the reproduction of the working class. This final item, including housework, childcare, care for the elderly and the disabled, and so forth, is increasingly balanced with one or more waged occupations in fields which may be similar or completely different, quite arbitrarily.

The workshop or the office as the site of the singular career, in which one is invested sufficient to wage long-term struggles for better conditions, benefits, gradual wage increases, and so forth, is disappearing in nearly every sector, from production, to education, to reproductive work. And beyond the diminished desire to wage struggle in these particular job sites, these jobs are so exchangeable that workers can be terminated at the slightest hint of agitation, or in the increasingly pervasive paradigm of precarious work, not terminated, but simply not called back to work again. No legislation or union protection can even comprehend this phenomenon, which runs common throughout many “freelance” trades.

Circulating constantly between multiple sources of income, some short-term, some even one-time, some retained only for benefits, others cherished for paying “off the books” so as to simultaneously draw state benefits, the modern precariat bares little resemblance to the centralized industrial proletariat or the “skilled professionals” on which the trade union system was built.

Regardless of trade or wage the work site is increasingly fragmented and isolated, with the virtual realm of the Internet being perhaps the apotheosis of this stage of alienation and literal radical separation. Thanks to networks for precarious employment like Craig’s List, the workforce of the 21st Century increasingly resembles a digital shape-up more than a shop floor of career manufacturers. It is not uncommon for a worker to know few if any of their co-workers, or to have never met their boss in person. Even in giant sites of cooperative work like Wal Mart, increasingly the model for the sphere of working class consumption, workers are deliberately kept on a part-time basis and their schedules are rotated endlessly.

This terrain taken in total poses an unpleasant reality for those of us who believe the site of value production to therefore be the primary site for the struggle of the proletariat against capital. The disintegration of the centralized workplace, the disappearance of the single paycheck, and the death of the career for a growing number of the working class creates a situation of aporia for those of us seeking to assist in the formation of revolutionary organizations of the working class rooted in its relations of production. The question is certainly legitimate: What is to be done?

But for the reasons outlined above, we cannot agree with the sentiment of many of our comrades, that the fate of the revolutionary in the present is bound up with that of the trade union. To the contrary, our work is to be done outside the restrictions of this moribund form, irrelevant to a vast and growing majority of the working class, and inimical to the aims of class-wide struggle.

VI. Conclusion

The union is nothing more than the legislative body which upholds the concessions made by capitalists in order to keep the status quo, and maintain capitalist order. We see debates in the ruling class play out that effect our material lives, but our strategy is not to convince one side or the other that they are correct. We do not wish to destroy “the union” more or less than we wish to destroy the supreme court, which currently maintains our legal rights to abortions, freedom of speech and assembly, and ensures due process. But just as we see our constitutional rights being eroded away and our solution is not to defend the supreme court, but rather to build a fighting working class; as we see our benefits being diminished, our primary response is to build analysis and organization of the working class that can fight directly against capital itself.

To this end, we do not believe the “correct form” for contemporary working class struggle has yet been discovered. But we know that whatever forms emerge must be the dialectical response to the current mode of capitalism, not a flat opposition that attempts to bring back the old days, impossible to resurrect anyway, instead of confronting the new. The current working class faces a new kind of “double freedom”: we work many jobs at once, we stay at jobs for short periods of time, we work under the table to get health benefits and food stamps from the state, we seek diminishing housing subsidies. We are so “free” that each day of work could be our last through no fault of our own. This is not a condition which the trade union form can comprehend.

The lives of the working class are thus simultaneously more isolated and more connected than ever before. No longer organized by the massive cooperation of the industrial factory, whether the factory of GM or the factory of the steno pool, we work for ourselves, by ourselves, on our bosses’ schedules. We work from our own cars or our tiny apartments, we purchase our own cleaning supplies to clean someone else’s office or apartment, we rent our own trucks to move someone’s furniture. We discover that the comfortable-sounding notion of “working at home” is instead the reality of a world in which we are always at work in some form or another.

We feel so isolated, so particular, so endlessly individualized. But when we meet one another in the welfare office, on the bus, or passing in the hallway of the company building we work, we find our experiences are almost identical. We work on a rotating basis for the same bosses or the same kinds of bosses, and when we confront the similarities of our situations, the particularities fade into the background. This is the basis for collective struggle.

There are more of us, the lowest rung of the working class, than perhaps any other time in the last fifty years, and we are directly involved with the production and reproduction of capitalism. It is this that we must seize on; not the protection of an institution that is itself dying. We will fight tooth and nail to hold on to health insurance, for those few who have it, and wage and security benefits, for those few who have it, but we will not do this from the isolation of our jobs. We will do this as a class, and for the class, not to demand simply a better price for the sale of our labor power, but to force a change in the entire mode of production itself.

At times, we may decide this means holding a union sign, and other times, it may mean holding our own picket signs in protest to the union. Most of the time, and for 86% of us who are not in unions, the over 10% of us who are unemployed, and the several million of us who are living on disability, or barely living at all, we will fight directly against capital, recognizing our own conditions and pushing the struggle forward, on the terrain of class struggle furnished by the present and the future.

*******

It is important to deal with Lenin’s concept of organization in WITBD. The point is not to elevate WITBD into a set of principles that can be abstractly and universally applied. Like any work, WITBD is a product of history. As Lih noted in the beginning of his book such an approach has been an evident enough problem in the history of “Leninism”. However, despite Lih’s attempt to downplay the importance of WITBD in subsequent bolshevik thinking about organization, Lenin’s work—including WITBD—continues to be a necessary reference point for rethinking the role of revolutionary groups and organizations in our own day. By restoring the detailed context of Lenin’s concept of organization and reestablishing its connection to Kautsky, Lih provides the basis to learn from and critique Lenin and Leninism. In doing so he makes WITBD alive again—a renewed and important departure point for thinking about revolutionary groups and organization.

As Lih argues, the importance of WITBD was found in its generalization of already existing practices in the Russian underground, codifying and synthesizing those practices into a broad whole. The generalizing character of WITBD is what continues to make it so valuable today.

The Need for Revolutionary Theory

The first principle that Lenin elaborates is the necessity of revolutionary theory. Lenin writes, “[w]ithout a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement” (696). A revolutionary theory is necessary to understand the system as a whole from the standpoint of the working class and the oppressed, and their necessary struggle for liberation. According to Lenin, only the revolutionary organization can develop such theory and put it in practical relationship with a workers movement through a program and tactics of struggle. For Lenin in such a role the organization articulates the relationship of the class in motion between its historical tasks and its concrete existence. Finally, not only is the elaboration of theory necessary so is its defense against reformists, or what today would be called progressives

The specific tasks that correspond to the construction of theory and its defense only become clearer when Lenin gives an account of the history of the workers movement in Russia. He argues that the strikes of the mid-1890s signaled an important leap in the form of activity by Russian workers. For the first time they demonstrated “the awakening of the antagonism between workers and owners” which was expressed in the form of collective action and specific demands on the capitalists (702). However, Lenin cautions, these struggles remained “a tred-iunionist struggle” and were “not yet a Social-Democratic one” because “there did not exist among these workers—nor could it have existed at that time—an awareness of the irreconcilable opposition of their interests to the entire political and social order” (701-702). In other words, for Lenin revolutionary theory grasps the totality of relations of capitalism and therefore the standpoint of abolishing the system itself. Trade unionism, on the other hand, is form that corresponds to workers as workers. As a result, Lenin implies, trade unionism without revolutionary theory and its organization leads to a focus solely on distribution of the surplus in the form of the wage.

This gives a better sense of Lenin’s insistence on the importance of theory and theoretical struggle. When Lenin defends his position against charges of “dogmatism”, formalism and sectarianism he is doing so against an economist trend that at worst collapses, and at best separates, the theory of the logic of class struggle from its historical expressions. Unable to find the relation of revolutionary organization to practical struggle, the economists, according to Lenin, dispense with the tasks of an independent theory of the historical tasks of the workers and cede this ground to the reformists. In this case revolutionary theory is replaced by a philosophical empiricism that, in the end, takes as its starting point the workers as wage, but not as living labor.

Implicitly Lenin helps in understanding that both philosophically and methodologically, economism and revisionism reproduce the standpoint of the wage de-linked from living labor. WITBD suggests that this problem arises when revolutionaries abandon the tasks of theory. Without the development of an independent theory of the class and the oppressed there is no basis by which to understand and put into practice the relationship between the wage and living labor.

Various theories of the bourgeoisie have no concept of living labor, equating labor with labor power, which receives the wage. A communist perspective sees living labor as an essence that takes the form of a commodity in capitalist society and corresponds to a certain value given in the wage. For Marx the struggle against capital is the consequence of living labor seeking to emancipate itself from its form as labor power; that is, as a particular class. The former is “logical” movement of the class in its essence as living labor. We cannot “see” this movement directly because it exists abstractly in capitalist society. Its movement only takes shape, or we “see” it in particular historical and concrete forms of existence. Labor power is one concrete, historical form of the existence of living labor in capitalist society, which we most commonly experience in receiving a wage.

WITBD is useful as a sounding board to think more deeply about how revolutionary organization articulates the dialectical relation between the content and forms of struggle. The organization contributes to synthesizing and generalizing their relation, further developing the strategy and tactics of the class in contradictory motion between its abstract (living labor) and concrete (labor power/wage) sides or movements.

The problem with economism, according to Lenin, is the sole focus on trade unionism. The union expresses labor as wage-labor, but on its own not as living labor. In our own day we can add NGOs, which focus solely on the more democratic distribution of the surplus, but not on its production. Lenin argues that by abandoning the tasks of theory, economism ceded this ground to revisionism just at the time when it threatened to empty Marx’s thought of its revolutionary content. In Lenin’s words, revisionism was that idea that marxism “must transform itself from a party of social revolution into a democratic party of social reform” (682). In WITBD, Lenin draws out the inner relation between economism and revisionism, outlining in general the political implications with utmost clarity. Economism as a practical orientation, with its deterministic conception of class struggle and the development of capitalism, inevitably supported revisionism by abandoning political leadership to the liberals.

Lenin opposed the slogan “freedom of criticism” because behind it he saw a policy of regroupment and party formation with economistic and revisionist trends in Russian marxism. This leads to one final observation. For Lenin, upholding the importance of theoretical struggle could hardly be “dogmatism” since he assessed his period as “an era of theoretical disarray” that was therefore reproducing “the narrowest possible forms of practical activity” (696). As will be discussed later, the target of this critique was not simply the character of organizing the Russian marxists were involved in, but also the reproduction of militants. The two, for Lenin, have a dialectical relationship.

Before turning to that issue, it is important to briefly touch on Lenin’s concept of theory in a broader sense.

Knowledge and Consciousness

We do not have to accept Lenin’s orthodox marxist theory of knowledge and consciousness in order to adopt the principle importance he places on revolutionary theory. It is possible to separate such a need, which arises from capitalist society in general, from Lenin’s specific conception of this reality. Once again, WITBD remains important to the extent it helps illuminate the general terrain of the need for revolutionary theory and organization. Nevertheless, it is critical to examine the understanding of the origins of communist theory in WITBD.

In chapter two of WITBD, Lenin provides a long quote from Kautsky in order to illustrate the relationship between revolutionary theory and the workers’ movement. Kautsky writes that in capitalist society “economic development and class struggle” do not “immediately generate the awareness” of the necessity of socialism. Therefore, Kautsky goes on to argue, “socialist awareness”—the awareness that the capitalist system is the source of class exploitation—is not “the necessary immediate result of the proletarian class struggle” (709). Nineteenth century England was a case in point. It had the largest and most well organized trade union movement in the world, and yet, arguably, it was the place where socialism had made the fewest inroads among the working class.

Kautsky disagreed with a deterministic conception of the emergence of “socialist awareness”. Rather than accept that this awareness emerges automatically or spontaneously with the development of capital and the proletariat, Kautsky puts forward an alternative view. Quoted by Lenin, Kautsky writes, “socialism and class struggle emerge side by side and not one from the other—they arise with different preconditions. Modern socialist awareness can emerge only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge” (709). Given the separation between the two, Kautsky argues that “[t]he carrier of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia: modern socialism emerges in the heads of individual members of this stratum and then is communicated by them to proletarians…socialist awareness is something brought in to the class struggle of the proletariat from without” (709-710). Kautsky concludes that a merger between the socialist intelligentsia and the workers movement in the form of a party is necessary to achieve revolution. The relationship between theory and the class struggle can only be articulated and find its form in the socialist party. Lenin does not question Kautsky’s formulation in WITBD, raising questions about his conception of revolutionary organization.

The problem with Kautsky’s formulation is that it does not really overcome the limitations of trade unionism from a communist perspective, leading to a faulty conception of revolutionary organization.

In focusing on the terms of the sale of labor, trade unionism alone leaves undisturbed the commodified form or social relations of labor. Unlike communism, trade unionism abstracts the wage from the totality of relations that constitute capitalist society. Most importantly it separates the categories of labor power and labor. It thereby fetishizes the wage, grasping labor one-sidedly in terms of labor power, but not as living self-activity.

It may seem that Kautsky is critical of the limitations of trade unionism since he thinks that a revolution is the necessary outcome of the struggle of the proletariat. Therefore socialists must be organized together in a revolutionary party with the workers movement. He argues that the struggle for better wages and working conditions is not enough. Instead, the workers must also struggle as producers who must inevitably overthrow the capital relation to address the needs of living labor. However, the workers’ struggle as producers, as living labor, is obscure to the proletariat and to grasp this relation entails a systematic knowledge of capitalism as a whole. Since such knowledge appears to have initially arose from middle class intellectuals it logically follows that it can only fuse with the workers from the “outside”.

What Kautsky has done is remove the dialectical relationship of the wage and living labor within the proletariat and transposed it as a duality between two classes—the workers and the bourgeois intellectuals—each with their own “preconditions”. Communism, then, is not the content and forms of struggle of the proletariat that express its contradictory existence as commodity and living labor. Nor is communism the categories of thought that emerge from the struggle of the proletariat, which become generalized and synthesized by revolutionary thinkers and “organic intellectuals” in dialectical tension with the fetishized forms of consciousness. Instead, for Kautsky, socialist theory arises from the study of capitalist society—including the proletariat—as an object. The resulting knowledge is external to and imparted as an idea to the proletariat.

Kautsky’s formulation of the emergence of socialism and the party reinstates a philosophical dualism in its understanding of capital, the working class and the oppressed. However, Marx critiqued such dualism in the “Theses on Feuerbach”, where he argued for a dialectical, or inner unity of subject and object. Marx’s critique of Feuerbach, that he “does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity,” certainly stands for Kautsky. For Marx the proletariat is a creator of the social world, but behind Kautsky’s sociology of classes in his account of the rise of socialist theory lies a theory of knowledge in which the knowing subject, in this case the dissident middle class intellectuals, observes its object in the proletariat.

In following Kautsky uncritically, then, Lenin leaves unclear the exact relationship between theory and the workers’ struggle. Consequently, Lenin’s formulations of the revolutionary organization seem to arise from the same dualism that characterizes Kautsky’s thought. In WITBD, Lenin explicitly restates the social democratic, Kautskyian narrative on the emergence of theory and its relationship to the class:

We stated that there could not have been a Social-Democratic awareness [at that time] among the workers. It could have been brought in only from outside. The history of all countries bears witness that exclusively with its own forces the worker class is in a condition to work out only a tred-iunionist awareness….The doctrine of socialism grew out of those philosophic, historical, and economic theories that were worked out by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intelligentsia…..the theoretical doctrine of Social Democracy arose completely independently from the stikhiinyi growth of the worker movement, arose as a natural and inevitable development of thought among the revolutionary-socialist intelligentsia. (702)

It is easy to draw the conclusion from such passages in WITBD that the practical outcome of the kind of organization Lenin envisioned is one run by dissident intellectuals who in effect lead the workers. However, Lenin attempts to clarify this issue. He argues that workers must significantly lead the party and that they must also develop revolutionary theory. He writes that workers do develop revolutionary theory, however, “they participate not qua workers, but qua theoreticians of socialism…they participate only insofar as they succeed to a greater or lesser extent in attaining a command of the knowledge of their century and in advancing that knowledge” (710). Further, as we will see, the organization Lenin envisions is composed of the advanced workers.

However, Lenin’s view of the origins of theory stands. As he emphatically states: “there can be no question of an ideology standing by itself and worked out by the worker masses in the very course of their movement” and that the party must fight with the bourgeois for hegemony over the workers in their choice between “bourgeois or socialist ideology” (710). It might be argued that Lenin simply means the workers do not have sufficient free time to attain and produce this theory. Yet, given his Kautskyian framework, such a simple interpretation is not adequate. If the categories of communist theory do not proceed from the “course of their movement,” then the party is conceived as a knowing subject whose form is imposed on the content of proletarian activity.

Party and Class

The result of a dualistic understanding of the relationship between knowledge and consciousness should be clear: it leads to an external conception of revolutionary organization whose origins lie outside the class. Nevertheless, what remains valuable about WITBD is that it upholds the problem of the relationship between organization and class by refusing to collapse the two together.

Although WITBD does not clearly theorize the inner relation between party and class it remains alive to the gap or discontinuities between revolutionary organization and class. WITBD suggests that this problem arises from the conditions of capitalist society itself and, it can be added in particular, the relationship between labor power and living labor, and between the division of labor and the totality of labor and capital.

Of course, Kautsky and Lenin’s theory of knowledge reproduces the one-sideness of trade unionism by simply posing alongside it another form of organization, which is the revolutionary party. The party absorbs the movement of the working class, embodied in trade unions, because it is founded on a theory of the totality of capital and labor and not just one moment of their process—that of the wage. Kautsky conceives of the terms of their fusion in a linear way, the party gradually coming to embrace the whole of the working class.

Despite their faulty conception of revolutionary organization, the merit of Kautsky and Lenin is that they pose the question of the unevenness within the class, albeit in different ways. While Kautksy conceives of the party as the representative of the whole class, Lenin thinks of the party as the organization first and foremost of a particular layer or sector in the class—that of the advanced workers. Nevertheless, both are focused on the discontinuities between the class and the totality of capital as a whole. However, Lenin’s thinking in particular is very useful. Unlike Kautsky who, living under late 19th century German capitalism, developed a linear and static understanding of revolutionary organization, Lenin was faced with the overwhelming reality of uneven social development in early 20th century Russia. As a result, Lenin’s concept of organization is more conducive to thinking about this matter.

Revolutionary organization is one of the necessary mediations of the gap between labor as living activity and wage. Existing as the wage, labor becomes abstracted through the separation from the means of production and the divison of labor from its activity and, consequently, from the totality of labors as a whole; that is, not only other workers, but the relationship between the production and reproduction of labor. As labor power, labor struggles to reappropriate itself as a whole. Therefore, as living labor, which exists abstractly, labor seeks to make itself concrete by the appropriation of their environment. Revolutionary theory and the revolutionary organization is made concrete through a program, embodied in strategy and tactics, expressing the internal antagonism with the working class and the oppressed. As such the revolutionary organization is a necessary part in realizing and maintaining the continuity between the abstract and concrete moments of the class.

Revolutionary organization is a partial means—though not the only means in this historical period—by which labor in its particular moments struggles to grasp itself as a whole. The organization develops the “scientific knowledge” of the working class. It is “scientific” knowledge because it constantly investigates and maps the relation between the logical, abstract development of capital and labor and its concrete historical manifestations. But this means nothing if knowledge is not actualized as real movement. Lenin’s conception of organization attempts to make actual the link between the logical and the historical through program, strategy and tactics, which the revolutionary organization helps synthesize as they arise from the workers struggle.

WITBD does not clearly state the relation between party and class briefly noted here. Significantly, it tends toward a Kautskyite conception of this process as an external, rather than internal, activity of the class. Nevertheless, WITBD upholds the problem of the relation between organization and class. Specifically, it grapples with how revolutionary organization articulates the relationship between the historical tasks of the working class and its daily existence, or its abstract and concrete sides.

Revolutionary Organization as Plan

Another key contribution of WITBD is its conception of revolutionary organization as “plan”.

The stress Lenin placed on the active link between the logical and historical movement of the class—its abstract and concrete moments—was meant to combat the dominant deterministic and static conception of the workers’ movement in the Russian marxist milieu of the time. As Lars Lih emphasizes, this context puts in a more complicated light Lenin’s constant attack on “any kow-towing before the stikhiinost of the worker movement, any disparagement of the role of the ‘purposive element’” (708). For Lenin it was critical to fight against the view that “the desirable struggle is one that is possible and the possible struggle is the one that is going on at a given minute. This tendency is, in fact, unbounded opportunism that passively adapts itself to stikhiinost” (717). Here, once again, Lenin is upholding the logical tasks of the class, which remain abstract and, at all times, a potential within its concrete activity.

In WITBD, Lenin argued that what was missing in Russian revolutionary circles was an organizational framework that could fuse with the advanced workers and thereby develop the “purposive element” in their activity and struggle. Regardless of the fact that Lenin tended to think of the “purposive element” in terms of the logical content of the class struggle abstracted from its concrete historical forms, the distinction he raises between the “purposive element’ and spontaneous highlighted the set of practices he thought integral to a Russian revolutionary organization. The debate in WITBD about these practices centered on Lenin’s understanding of the relationship between the mass movement and the circles of revolutionaries scattered throughout Russia.

Lenin argued, “the strength of the present-day movement is the awakening of the masses (and principally the industrial proletariat), while its weakness is the inadequate purposiveness and initiative of the revolutionaries and leader/guides” (700). In contrast to the largest upsurge in the mass movement since the mid 1890s, Lenin insisted that it was the marxist revolutionaries who “suffer precisely from a lack of sufficient initiative and energy” (718). As a result, “revolutionaries fell behind this upsurge both in their ‘theories’ and in their activity—they did not succeed in creating an uninterrupted and continuous organisation with gathering momentum that was capable of guiding the entire movement” (721). The mass upsurge, Lenin proposed, offered an opportunity, not to be missed, to clarify the relationship between organization and class:

There can be no disputing that the mass movement is indeed the most important phenomenon. But the question is: what do we mean when we say that this mass movement ‘determines tasks’? There are two possibilities: either in the sense of kow-towing before the stikhiinost of this movement, that is, reducing the role of Social Democracy down to a simple servicing of the worker movement as such [ ]; or in the sense that the mass movement puts before us new theoretical, political, organisational tasks, much more complicated than those found satisfactory in the period before the emergence of the mass movement. (715)

In order to catch up with the class, to be more “purposive,” revolutionaries had to be more centralized, disciplined and professional. WITBD was aimed at what Lenin considered disorganized and “amateurish” practices that represented a historical limit on the activity of Russian marxists. These practices were inevitable in the mid-1890s when Russian marxists were beginning to conduct broader agitation, moving from propaganda and study circles. Yet at the turn of the century the historical development of both the broader movement and the revolutionary circles made possible and, indeed, necessitated a new form of organization. Lenin was concerned primarily by the division of labor within the marxist milieu and the limitations it imposed. Lenin had in mind things like redundant labor, such as printing many local papers, a stubborn localism that resulted in lack of communication, sharing of experience, uneven national development of militants and political perspectives, as well as the constant arrest of trained organizers.

The emphasis on “purposive” as a conceptual link between the logical and the historical opened the way for thinking about the role of organization in a much more dialectical way than the economists. Lenin uses an illuminating metaphor to illustrate his point:

when bricklayers lay bricks in, various parts of an enormous, unprecedentedly large structure, is it “paper” work to use a line to help them find the correct place for the bricklaying; to indicate to them the ultimate goal of the common work; to enable them to use, not only every brick, but even every piece of brick which, cemented to the bricks laid before and after it, forms a finished, continuous line? And are we not now passing through precisely such a period in our Party life when we have bricks and bricklayers, but lack the guide line for all to see and follow?…If we had a crew of experienced bricklayers who had learned to work so well together that they could lay their bricks exactly as required without a guide line…But it is unfortunate that as yet we have no experienced bricklayers trained for teamwork, that bricks are often laid where they are not needed at all, that they are not laid according to the general line, but are so scattered that the enemy can shatter the structure as if it were made of sand and not of bricks. (822)

He concludes: “for the building of revolutionary organisations…we cannot even imagine the possibility of erecting the building we require without scaffolding”. Once again, Lenin is making a historical argument. There are plenty of militants, Lenin is saying, a consequence of the developments of the 1890s, but no systematic work has been carried out to unite them around common perspectives and organizational ties.

The central vehicle for centralization was the production and distribution of a national newspaper that would act as “a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, [ ] also a collective organiser.” The paper and its network of distribution would act as a “scaffolding erected round a building under construction; it marks the contours of the structure and facilitates communication between the builders” (823). The production of a national paper would provide a centralized framework for theoretical development as well as social analysis. The process of its distribution would act as a centralizing force, helping to develop a theoretical and methodological evenness to the locally functioning collectives and nodes of militants among the advanced workers in the unions and elsewhere.

Lenin adopted the phrase “tactics as plan” as a way to distinguish his proposal for building a revolutionary organization. He contrasted the idea of a “plan” with the notion of “tactics-as-process”, which the economists had taken up, a concept that set out an alternative understanding of the relationship between revolutionaries and the mass movement. “Tactics-as-process” encapsulated the idea that strategy and tactics, including the development of the marxist groupings, had to proceed from the historical development of workers’ activity. The economists argued that the idea of “tactics as plan” conceived of strategy and tactics formalistically, imposing them on the local groups and the movement as a whole. The economists, in Lenin’s words, held to the notion that “tactics-as-plan contradicts the basic spirit of Marxism” and that strategy and tactics are “a process of growth of party tasks that grow together with the Party” (717).

Lenin maintained, however, that the concept of “tactics-as-plan” expressed a more accurate assessment of the development of the local marxist groups and the new upsurge in the movement. “Tactics-as-process”, Lenin countered, was “nothing but a lowering of the initiative and energy of purposive activists” (717). The growing initiative and political content of the workers movement needed to forms of organization on the part of revolutionaries. The localism, uneven development, and poor division of labor had to be overcome as a new period of tasks emerged from the mass movement.

At stake in the debate between Lenin and the economists was the understanding of the historical development of the Russian workers. The economist trends in Russian marxism, Lenin believed, were premised on a reformist view of the development of socialism, significantly influenced by the revisionism of Bernstein. For Lenin the Russian workers, despite their relatively small number, could lead a successful revolution against the czarist regime and that, though only a democratic revolution, the proletariat would be a leading element. It was therefore imperative that tactics remain not simply in the realm of the economic organization of the workers, but also their political organization.

In WITBD, Lenin argues that the revolutionary party must, at least initially, be the organization of the advanced worker. The tasks of revolutionary organization has to be derived from the activity of the advanced workers and not the “average” worker. Revolutionaries had to fuse with the advanced workers, skilled workers in some of the most developed factories in the world, in “a party guided by an advanced theory” (697). Setting aside the specific early 20th century Russian context, and despite Lenin’s intention that he was adapting Social Democracy to Russian conditions, WITBD does represent a break with the orthodox Social Democratic conception of the party. As formulated by Kautsky the orthodox idea of the growth of the party consists of a linear aggregation of the class. The party’s continuity is located in the growth of the institutions of “workers reformism”—expanded franchise in the parliament and the growth of trade unions. In WITBD revolutionary organization emerges from a specific section of the class.

Again, setting aside the fact that Lenin’s concept arose from the development of capitalism in Russia, in a general sense it emphasized the discontinuities in the development of social struggle rather than its linear, continuous and even development guaranteed by parliamentary and trade union gains. By counterposing “plan” to “process”, Lenin was not foregoing an historical understanding of the development of organization. WITBD does not advocate an empty formalism to be imposed on the movement of the workers. As WITBD repeatedly emphasizes, the concept of “plan” was suggested by the actual development of the worker and popular struggle in Russia itself and, specifically, its most politically developed section in the advanced skilled workers.

In WITBD, Lenin responds to the charge that Iskra underestimated the spontaneous element of the workers; that it spent too much time on fetishizing leadership and not enough on worker militancy. Lenin countered that the problem is not militancy, which was growing, but the effective organization of that militancy around a common program, strategy and tactics. Revolutionaries were falling behind the political tasks that were being raised by the new qualitative leaps of the popular and workers’ struggle. Such a problem on the part of revolutionaries represented a historical limit in their development that had to be overcome.

According to the economists the leadership of political struggle by the workers was not possible. Lenin insisted that the economists had abandoned the political training of the workers, particularly the advanced workers. Speaking in the voice of these of these workers, Lenin writes that “we” do not want to be “fed on the thin gruel of “economic” politics alone; we want to know everything that others know, we want to learn the details of all aspects of political life and to take part actively in every single political event. In order that we may do this, the intellectuals must talk to us less of what we already know and tell us more about what we do not yet know and what we can never learn from our factory and “economic” experience, namely, political knowledge” (741). WITBD was written to drive the point home that the Russian working class was already fighting a political struggle against the czarist regime.

Revolutionaries had so far failed to take the political development of these workers serious enough. Revolutionaries are confronted with “the pressing needs of the working class for political knowledge and political training.” While no Russian marxist disputed that theoretically “it is necessary to develop the political consciousness of the working class”, Lenin answered that the economists did not elaborate the urgent necessity and practical aspects of this problem, in other words, “how that is to be done and what is required to do it” (745). Such training was critical because it was the advanced workers who were emerging as the organic leadership of the class and the popular masses as a whole.

The further development of revolutionary organization depends on the “scaffolding” created that lays a new organizational foundations for the fusion of the revolutionaries and the militants of the advanced workers. This organizational scaffolding would give shape to the practical relations between the two. For Lenin this was critical because the political training of the advance workers would contribute to deepening and expanding the capability of the mass movement as a whole since it was they who would lead it.

Finally, implicit in the concept of organization as “plan” is the emphasis on the discontinuous development of struggle. WITBD argues that organization as plan is necessary to build the possibility of “continuous organisation” (721). Since struggle is not continuous, Lenin seems to argue, its high points—and the militants that emerge from those moments—have a tendency to dissipate back into the latent possibilities of the class. The accumulation of these experiences over time achieves a unity in the organization.

What is key for Lenin is that this explicit unity is drawn together by the “plan”—as the analogy of the masonry line indicates—making possible a common reproduction of militants, who, in their practices, carrying out a common theory, set of tasks and methods, and thereby help maintain continuity of struggle. Of course, that struggle qualitatively changes, presenting new objective conditions at each step. Nevertheless, militants organized together help sustain and nuture the political content of the network of contacts that function as leading elements with the struggle, even as it passes through its quantitative phases. These militants, again, cannot be equated with the class as a whole. Instead, Lenin believes, militants must become institutional bearers that reproduce a common approach based upon a common theory. As militants reproduce this common approach, following Lenin’s bricklaying analogy, the masonry line is no longer needed. The building stands on its own foundation and the scaffolding is removed.

Despite the necessary critique of WITBD, in particular its social democratic marxism, it remains one important document in coming to grips with how revolutionary organization partially mediates the relationship between the logical and historical movement of the class, developed in its theory, embodied in a program, and actualized in strategy and tactics. In the end, WITBD helps us grapple with the fact that all organization, including revolutionary organization, is a positive constitution of content and not simply its negation. Just because in capitalism the refication of form is inevitable does not mean we can do without it. To do so would be to deny the objective movement of capital and labor itself, which, afterall, is both a constantly moving content and its particular moments, or specific forms of appearance.

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V.I. Lenin, “What is to be Done?”, trans. Lars T. Lih in Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be Done? in Context (Haymarket: Chicago, 2008).

1.  Why force a wedge between Federici and James?  

Federici and James are a part of the same Marxist-Feminist tendency.  A third person I would put in this longstanding tendency is Mariarosa Dalla Costa, who co-wrote “The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community” with James, and still writes alongside Federici for The Commoner journal.  In fact, in the “Preface” to Federici’s Caliban and the Witch, she writes:

“The thesis which inspired this research was first articulated by Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, as well as other activists in the Wages for Housework Movement, in a set of documents in the 1970s that were very controversial, but eventually reshaped the discourse on women, reproduction, and capitalism [7].”

Furthermore, Federici wrote pamphlets in support of Wages for Housework in the 1970s.  In addition to their theoretical contributions, Dalla Costa, Federici, and James have done similar organizing through the years, for example with sex workers and in communities in the third world.

It is not clear what James’ and Federici’s relationship is today, but in discussing their contributions between (roughly) 1950 and 1980, their arguments (both historically and theoretically) strengthen and uphold one another.  The following will explain why.

2. James’ analysis of the housewife and reproductive work under capitalism.

First, I would like to look more closely at James’ discussion of the housewife.  At face value, the housewife is a one-sided experience at best, and a dated concept at worst.  As Zora describes,

“The whole wages for housework thing seems alienating for me, because it’s not applicable to that many people in the U.S. There is a history here of women of color being pushed into waged domestic work, in which you weren’t paid that much, and your worker’s rights weren’t protected. So it has already been capitalized on. You pushed multiple groups of people, who were not white women, into this domestic work to take care of white women’s children. And the wages for housework thing makes me think, “Well is that your end goal? To be co-opted by capitalism, and to make your work legitimate under capitalism?” It seems like a weird coexistence with capitalism instead of addressing how capitalism is reaching all the way down into reproduction, and developing a strategy to combat that, beyond just demanding wages.”

However, James’ methodology (along with Federici’s) is much more complex than Zora acknowledges.  James discusses the particular, or one-sided expression of the division of labour under capitalism, in conversation with the totality of social relations.  James explicitly acknowledges that the experience of the unwaged domestic labourer is one particular experience of the many different types of labour due to the capitalist division of labour.  For example, consider the following quote from James’ pamphlet, “Sex, Race and Class:”

[James quoting Marx's Capital] “‘Manufacture…develops a hierarchy of labour powers, to which there corresponds a scale of wages.  If on the one hand, the individual laborers are appropriated and annexed for life by a limited function; on the other hand, the various operations of the hierarchy are parceled out among the laborers according to both their natural and their acquired abilities.’

“In two sentences is laid out the deep material connection between racism, sexism, national chauvinism and the chauvinism of the generations who are working for wages against children and pensioners who are wageless, who are ‘dependents.’

“A hierarchy of labor powers and a scale of wages to correspond.  Racism and sexism training us to develop and acquire certain capabilities at the expense of all others.  Then these acquired capabilities are taken to be our nature, fixture our functions for life, and fixing also the quality of our mutual relations.  So planting cane or tea is not a job for white people and changing nappies is not a job for men and beating children is not violence.  Race, sex, nation, each an indispensable element of the international division of labour.” [Sex, Race and Class p. 96].

Under the capitalist division of labour, we become our jobs.  We are relegated into one form of work (we are teachers, bus drivers, call center workers, etc.) that we are to perform over and over again.  Marx calls this alienation.  Capitalism has a gendered and racialized hierarchical division of labour, where certain kinds of work, as James points out, are “naturalized,” to people of color, women, and children.
These forms of work are historically de-valued under capital, and therefore women’s labour power is de-valued, a point that Federici explains in her account of primitive accumulation.  Further, the appearance of the value of labour power is the wage, and so women’s work is unwaged and/or underwaged.  This means that the housewife’s position in the division of labour as an unwaged worker, is tied to an immigrant domestic worker’s low-waged position, and a school teacher’s position, etc.

James’ work in this area was an important step for challenging Orthodox Marxism’s assertion that class struggle only took place in the factory.  These arguments could be extended to feudal peasantry, for example, arguing that the peasantry in countries who had not yet been colonized by capitalism had their own unique communist potential.

3. Wages for Housework and reformism.

As noted above, Zora and Ba Jin question whether Wages for Housework is a revolutionary demand, hinting that it echos liberal feminist assimilation/”equality” politics.  While I do think it’s important to question the relevance of Wages for Housework (a point taken up below in section 4), I disagree that it can be chalked up to liberal feminism so easily.

The first reason is that Wages for Housework must be placed in its historical context.  It was a demand made between the 1950s and 1970s in the US and Europe.  It is the absolutely correct approach to make demands appropriate to your time and location.  We cannot criticize James for not making international demands when there is not a strong international women’s movement.  We cannot put form before content.

Furthermore, the Wages for Housework campaign existed at the height of the women’s liberation movement, which demanded “Equal Wages for Equal Work,” and an opportunity to enter into the workforce.  This was a purely economic demand that the Marxist-Feminism tendency (including James) fiercely argued against.  According to the Marxist-Feminists, such a strategy would allow capital to absorb the feminist movement by creating additional labour power.  The alternative, Wages for Housework, would have caused increased devastation to capital by forcing profit concessions for unwaged domestic labour.  In other words, James argued that equality politics would add labour to women’s plates instead of forcing capital to relinquish profits for work already being done.

Wages for Housework demanded wages, yes, but its effort to explode the division between productive and reproductive labour extended beyond economic reformism.

This anti-capitalist strategy was placed alongside the Marxist-Feminist goal of breaking down the patriarchy of the wage; women’s existence would no longer be mediated by their husband’s wage.  When viewed in this context, Wages for Housework was a political demand, not purely economic.

4. Is the housewife/unwaged reproductive labour relevant today?

This brings us to the question of whether Wages for Housework as a demand is relevant today.  Zora and Ba Jin argue, as many others have, that because women of color have for a long time received wages for domestic work performed in white women’s homes, and in the service industry, Wages for Housework does not apply to them.  However, this argument ignores the material reality that most unwaged domestic labour is still done by women in the home; this is on top of the waged work performed outside the home.  Consider the following quote from The Monthly Review, citing the Bureau of Labor Time Use Survey:

“Women are still primarily responsible for raising children and taking care of the house. Although there has been an increase in the number of single-father-headed households and the amount of child care done by fathers in general, there continues to be a large gap between the average hours that mothers and fathers devote to raising children. Contrary to the popular view that many young fathers are leaving the labor force to care for their children, the labor force participation rate for fathers with children under three years old is 95 percent: higher than any other group. Even when both parents work outside the home and fathers share in child-care tasks, mothers are more likely to take jobs with flexible hours that allow them to drop off and pick up children from school or take the day off when the children are sick. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, working women with small children spend more than twice the hours per day doing primary child-care activity than their spouses. Husbands do a slightly greater share of household tasks but still average only about half of the work done by their wives.”

Researchers in Britain are drawing similar conclusions.  We can couple these comments with anecdotes about generations of children of color being raised by single mothers, sisters, aunties, and abuelas.  This is compounded by material conditions such as the hyper-incarceration of men of color, as Zora notes:  men of color are oftentimes physically unable to contribute to unwaged domestic labour in the home. 
In essence, Wages for Housework is actually more relevant for women of color and immigrant women than the white women who do not do domestic labour in their own homes.

Many have questioned the relevancy of Wages for Housework based on the fact that women of color have always worked as waged labourers. This argument ignores the feminized and racialized division of labour, the wage division between production and reproduction, and the value hierarchy that follows suit.

However, women of color accessing waged work does complicate James’ and Federici’s arguments about the patriarchy of the wage.  Under these conditions, patriarchy does not appear as a wage-relationship between a man and woman in the home (i.e. her existence is not mediated by her husband’s wage). But one could counter that since the gendered wage gap exists among people of color, women of color in some ways still mediate their existence through men’s wages.  Furthermore, this problem only complicates Wages for Housework as a strategy to break down the patriarchy of the wage; it does not upset its potential to impare capital, while winning material gains for the class as a whole.

5. For the last 60 years, James has forefronted third world women and women of color in her analysis.

Putting the housewife and Wages for Housework aside, James is now over 60 years deep into her work as a Marxist-Feminist theorist and organizer.  It is not enough to look at one aspect of her work and assume it is the end-all/be-all of her politics.  As an alternative, I encourage Zora and Ba Jin to check out James’ recently released anthology, Sex, Race and Class and note that a majority of the pieces forefront women of color and the third world, tackling women’s interest in topics such and Israeli Apartheid, the U.S. Coup in Haiti, State Capitalism in Venezuela, etc.

In addition, James explicitly acknowledges the links between the housewife figure and unwaged/underwaged feminized labour in the global division of labor in her pieces, “The Global Kitchen,” and “Strangers and Sisters:  Women, Race and Immigration.”  And finally, these politics are most impressively filled out, in conversation with defending the subjectivity of the peasantry in the essay, “Wageless of the World.”

6. Second Wave Feminism’s Subjectivist Methodology.

Finally, I want to clarify what I see as the flaws of second wave feminism, how successive feminist currents have not only failed to rectify those flaws, but actually replicated them.  I am unclear whether Zora and Ba Jin would agree with this assessment because the post does not go into detail on what they mean by “Black Feminism” and how it overcomes the limitations of second wave feminism.  I would like to hear more from them on this.

For me, the pitfall of second wave feminism is that it was rooted in subjectivist identity politics, which overemphasized the individual one-sided expression of capitalism, conflating the particular with the totality.  This was characterized by consciousness-raising circles, for example, which encouraged women to find their voices and express their experiences.  These were (and are) an essential part of building up women and oppressed people as revolutionary leaders, but it cannot replace a political program for organization.  The downfall of such a method, as has been pointed out by many, is that an objectively white feminist movement conflated their experience under the capitalist division of labour with ALL women’s experiences, or the totality of experiences.  However, the response has generally been to replicate second wave feminism’s subjectivism, by relying on “intersectionality theory,” which seeks to merely add on one-sided expressions of capitalism to white women’s expressions, again conflating the particular with the totality.  More specifically, intersectionality theory creates a list of one-sided expressions of the division of labour (being Black, disabled, queer, etc.), treating these identities as static and universal.  Instead of focusing on what is the historical unity between these identities, intersectionality theory is trapped in the logic of identity, which replicates the individualism and alienation of capitalism, and conflates the particular with the totality.  A person is then a queer, Black bus driver, instead of those three aspects being different expressions, or sides, of the totality of relations under capitalism.

Marx, on the other hand, offers the concept of “moments of expression,” which place a particular one side of capitalism in conversation with the totality of social relations.  He writes, in the Grundrisse:

“When we consider bourgeois society in the long view and as a whole, then the final result of the process of social production always appears as the society itself, i.e. the human being itself in its social relations. Everything that has a fixed form, such as the product etc., appears as merely a moment, a vanishing moment, in this movement. The direct production process itself here appears only as a moment. The conditions and objectifications of the process are themselves equally moments of it, and its only subjects are the individuals, but individuals in mutual relationships, which they equally reproduce and produce anew. The constant process of their own movement, in which they renew themselves even as they renew the world of wealth they create” (712).

This is the methodology that James, Dalla Costa, Federici, and other Marxist-Feminists sought to expand.  An entire post could be written on the bankruptcy of intersectionality theory, but the goal here is to identify and dissect the Marxist-Feminist methodology and how it differs from the subjectivist methodology of second wave feminism.  Further, I aim to dispute the counterposition of James and Federici, and to facilitate further conversation about the Marxist-Feminist tendency.  I welcome comments from Zora, Ba Jin, others in Fire Next Time, and anyone else, in the hopes of fleshing this out more.

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The preceding section discussed Marx’s understanding of human beings in the abstract. However, a true picture only emerges when one grasps humanity in the concrete; that is, in its actual living existence. So, for instance, in the beginning of the previous section the relationship between essence and existence was described as a matter of “standpoint.” This terminology is important because it suggests how Marx conceived of humanity as a dialectical unity between its essence and its mode of existence. One can only view human beings from different, distinct sides that, nonetheless, constitute a whole. As was emphasized above, essence only comes into being through existence and its content only exists objectively as form.

To develop this methodological point further it is necessary to consider the important role of abstraction in Marx’s thought. In order to understand the concrete phenomena of society, it is necessary to abstract from their particularity. Since a specific phenomena cannot be comprehended in itself, but only in its relation to other phenomena, it is necessary to discover new concepts that explain their unity. One thereby moves toward a conception of the totality of all relations in society. Without the relations between phenomena, the concrete becomes merely empirical. Once again, in Marx’s approach there are no “things,” but only relations and moments of totality. However, it is also necessary to grasp the concrete or else the relations from which phenomena emerge would become abstract. As a result, social reality and its concrete historical movement could not be comprehended at all. Marx’s methodology regarding abstraction and the concrete will be returned to later and developed further.

With these considerations in mind it becomes clear that Marx’s philosophical break in the “Theses” and ‘Estranged Labor” does not really begin to take methodological shape until he grounds his categories in history. For Marx history is the movement of the successive modes of existence humanity has created. History is the result of and the process of the objectivity of sensuous activity he speaks of in those early writings. In this light it is possible to understand more clearly Marx’s turn to the critique of political economy. Of course, this move was necessary to critique bourgeois ideology. But this critique proceeded in immanent fashion by grasping the movement of human activity in its concrete forms of existence. Marx’s aim was to show how in class society, humanity’s essence and existence come into contradiction with each other.

Mode of Production and the Mode of Life

When Marx turns to history he does not look at human beings in isolation, but rather in society. It is not possible to think of humanity as separate individuals. Human beings only come into being and gain awareness in mutual association with each other. In The German Ideology, Marx writes that if “consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other” people, then “consciousness of the necessity of associating with the individuals around [them] is the beginning of the consciousness that [they are] living in society at all.” Consequently, Marx’s concept of self-activity must be understood as being a social process, one that involves human beings reproducing themselves only in relation to each other.

We are not dealing with the materialization of a single individual, but a collective realization. Only in mutual association do human beings therefore “distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation.” The means of subsistence are the objects produced by people in association that consist of the tools and knowledge that subsequently absorbs and gives shape to the labor that follows. The means of subsistence is the basis for society because it is the foundation for the reproduction of the people who comprise that society. As Marx notes, “By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life” (The German Ideology). The result of this mutual materialization is the creation of the means of labor.

In putting forward the concept of the means of labor Marx restates the methodological point about the objectivity of self-activity. As he maintains in The German Ideology, humanity does not have “inherent” or “‘pure’ consciousness” independent of the objective reality it creates. There is an inner connection between consciousness and its material conditions. Marx thereby returns to the dialectic of self-activity between sensuous activity as a metabolism with nature and the materialization of the needs that arise from that activity. This dialectic, according to Marx, comprises the historical movement of content and form:

The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history…the satisfaction of the first need (the action of satisfying, and the instrument of satisfaction which has been acquired) leads to new needs; and this production of new needs is the first historical act. (The German Ideology)

As needs have changed and expanded so too have the means of labor to materialize and therefore realize those needs. The means of subsistence establish a ground upon which new needs and desires develop. With the concept of the means of labor, Marx recasts the dialectic of subject and object as a social process which mediates the historical movement of humanity. As such the means of subsistence do not stand outside those who create them. Instead they are, as he continues in The German Ideology, “a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore coincides with their production, both what they produce and how they produce.” History is the successive modes of existence humanity has created. Recalling “Estranged Labor,” Marx further develops the inner relation between needs and labor in The German Ideology now fully conceived as a social process. It is a social process in which human beings “daily remake their own life,” and, through “increased needs create new social relations,” create the content and forms of the history.

In grasping the self-reproduction of humanity as a “mode of life,” Marx indicated that he has in mind the recreation of human life as a whole. Thus the concept of the means of labor is not a reductionist one. Rather “mode of life” signifies people’s way of being in the world at any particular moment in time. Marx is focused on the forms of expression of human existence, their relations and the manifestations of their subjectivity. The means of labor as “mode of life” is also therefore a cultural concept which plays a crucial role in a communist analysis.

Marx makes one more conceptual leap that must be taken into account in regards to the means of labor that has so far remained implicit. If needs expand then, by definition, Marx no longer conceives of the means of labor as the material expression of social relations through which human beings simply subsist. To subsist is to reproduce one’s existing self. For Marx, as a matter of course, no society simply subsists. It is axiomatic that human beings develop historically, slowly as in the past, or at a barely imaginable pace with the modern capitalist epoch. Social relations are social labor and they are what Marx calls a “productive force.” Consequently, the means of labor are not merely a matter of subsistence, but, in fact, a “mode of production.” According to Marx, “a certain mode of production, or industrial stage, is always combined with a certain mode of co-operation, or social stage, and this mode of co-operation is itself a ‘productive force’” (The German Ideology). How productive forces expand with the mode of production is found in the increasing development of the division of labor.

Division of Labor

In “Estranged Labor,” Marx examines self-activity in a state of “free activity,” where their “own life is an object” for human beings. As we have seen, by definition self-activity is social activity or social labor. Social labor expresses itself in a particular form called the mode of production. The form of social organization mediates the self-activity of all the individuals who make up a given society as a whole at any specific historical moment. Since the mode of production is a specific form of association, or what Marx calls cooperative labor, it gives rise to a particular organization of collective labor in society and, therefore, the relations between its members. Those relations constitute a division of labor and every mode of production has a particular one.

Under the division of labor in a class society self-activity is no longer “free activity.” Instead, as Marx writes, “as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape” (The German Ideology). Accordingly, the division of labor gives rise to and is an expression of a “fixation of social activity.”

The image is an important one. For Marx the division of labor is a reduction of self-activity to a one-sided production. By limiting people to the production of one kind of object or one type of labor the division of labor reduces them to a one-sided activity. The division of labor interrupts the metabolism of self-activity and freezes it in a constant reproduction of a single sided activity. The expression of the many-sided content of human beings is limited at best to a very few forms.

However, Marx argues, the mode of production has developed historically through the social division of labor. We have seen how in the process of satisfying needs, humanity creates new needs. The mode of production changes accordingly to realize these new needs. The dialectic of content and form here gives rise to the collective or social productive powers of humanity, or what Marx calls the “productive forces.” In The German Ideology, he writes: “How far the productive forces of a nation are developed is shown most manifestly by the degree to which the division of labour has been carried. Each new productive force, insofar as it is not merely a quantitative extension of productive forces already known [ ] causes a further development of the division of labour.”

The productive powers of humanity achieve a qualitative shift in substance or content, changing from what was known to something previously “unknown.” New abilities of labor emerge from new kinds of people that correspond to new social relations. Marx refers to these qualitative changes in self-activity as the growing productivity of labor. Productivity, or the growth of the forces of production, is “The social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force, which arises through the cooperation of different individuals as it is caused by the division of labor.” As a result, “consciousness receives its further development and extension through increased productivity, the increase of needs” (The German Ideology). In turn, increased productivity leads to a further growth and development of productive powers.

History, then, moves through an important contradiction. As the productive powers increase so does the division of labor and, therefore, the relative impoverishment of humanity. The qualitative development of the productive powers is linked to people being assigned a “particular, exclusive sphere of activity” whose labor then becomes “fixed” in place one-sidedly. What was previously more holistic forms of labor are subsequently separated into specific acts of labor. Where before a person completed the creation of an object as a whole, or worked with others to do so, now their labor becomes increasingly isolated as the production process becomes more and more segmented.

Production relations are social relations of labor. Therefore, as Marx notes, “the existing stage in the division of labour determines also the relations of individuals to one another with reference to the material, instrument, and product of labour.” We are dealing with social relations in which, in some form, people become separated from the means of production and each other. In short, the form of cooperation expressed in the mode of production becomes internally divided and develops into an increasingly conflicted unity.

“Each new productive force,” Marx argues, “causes a further development of the division of labour.” For Marx this is the case for a particular reason. The content of the productive powers of humanity and their form in the mode of production “must come into contradiction with one another, because the division of labour implies the possibility, nay the fact that intellectual and material activity – enjoyment and labour, production and consumption – devolve on different individuals” (German Ideology).

The productive powers grow as a result of the increasing specialization and concentration of labor. This process shortens the time it takes to produce a greater amount of objects to satisfy needs, establishing a new ground of productivity. In turn, this creates a new foundation for expanding needs that are reflected in new knowledge, desires and technology. This is possible because increasing productivity frees up more time to discover and realize those new needs. However, as the division of labor develops, becoming deeper and more rigid, these needs can only be expressed and realized by some though they are the common content of all. For Marx the tension between the two becomes the moving contradiction of history. With the growth in the productive powers, as the mode of production and social labor develop, labor becomes more impoverished relative to those productive powers. The conditions of labor are kept at a minimum while the wealth created by labor grows exponentially. Those without the ability to realize the new needs that come into existence seek to appropriate the means of production and, in the process, create a new mode of production, a new form of cooperative association.

The division of labor lies at the origins of class society and its increasing development gives rise to a struggle of classes. Marx posits that the associative self-activity or social labor in the form of a mode of production creates a division of labor. Different forms of labor fall upon different members of society and, as a result, classes arise, with a ruling class who appropriates the labor of other classes, enriching itself on the growing powers of social production. No longer “free activity,” self-activity turns against itself, creating a society of exploitation and oppression. At the same time the productive powers of humanity grow, outstripping the given mode of production. The mode of production can no longer contain the new forces of production. In this struggle of new content in old forms of existence, new classes emerge, struggling for the “the negation of the division of labour” of the old mode of production (The German Ideology).

Alienation

We saw how Marx described the division of labor as a “fixation of social activity” that interrupts the process of self-activity and that this disruption is the result of and gives further rise to the division of labor. With the emergence of class society a ruling class controls the means of production and confiscates the results of the productive powers of humanity in part, as in pre-capitalist societies, or as a whole, as is the case with capitalism. Key for Marx is that self-activity becomes internally divided, separating the creation of productive powers from the means to appropriate its results. The consequence of class society, then, is alienation.

Alienation expresses itself in two interrelated ways. On one side class society leads to the impoverishment of the material existence of humanity relative to the productive forces created. By coercing and ultimately reducing human beings to a particular activity the division of labor leads to a one-sided development of people. This one-sidedness manifests itself not only qualitatively, reducing living content to a single form of activity. As Marx contends in “Estranged Labor,” class society reduces “spontaneous, free activity to a means, estranged labor makes man’s species-life a means to his physical existence.” Thus a reduction of human life also occurs quantitatively, spending the overwhelming time laboring simply to reproduce one’s physical existence, or one’s historically conditioned subsistence.

As a result, a contradiction arises in which the condition of labor “is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production” (“Estranged Labor”). Such a contradiction grows with the historical development of class society in which, as the more wealth is created and the more the productive powers of humanity grow, “the more powerful labor becomes, the more powerless” is the laborer (“Estranged Labor”). The material existence of humanity declines relative to the productive powers whose wealth exists as an unrealized potential for the vast majority. The productive power created, therefore, “does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind” (“Estranged Labor”). Alienation as material underdevelopment emerges objectively from the division of labor.

The other side of alienation is the inner movement of this impoverished material development. As we have seen the “fixation of social activity” leads to an internal division within the individual and the unity of the social body as a whole. In The German Ideology, Marx writes, “For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape.” Marx continues:

This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now. The social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force, which arises through the co-operation of different individuals as it is determined by the division of labour, appears to these individuals, since their co-operation is not voluntary but has come about naturally, not as their own united power, but as an alien force existing outside them, of the origin and goal of which they are ignorant, which they thus cannot control, which on the contrary passes through a peculiar series of phases and stages independent of the will and the action of man, nay even being the prime governor of these. (The German Ideology)

The mode of production arises as an expression of the mutual association and constitution of the members of society as a whole or totality. It is the social form by which the process of self-activity takes place, in which “man’s relation to himself becomes for him objective and actual through his relation to the other man” (“Estranged Labor”). Consequently with class society the process of “objectification,” or materialization and realization of needs, becomes inverted. Separated from the means of production, activity is no longer free, but instead produces for another and, in the process, reproduces the division of labor. In class society the means of production do not function as a means for people to realize themselves as whole. Separated from the means of production, reduced to a single activity without the ability to realize other needs, the productive forces exist as an “objective power above” people.

As a result, self-activity becomes externalized where “man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him” (The German Ideology). With alienation self-activity is internally divided against itself. Labor produces an objective world that it cannot appropriate. Humanity becomes imprisoned in a world in which it cannot recognize itself. For the producer, alienation arises because activity “does not belong to his essential being; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm,” but negates himself through his own activity (“Estranged Labor”). Being alienated from the world one has created also results in “the estrangement of man from man. When man confronts himself, he confronts the other man” (“Estranged Labor”). As the creator of their social relations humanity comes to imprison itself. The objectifier becomes objectified.

For Marx the dialectic of alienation is “one of the chief factors in historical development” (The German Ideology). Separated from the means of labor, labor experiences a profound disunity with itself. The struggle to achieve a unity of labor and the means to realize the results or object of labor is expressed in the constant struggle toward “negation of the division of labor.” This inner movement to reappropriate the productive powers of society and therefore of oneself is how, historically, the mode of production has developed through the social division of labor. Only with this in mind can we understand Marx’s famous statement in The Communist Manifesto that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

Next up: Capitalism and the Value-Form

Originalmente escrito por HiFi y traducido por Parcer.

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El Carácter Doble de la Mercancía es el Carácter Doble Del Trabajo 

Marx empieza capítulo uno de El Capital describiendo el carácter doble de la mercancía. Un lado de la mercancía se define por la forma en que se utiliza. Marx llama a esto el “valor de uso.” Él define uso por cómo la mercancía “satisface necesidades humanas, de cualquier clase que ellas sean” (3). La idea de “necesidades humanas” representa una función importante en el pensamiento de Marx y toma una multitud de significados interrelacionados. En La Ideología Alemana él argumenta “El primer hecho histórico es, por consiguiente, la producción de los medios indispensables para la satisfacción de estas necesidades, es decir la producción de la vida material misma, y no cabe duda de que es éste un hecho histórico, una condición fundamental de toda historia” (28). A lo largo de la historia los seres humanos han producido cosas, o “usos,” para atender sus necesidades básicas y ampliadas, que causa formas particulares de la sociedad, determinados tipos de relaciones sociales y subjetividades.

Cuando se observa sólo como un uso, la mercancía es indistinguible del proceso de satisfacer necesidades como una característica general de todas las sociedades humanas. Así, como diversos tipos de usos para cumplir con nuestras numerosas necesidades, la mercancía “forma el contenido material de la riqueza, cualquiera que sea la forma social de ésta.” Sin embargo, Marx deduce en El Capital que una mercancía asume características que son específicas de la sociedad capitalista, que sólo se aclarará cuando se mira al otro lado de la mercancía: el cambio. “En el tipo de sociedad que nos proponemos estudiar [en Capitalismo], los valores de uso son, además, el soporte material del valor de cambio” (4).

La producción de usos para satisfacer necesidades en la sociedad capitalista asume una forma específica de cambio. Aunque históricamente han habido otros tipos de cambio, estos reflejaban no capitalista formas de sociedad. Una de las tareas de Marx es mostrar cómo la forma de cambio en el capitalismo, y por lo tanto las relaciones sociales o forma de esa sociedad no tiene precedentes históricamente y es algo nuevo.

Así, la tendencia de la producción de usos para satisfacer las necesidades para asumir una forma específica de cambio es el otro lado de la mercancía. ¿En qué forma se realiza este cambio en el capitalismo? “A primera vista, el valor de cambio aparece como la relación cuantitativa, la proporción en que se cambian valores de uso de una clase por valores de uso de otra” (4). Como explica Marx:

“Bajo el tropel de los diversos valores de uso o mercancía, desfila ante nosotros un conjunto de trabajos útiles no menos variados, trabajos que difieren unos de otros en género, especie, familia, subespecie y variedad: es la división social del trabajo, condición de vida de la producción de mercancías….Sólo los productos de trabajos privados independientes los unos de los otros pueden revestir en sus relaciones mutuas el carácter de mercancías” (9).

Marx sugiere que sólo podemos entender la forma capitalista de la sociedad si comprendemos cómo la creación y uso de algo por necesidad es relacionado a la necesidad para el cambio específico del capitalismo. Es importante cómo Marx caracteriza a estos “actos de trabajo” como “mutuamente independientes,” y “aislado” de uno al otro. Bajo el capitalismo nuestra asociación con otros no es sólo una en la cual estamos enajenados uno al otro, sino también estamos enajenados de nuestras numerosas necesidades, y de nuestra actividad multifacética. En la forma capitalista de la sociedad nosotros, en general, ejecutamos sólo una tarea, separada de todas las demás. Ya que no podemos satisfacerlas, debemos cambiar para satisfacer nuestras varias necesidades. Marx escribe, “Y puede, asimismo, un objeto ser útil y producto del trabajo humano sin ser mercancía. Los productos del trabajo destinados a satisfacer las necesidades personales de quien los crea son, indudablemente, valores de uso, pero no mercancía. Para producir mercancías, no basta producir valores, sino que es menester producir valores de uso para otros” (8).

Por consiguiente, la mercancía no es una cosa, sino una relación social. Es la relación entre el trabajo para el uso y el trabajo para el cambio. Para Marx relaciones sociales son relaciones del trabajo, y la mercancía es la forma de trabajo en la sociedad capitalista. Marx argumenta que el carácter doble de la mercancía es también, al mismo tiempo, el carácter doble del trabajo en la sociedad capitalista.

Sin embargo, antes de comenzar con el carácter doble del trabajo, la forma del trabajo mercantilizado, vale la pena dar un paso atrás y observar lo que Marx exactamente quiere decir por “el trabajo.” Esto es crítico porque si no entiendes su concepto del labor en sus dimensiones filosóficas no puedes comprender el concepto de Marx del ser humano y por lo tanto su noción de libertad y liberación.

El Trabajo como Auto-Actividad

Marx dice, de una cierta perspectiva, trabajo para el uso o necesidad trasciende la historia. Es la condición fundamental del ser humano independientemente de cualquier forma particular que se toma en un determinado momento histórico. Él escribe, “Como creador de valores de uso, es decir como trabajo útil, el trabajo es, por tanto, condición de vida del hombre, y condición independiente de todas las formas de sociedad, una necesidad perenne y natural que media el metabolismo entre el hombre y la naturaleza, y por consiguiente la vida humana misma” (10**). ¿Qué quiere decir que el trabajo media “la vida humana misma?”

Marx ya empezó a explorar la idea del trabajo como metabolismo en Los Manuscritos Económicos y Filosóficos de 1844. En El Trabajo Enajenado, Marx dice si “la actividad libre, consciente, es el carácter genérico del hombre,” entonces “el hombre hace de su actividad vital misma objeto de su voluntad y de su conciencia.” A diferencia de un animal, que es “inmediatamente uno con su actividad vital,” el ser humano “tiene actividad vital consciente” (76). En otros términos, donde los animales están obligados por la naturaleza, los seres humanos se definen por una relación diferente a la naturaleza. Como un “ser genérico,” son capaces de aplicar sus poderes de imaginación a la naturaleza y ellos mismos de ese modo alterando ambos en formas significativas de acuerdo con su intención consciente.

Para estar seguro, como el mundo animal, “el hombre es una parte de la naturaleza,” “el hombre vive de la naturaleza….con el cual ha de mantenerse en proceso continuo para no morir” (76). Sin embargo, porque los seres humanos están conscientemente separados del mundo natural, pero parte de un continuo corporal con ello, en la reproducción de ellos mismos se deben transformar la naturaleza y su propio ser y sus condiciones de vida. Al hacerlo, de acuerdo con Marx, el ser humano constantemente transforma la naturaleza y sí mismo en “un mundo objetivo de su actividad práctica.” El proceso metabólico del “trabajo” es la realización de la imaginación en formas materiales, el constante y alquímico transformación de la naturaleza y sí mismo (76). La creación del mundo social y sí mismo es la consecuencia y proceso de la auto-actividad, que es la esencia del ser humano. Escribe Marx, “El objeto del trabajo es por eso la objetivación de la vida genérica del hombre, pues éste se desdobla no sólo intelectualmente, como en la conciencia, sino activa y realmente, y se contempla a sí mismo en un mundo creado por él” (77). Al final, la auto-actividad – el proceso metabólico – en su estado ideal, desenfrenado por cualquier forma que no corresponde a su esencia, es el estado de libertad. Para el ser humano el criterio de la liberación debe ser, deduce Marx, “su propia vida objeto para él. Sólo por ello es su actividad libre” (76).

Por supuesto, aclara Marx, no existimos en este estado de “actividad libre,” donde nuestra “propia vida es un objeto” para nosotros mismos. La razón es la forma predominante de las relaciones sociales o división de trabajo social. En La Ideología Alemana, Marx sugiere que los seres humanos “comienzan a ver la diferencia entre ellos y los animales tan pronto comienzan a producir sus medios de vida.” Aquí la objetivación de la auto-actividad – como dice él en El Trabajo Enajenado – toma una forma social específica o organización para producir los usos para satisfacer las necesidades humanas. Marx llama a esto “un modo de producir.” Sin embargo, “Este modo de producción no debe considerarse solamente en el sentido de la reproducción de la existencia física de los individuos. Es ya, más bien, un determinado modo de la actividad de estos individuos, un determinado modo de manifestar su vida, un determinado modo de vida de los mismos” (8). Es una forma que media la totalidad de la auto-actividad y la organización social de esa auto-actividad en un determinado momento histórico. El modo de producir, “un modo de vida,” es la forma de existencia que media la auto-actividad, el trabajo humano y la esencia.

Se sigue que la historia, entonces, es el proceso y narrativa de las sucesivas formas – modo de producir, modo de vida – que la auto-actividad asume. Es la manera en que la auto-actividad se desvía de ser “actividad libre,” y cómo el proceso metabólico, la objetivación de sí mismo en el mundo, crea su propia cárcel, se realiza de sí mismo en las formas que cierra la totalidad de sus poderes potenciales y expresión. Es el proceso por lo cual el desarrollo de la totalidad de la personalidad humana, la realización de sus varios poderes y necesidades, se convierte desfigurado y impedido. Las formas que se asume o a través de la cual es mediada enajena el contenido de la actividad humana de sí misma. El comunismo es a la misma vez el movimiento constante de este contenido hacia su auto-abolición de su forma enajenada en la que se toma forma – tal como el proletariado – y el estado de libertad donde este contenido – nuestra auto-actividad variada – establece su correspondiente sociopolítica forma en que se encuentra expresión y desarrollo.

Una imagen valiosa del concepto de Marx del ser humano sale detrás del concepto del trabajo que está en el centro absoluto de El Capital y todo su trabajo. “El trabajo” no puede ser entendido reductivamente como una categoría económica, sino que tiene que ser comprendido en sus dimensiones filosóficas como transformativo (metabólico) auto/social actividad. Marx no está escribiendo “economía política” lo está negando como desesperadamente atrapado en las categorías de la sociedad capitalista.

Relaciones Sociales y El Valor

¿Volviendo al capítulo uno de El Capital, Marx pregunta cómo pueden estos individuos enajenados,  aislados, produciendo un solo uso, reproduciéndose como una sola actividad, estar interrelacionados y así producir los varios tipos de usos necesarios para su reproducción conjunta? Él identifica el trabajo – el proceso “metabólico” – como el “elemento común” que hace el intercambio de los usos variados, separados como actividades aisladas, posible.

¿Qué quiere decir Marx? Si los seres humanos son únicos en que “producen sus medios de subsistencia” sólo podrán hacerlo colectivamente. Los “medios de subsistencia,” un  “modo de producción” es, entonces, como dice él en La Ideología Alemana, necesariamente un “modo de cooperación” (30). A través de esta cooperación llegamos a ser como individuales sociales, existiendo como relaciones de “mutua dependencia de los individuos entre quienes aparece dividido el trabajo” (34). Nuestra conciencia se constituye por “la necesidad de entablar relaciones con los individuos circundantes” (32). La sociedad, por consiguiente, es la relación de la auto-actividad interdependiente de sus bastantes habitantes. En El Capital, argumenta Marx que esta actividad común se divide en actividad separada, atomística, aunque el intercambio de estas actividades es vital para reproducir la sociedad y nosotros. Con la división social del trabajo el intercambio de nuestra actividad – nuestra interdependencia mutua – debe ser mediada por, u ocurrir a través de, una forma que expresa esta mutua e interna enajenación. Separado de otros tipos de actividad que son necesarios para satisfacer nuestras diversas necesidades, la actividad de otros y los “usos” que crean deben venir a nosotros en esta forma enajenada. Dentro de estas relaciones sociales capitalistas la mercancía – como una relación a nosotros mismos y los demás – representa la forma de cómo esta interacción se logra.

Marx dice, “la relación de las mercancías es precisamente el hecho de hacer abstracción de sus valores de uso” (5). Él indica que al final de este proceso de abstracción no hay “un átomo de valor de uso” como el uso pierde sus “elementos materiales y de las formas que los convierten en tal valor de uso” (5). Aunque es la calidad específica de un uso – lo que lo hace útil – que individuos aislados necesitan, para obtenerlos ellos deben hacerlo a través de una forma de intercambio donde “todas sus características sensuales son extinguidas.” Marx es evidente – y ya he señalado esto anteriormente – ya que la mercancía es una forma del trabajo, una forma de auto-actividad, la transformación del trabajo para el uso, para necesidades, al trabajo necesario para el intercambio involucra, últimamente, una enajenación en algo Marx llama “el valor.”  Él describe el movimiento así:

“Todas su propiedades sensuales se habrán evaporado. Dejarán de ser también productos del trabajo del ebanista, del carpintero, del tejedor o de otro trabajo productivo concreto cualquiera. Con el carácter útil de los productos del trabajo, desaparecerá el carácter útil de los trabajos que representan y desaparecerán también, por tanto, las diversas formas concretas de estos trabajos, que dejarán de distinguirse unos de otros para reducirse todos ellos al mismo trabajo humano, al trabajo humano abstracto. ¿Cuál es el residuo de los productos así considerados? Es la mis objetividad espectral, un simple coágulo de trabajo humano homogéneo, es decir, de empleo de fuerza humana de trabajo, sin atender para nada a la forma en que esta fuerza se emplee. Estos objetos sólo nos dicen que en su producción se ha invertido fuerza humana de trabajo, se ha acumulado trabajo humano. Pues bien, considerados como cristalización de esta sustancia social común a todos ellos, estos objetos son valores, valores-mercancías” (5-6).

Algo sucede a nuestro proceso metabólico o auto-actividad, donde sus propiedades concretos, particulares, y sensuales asumen las características y experiencia de ser “abstracto,” “coagulado,” y “homogéneo.” Las calidades específicas de la auto-actividad y el trabajo se reducen a un simple cantidad que Marx llama “el valor,” que asume “una objetividad espectral.” Él hace esta ecuación explícita cuando dice que el valor  es “el trabajo humano…objetivado” (6). Esta es una transición crítica en sólo las primeras páginas de El Capital.

En El Trabajo Enajenado, describe Marx la misma transición él hace aquí entre el trabajo concreto, vivo (actividad para el uso y la necesidad), y el trabajo abstracto, muerto (actividad para el cambio y el valor). Tenemos que recordar que para Marx la esencia humana es la objetivación de sí mismo en la creación del mundo social a través de la intención consciente. Hasta el punto que esta actividad o proceso metabólico asume una forma social que corresponde a esta esencia, puede ser caracterizado como “actividad libre.” Sin embargo, en el capitalismo este proceso de objetivación de sí mismo es  dramáticamente invertido a través de la forma de valor, la forma mercantil, que es la forma social en la sociedad capitalista. Como escribe él en El Trabajo Enajenado, aquí

“el objeto que el trabajo produce, su producto, se enfrenta a él como un ser extraño, como un poder independiente del productor. El producto del trabajo es el trabajo que se ha fijado en un objeto, que se ha hecho cosa; el producto es la objetivación del trabajo. La realización del trabajo es su objetivación. Esta realización del trabajo aparece en el estadio de la Economía Política como desrealización del trabajador, la objetivación como pérdida del objeto y servidumbre a él, la apropiación como extrañamiento, como enajenación” (71).

La auto-actividad ya no es la realización del objeto de nuestras imaginaciones a través de la transformación de la naturaleza, y nosotros, sino nuestra realización como objetos determinados por imperativos sociales no de nuestra elección. Es por esta razón que la sociedad (y nosotros mismos) se siente como una fuerza externa que determine o nos controla desde el exterior. En La Ideología Alemana, Marx se conecta de nuevo la organización material de la sociedad a la forma que su “metabolismo” asume: “una separación entre el interés particular y el interés común, mientras las actividades, por consiguiente, no aparecen divididas voluntariamente, sino por modo espontáneo, los actos propios del hombre se erigen ante él en un poder ajeno y hostil, que le sojuzga, en vez de ser él quien lo domine. En efecto, a partir del momento en que comienza a dividirse el trabajo, cada cual se mueve en un determinado círculo exclusivo de actividades, que le viene impuesto y del que no puede salirse” (36). Nuestro “propio acto” reproduce la forma de nuestra propia objetivación, nuestro propio encarcelamiento en la forma de existencia del proletariado. El mundo asume una “objetividad espectral” porque no es más que nuestra auto-actividad espectral atrapada en el cadáver de la forma del valor mercantilizado.

Cuando Marx escribe sobre el proceso de abstracción en la producción del valor, se dirige del hecho de que no sólo las “características sensuales [del uso] son extinguidas,” sino también nuestras relaciones “sensuales” a otros y nosotros mismos. Es el caso porque estas relaciones son mediadas abstractamente por el valor, tomando la forma del valor de cambio. Por tanto experimentamos una pérdida de “sensualidad” por ser separados de nuestra auto-actividad y relaciones mutuas. Perdimos el contacto concreto, corporal con y control consciente del objeto de nuestra actividad por ser convertido en un objeto nosotros mismos – un objeto, abstraído de nuestra esencia, entre muchos otros en el mundo social capitalista de mercancías.

Que el valor es actividad humana “objetivada,” de acuerdo con Marx, asume una característica específica que es una consecuencia única de la división social del trabajo en la sociedad capitalista. El trabajo individuo, aislado dentro de una sola actividad y uso, se convierte en trabajo social sólo a través de la forma de nuestras abstractas relaciones uno con el otro reflejado en esta división de trabajo capitalista. Por consiguiente la necesidad universal de relaciones sociales mutuas, además de nuestra auto-actividad esencial como total y diverso, sólo puede tener en el capitalismo una unidad necesaria a través del valor. Así pues, como dice Marx, “toda la fuerza de trabajo de la sociedad, materializada en la totalidad de los valores que forman el mundo de las mercancías, representase para estos efectos un inmensa fuerza humana de trabajo” (6). El valor es la suma de toda nuestra auto-actividad interrelacionada dentro de la forma de la división social capitalista del trabajo – la forma que asume nuestras relaciones sociales en la sociedad capitalista. Separados el uno al otro y nosotros mismos, pero todavía unidos, el proceso de auto-actividad mutual debe ser realizada a través de la forma de valor, es decir, el intercambio medido por los criterios de valor.

Ya que el valor es una relación y no una cosa, no podemos verlo. Se toma forma sólo en los objetos producidos (usos) como una resulta de nuestras interacciones mercantilizadas. En esta situación nuestro proceso metabólico se reduce a – o asume la forma de – una mera relación cuantitativa que llama Marx “tiempo de trabajo socialmente necesario.” Es el “tiempo de trabajo socialmente necesario es aquel que se requiere para producir un valor de uso cualquiera, en las condiciones normales de producción y con el grado medio de destreza e intensidad de trabajo imperantes en la sociedad” (6-7). El tiempo de trabajo en la sociedad capitalista está marcado por su propia medida “socialmente necesario” de nuestra actividad mutua de que algo “vale” y por tanto determine en qué base o valor se intercambiará. Lo que es “socialmente necesario” bajo el capitalismo es la organización de la sociedad y nuestro trabajo para producir el valor y, específicamente, el plusvalor para los capitalistas. Por consiguiente nuestras relaciones están mediadas por, o reducidas a la forma abstracta de “valores de cambio,” como “mercancías [que] no son todas ellas más que determinadas cantidades de tiempo de trabajo cristalizado” (7). Si el “elemento común” que hace el intercambio de usos posible es nuestra auto-actividad mutua, se asume la forma enajenada de una abstracción llamada el valor: “aquel algo común que toma cuerpo en la relación de cambio….es por tanto, su valor” y “valor de cambio es el necesario modo de expresión, o forma de apariencia, de valor” (6).

El Valor y La Reproducción de La Enajenación

 Las implicaciones que el valor es el trabajo humano “objetivado” es importante para explayarse en, incluso si sólo se hace evidente en la cuarta sección. Hablaré de ello con más detalle al observar esa sección, pero una breve nota es útil para entender el valor. En La Tesis Sobre Feuerbach,  argumenta Marx que debemos “concebir la propia actividad humana como una actividad objetiva.” Esta idea se desarrolla más en El Trabajo Enajenado, donde él dice que la auto-actividad es un proceso donde, a través de la interacción con otros y la naturaleza nos objetivamos a nosotros mismos por reproducir en forma material nuestra imaginación. En La Ideología Alemana, Marx escribe que este proceso sólo surge colectivamente como un proceso social, lo que él se refiere como las relaciones sociales de producción.

El valor es la inversión de este proceso. El proceso metabólico objetivante termina siendo uno donde llegamos a ser objetivado. Las relaciones sociales de producción se han vuelto contra nosotros, existiendo como algo aparentemente externo. Sin embargo, como muestra la relación mercantil, no es también fuera de nosotros. La relación entre nosotros y el cambio es dialéctico, una unidad de contrarios, haciéndolos mutuamente dependientes el uno al otro. La necesidad de usos nos obliga a intercambiar. El intercambio es sólo posible porque lo que se está intercambiando es necesario o útil. En el capitalismo el contenido de necesidades humanas constantemente reproduce la forma de nuestra objetivación. Nuestro propio metabolismo proporciona el combustible, por decirlo así, para que el sistema funcione. Nuestra actividad, entonces, objetivando o reproducción de nosotros mismos en el mundo, vuelve a nosotros como “una objetividad espectral,” que es el contenido viviente de la actividad humana encarnada en la forma muerta de la relación mercantil y el valor (6**). Este regreso de los muertos vivientes, existente como lo hacemos en un mundo embrujado por nuestra presencia espectral, un mundo de alguna manera hecho por nosotros pero sin nuestro control y por detrás de nuestra espalda, no es una ilusión. Es real y “objetivo.” Existimos como el valor, y al mismo tiempo, no existimos como el valor. Somos el proletariado y, al mismo tiempo, una esencia que lucha constantemente hacia la abolición de las formas sociales enajenadas que tomamos en la modernidad capitalista.

Al medir el tiempo de trabajo socialmente necesario, el valor media la equivalencia entre diferentes tipos de trabajo y el total de toda nuestra auto-actividad colectiva tomado en su totalidad. También encarna la calidad abstracta, enajenada de nuestras interacciones dentro de la forma de relaciones sociales capitalistas. Finalmente, es el poder abstracto de capital que reduce nuestra capacidad de trabajar – nuestro proceso metabólico – a la sola meta de producir plusvalor para el capitalista. El valor se convierte separado del uso y la satisfacción necesaria de necesidades humanas, viniendo a imponer su propia lógica y sus propias necesidades. El modo de producción se convierte separado de los medios de subsistencia, imponiendo una lógica que se convierte antitético a las necesidades humanas.

En consecuencia, debemos producir para vender, y vendemos de acuerdo con el tiempo de trabajo socialmente necesario, al valor de nuestra fuerza de trabajo que es forzada de nosotros en esta forma particular a través del control de los medios de producción por los capitalistas. Para Marx el valor se convierte, en una transición de los productores individuos, el totalizando poder social horrible de la auto-reproducción de capital mismo. Es el inverso del diverso  potencial de nuestra auto-actividad y humanidad colectiva, en breve, de libertad humana, creatividad y la riqueza colectiva. Marx habla aquí de lo objetivo y objetivando lógica de la sociedad capitalista, ese momento en que el valor como una autónoma relación de auto-reproducción determine la actividad vital de la sociedad y nosotros mismos como una totalidad. La realización de los poderes humanos no es de preocupación desde el punto de vista de capital y los capitalistas. En las condiciones de la lucha de clases, que es inmanente en las categorías del capítulo uno, pero no desarrollado hasta más tarde en El Capital, el capitalista personifica los imperativos implacables de valor, y organiza la sociedad y su reproducción a través de la determinación de lo que es el tiempo de trabajo socialmente necesario, que mide nuestras vidas a diario.

El Valor como La Forma Invertida de Nuestros Crecientes Poderes Creativos

Sin embargo, dado que el valor depende del trabajo viviente, al final no puede separarse del proceso metabólico de los seres humano. Si se intenta de separarse, entonces el sistema capitalista se derrumbaría. Por tanto Marx termina la segunda sección en este punto crítico. A pesar de su aparente poder de reproducirse y destruir el mundo y nosotros para lograr sus objetivos aparentemente autónomos, el valor no puede escapar su relación dialéctica con el trabajo viviente. Esto es claro en la relación dialéctica entre el uso y el cambio como los dos polos en la relación mercantil, la relación embrionaria de la sociedad capitalista.

Dice Marx que como el valor es el trabajo viviente objetivado, no se encuentra su origen en cambiando tecnología de máquinas diseñadas para aumentar la productividad. Eso también producido por el trabajo viviente, ahora materializado como trabajo muerto, objetos que no tienen significado o función salvo en relación a la actividad viviente. Escribe Marx que “cuanto mayor sea la capacidad productiva del trabajo, tanto más corto será el tiempo de trabajo necesario para la producción de un artículo, tanto menor la cantidad de trabajo cristalizada en él y tanto más reducido su valor. Y por el contrario, cuanto menor sea la capacidad productiva del trabajo, tanto mayor será el tiempo de trabajo necesario para la producción de un artículo y tanto más grande el valor de éste.” Por consiguiente, deduce Marx, “el valor de la mercancía representa….el simple trabajo medio….el trabajo complejo no es más que el trabajo simple potenciado o, mejor dicho, multiplicado: por donde una pequeña cantidad de trabajo complejo puede equivaler a una cantidad grande de trabajo simple” (11-12).

Estos son importantes implicaciones para la comprensión de la relación entre el trabajo y el valor. Sigue explicando Marx:

“Cuanto mayor sea la cantidad de valor de uso mayor será, de por sí, la riqueza material: dos levitas encierran más riqueza que una. Con dos levitas pueden vestirse dos personas; con una de estas prendas una solamente, etc. Sin embargo, puede ocurrir que a medida que crece la riqueza material, disminuya la magnitud de valor que representa. Estas fluctuaciones contradictorias entre sí se explican por el doble carácter del trabajo. La capacidad productiva es siempre, naturalmente, capacidad productiva de trabajo útil, concreto. Y sólo determina, como es lógico, el grado de eficacia de una actividad productiva útil, encaminada a un fin, dentro de un período de tiempo dado. Por tanto, el trabajo útil rendirá una cantidad más o menos grande de productos según el  ritmo con que aumente o disminuya su capacidad productiva. Por el contrario, los cambios operados en la capacidad productiva no afectan de suyo al trabajo que el valor representa. Como la capacidad productiva es siempre función de la forma concreta y útil del trabajo, es lógico que tan pronto como se hace caso omiso de su forma concreta, útil, no afecte para nada éste. El mismo trabajo rinde, por tanto, durante el mismo tiempo, idéntica cantidad de valor, por mucho que cambie su capacidad productiva” (13).

El “doble carácter del trabajo” en el capitalismo – la esencia de la forma mercantil – significa que sólo la actividad humana concreta puede poner a utilizar o realizar el valor abstracto encarnado en esos usos. Menor será el tiempo que se tarda en hacer cada uso, por tanto, puede haber más usos, pero cada uno contiene menos valor. Para realizar más valor el capitalista debe ampliar, “intensificar”, y “multiplicar” la productividad, inevitablemente resultando en una creciente explotación. El valor permanece irrevocablemente unido al trabajo humano, concreto.

Las implicaciones son profundas y hay aquí una ironía terrible. Mayor productividad amplía dramáticamente nuestra capacidad para producir usos y satisfacer necesidades. Sin embargo,  las dimensiones sociales nuevas, cooperativas e individuales de este nuevo poder expansivo permanece sólo una potencial, luchando por adentro y contra la forma de producción para el valor. En vez, en el mundo invertido del capitalismo, mayor productividad resulta en  la miseria general del proletariado. Marx está pensando aquí del tipo de contradicción él ve en el corazón de la modernidad capitalista. En El Trabajo Enajenado, dice Marx, “la miseria del obrero está en razón inversa de la potencia y magnitud de su producción” (69). En lugar de los poderes ampliados de la humanidad, tenemos los “intensificados” y los “multiplicados” poderes de capital. Argumenta Marx otra vez en El Trabajo Enajenado, para el obrero, “tanto más poderoso es el mundo extraño, objetivo que crea frente a sí y tanto más pobres son él mismo y su mundo interior, tanto menos dueño de sí mismo es….tanto más poderoso el trabajo, tanto más impotente el obrero” (72-73**).

Semejante visión por Marx de nuestra existencia en la sociedad capitalista se refleja en la relación entre productividad y el trabajo concreto en el pasaje citado anteriormente de El Capital. “La capacidad productiva es siempre, naturalmente, capacidad productiva de trabajo útil,” escribe Marx. Entonces, “los cambios operados en la capacidad productiva no afectan de suyo al trabajo que el valor representa. Como la capacidad productiva es siempre función de la forma concreta y útil del trabajo, es lógico que tan pronto como se hace caso omiso de su forma concreta.” En el capitalismo, la sabiduría y las herramientas que permiten la productividad son separadas del trabajo concreto. Aún como objetos de la riqueza en expansión y la capacidad de la sociedad humana son producidos por el trabajo concreto. La riqueza colectiva – los poderes alquimias, en expansión y “multiplicando” poderes de nuestras imaginaciones y su realización alrededor de y adentro de nosotros – es en lugar apropiado por el capital. El mundo invertido del valor, la riqueza colectiva de la humanidad se utiliza para “intensificar” y “multiplicar” su explotación. La forma de valor hace esto como una separación: una separación entre los medios de subsistencia y los medios de producción, el trabajo manual y mental, el sujeto y el objeto, la forma y el contenido. Al final no podemos apropiar la expansión de los poderes, objetos y mundo social que creamos, que es en lugar apropiado por el capital y el capitalista como plusvalor. Como Marx concluye al final de La Ideología Alemana, la realidad objetiva y “necesidad” del comunismo fluye de la lógica diaria de la lucha para lograr una reapropiación, una explosión de la forma de valor de existencia como el proletariado:

 “Las cosas, por tanto, han ido tan lejos, que los individuos necesitan apropiarse la totalidad de las fuerzas productivas existentes, no sólo para poder ejercer su propia actividad, sino, en general, para asegurar su propia existencia. Esta apropiación se halla condicionada, ante todo, por el objeto que se trata de apropiar, es decir, por las fuerzas productivas, desarrolladas ahora hasta convertirse en una totalidad y que sólo existen dentro de una relación universal. Por tanto, esta apropiación deberá necesariamente tener, ya desde este punto de vista, un carácter universal en consonancia con las fuerzas productivas y la relación. La apropiación de estas fuerzas no es, de suyo, otra cosa que el desarrollo de las capacidades individuales correspondientes a los instrumentos materiales de producción. La apropiación de una totalidad de instrumentos de producción es ya de por sí, consiguientemente, el desarrollo de una totalidad de capacidades en los individuos mismos. Esta apropiación se halla, además, condicionada por los individuos apropiantes. Sólo los proletarios de la época actual, totalmente excluidos del ejercicio de su propia actividad, se hallan en condiciones de hacer valer su propia actividad, íntegra y no limitada, consistente en la apropiación de una totalidad de fuerzas productivas y en el consiguiente desarrollo de una totalidad de capacidades” (101).

Bibliografía

Marx, Carlos. El Capital: Crítica de la Economía Política, I. Trad.de Wenceslao Roces. México, D.F.: FCE, 1999.

El Trabajo Enajenado

http://www.marxists.org/espanol/m-e/1840s/manuscritos/man1.htm

Tesis sobre Feuerbach

http://www.marxists.org/espanol/m-e/1840s/45-feuer.htm

Ideología Alemana

http://www.marxists.org/espanol/m-e/1840s/feuerbach/index.htm

The following piece, by James Frey, was originally posted at Libcom, and is the story and analysis of organizing in a precarious workplace in New York, where a significant part of the working class works at-will, without health insurance, and several jobs at a time.  The piece includes important lessons for organizing precarious work places, as well as a range of important political critiques, made concrete through the questions raised by this struggle.  Frey can be reached at movingstorycontact@gmail.com

“They Just Run Us Into The Ground…”

Our struggle was born in the cabs of box trucks all over the city. Stopped in traffic, cramped and stewing in diesel fumes, and working off the clock due to flat-rate travel pay based on mythic road conditions, we have spent countless hours in the privacy of our little boxes enumerating our grievances endlessly. In these scenes, the individual gripe is always the germ of systematic critique. And such grievances are in no short supply when the starting rate for workers at our dangerous job has progressively fallen over the past four years, rolling back a full five dollars and coming to rest on the precipice of minimum wage, as has the pay cap for our nearly nonexistent pay raises, which can only be negotiated individually and secretly with management, in competition with our co-workers, and are rarely granted. Medical benefits are non-existent, though the threat of severe bodily harm comes with every day’s work, more reliably so than the gratuity with which each of our customers, in morally satisfied ignorance of our pay rate, are expected to subsidize our basic social needs out of sheer generosity. “Have a few drinks tonight!” they’ll chortle along with a meager tip, as we wonder if this keeps us on track to make rent. The undesirable conditions at our shop have created a high turnover which makes for unsafe working conditions, only exacerbating the daily struggle to make ends meet and make it home one piece.

Work in our shop comes in a pattern of feast or famine. We list which days we are available, and work is assigned to us based on necessity. This “flexibility” (as it is presented in the job interview) is misleading, as it is necessary to make oneself available almost every single day in order to make enough hours for the week, and work is announced with less than 24 hours notice. Many days we are available there is no work at all, especially for the newer workers, who can go two weeks at a time without hearing from the company. Often the most competent, experienced, and professional of our ranks view the job as an unfortunate short-term situation, explicitly citing lack of pay, reliable scheduling, and above all, dignity, and these workers have one eye on the door from the start.

This situation has engendered an entire class of disposable workers hired for the extreme short term and not expected to stay beyond a month, at which time they can be replaced by another crop from the inexhaustible Craig’s List precariat. They are hired at a pay rate which most often precludes any experience, and in many cases precludes maturity and responsibility. It is not uncommon to find among new hires an apathetical approach to this labor intensive and dangerous job. Surely, nobody among us can really blame workers making close to minimum wage for behaving accordingly. A while back a worker in this pay rate was an hour late on a Saturday morning, and one of the veterans joked “He just paid $8 to sleep in for an hour.” However, the most experienced and responsible crew members on each job must train each new worker behind the customer’s back while doing the work of two, and to turn their attention away from the new hire to perform a technical task or to even use the bathroom is to risk catastrophe.

And catastrophe strikes often, in the form of avoidable damages resulting from basic errors or carelessness, for which the company regularly doles out thousands of dollars, overcompensating the customer in the name of preserving its good standing in the public eye. The same is true for drivers, who the company is unwilling to hire at a competitive rate for commercial trucking. Instead it opts to underpay inexperienced drivers who routinely cause expensive wrecks and drive up the company’s insurance costs, while posing an obvious threat to the safety of all. In a bitter irony, the myriad expenditures stemming from constant turnover in an underpaid, often inexperienced, and increasingly apathetic workforce are cited as the reason we cannot receive raises, which of course would help obviate accidents and damages, and the cycle continues as wages are driven ever downward by the imperative to minimize costs in the short-term. This lends some weight to the view that in the wage relation, domination of the labor force is the primary concern for the accumulation of capital, and the importance of low wages to immediate concerns of profit is secondary.

Those of us who work our hardest do so not because it reflects our pitiful remuneration, but out of a basic human desire to take pride in the application of one’s faculties to a day’s work, and to recognize one’s efforts in the quality of the product. This is of course a complicated relationship within the paradigm of exploitation, and it leaves especially the most adept and responsible workers feeling like suckers. “The company uses us the same way they use the [notoriously unmaintained] trucks”, one seasoned worker commented morosely. “They just run us into the ground.”

“My Mover Has Read Goethe!”

We have all worked plenty of “shit jobs” before and came to this company with no illusions about the nature of precarious work in the present day. But the real insult to injury for most of us lies in the company’s hipster “niche market” status. According to its literature, our company only hires artists and other creative people, whose creative endeavors the customer can “support” simply by hiring us. This is a major selling point with the customers of course, but also with new hires, with whom it is used to justify low wages. The company dons the “starving artist” trope for itself in dealings with the staff, to whom the trope actually applies. And the idea that “we” are a “collective” of “artists” suggests to the average customer that there is some kind of common ownership or stake in the company, or at the very least, that the workers are compensated anywhere near the mean industry rate. After all, how could a company so hip and cool and with it pay its workers minimum wage? Instead, tips are a major source of our income, though we are prohibited from discussing it with the customers, and many customers seem legitimately unaware of how much we need gratuity to survive. Worst of all, this sort of company manages to drape a layer of DIY hipster obfuscation over the basic relationship of exploitation. This fools the willfully ignorant customers, who don’t want to think ill of their precious luxury item, but can also make things difficult for organizing those among the staff with somebody else supporting them, a type often drawn to this kind of hip company, whose class privilege allows for some distance between the exploitative wage and the material necessities of their lives.

“My mover has read Goethe!” one clueless bourgeois declared amazedly, “Only in New York.” (Surely, especially in this man’s native Germany, this is not the case.) The strange affect that comes with artistic types performing ones manual labor for them is precisely why our rates can be higher than typical companies of our size and capacity, though materially there is little difference. Instead, the private artistic pursuits of the worker, conducted in their unwaged time away from work, renders their labor a luxury item, and enables a luxury price for which the worker is not compensated. It is not uncommon for a customer to ask one of us, while we’re grappling to carry their couch down a flight of stairs, what our “art” is, and on the spot we are made to tap dance to their satisfaction. This is all just clever marketing. Paradoxically, however, there is a real creative community at our workplace, though it exists not in the form of an “artist collective”. Instead, it is a collectivity of workers, acting in concert to accomplish challenging tasks, and using the full range of our creativity and intelligence to solve problems in a difficult occupation which requires constant improvisation, mental and physical strength, and emotional intelligence. It is this creative community, which exists everywhere, that is important to our struggle. In this way we are no different from any other workplace where difficult tasks are tackled in common.
We Are Not The 99%

Given these conditions, theories abound about the company’s financial practices, the preferential scheduling of certain workers, perceived acts of retribution by management for petty transgressions, etc., and though these sometimes run from fanciful to paranoid, they always point toward a systematic critique of the company’s functioning and, at root, the relationship between labor and capital. The most important task of our struggle consisted in orienting these myriad grievances toward a coherent and cohesive conception of the company, encompassing its governing logic, the mechanisms by which this was implemented, and the potential strengths and weaknesses these contained. From the onset it was of the utmost importance to distance our analysis from the intentions, beliefs, personalities, and feelings of those in management, who embody the domination of labor by capital, but who are dominated in turn by its necessity. The unfolding of our struggle confirmed this imperative. It further confirmed that had we opted for a more sentimental, emotional, or personal critique in the vein of Occupy’s unfocused analysis excused as inclusivity, which draws on such abstract notions such as “greed”, “bad bankers”, “fairness”, and “the 99%”, etc., we would have been endlessly bogged down in talk of good people vs. bad people, personal autobiographies, the form of rhetoric rather than its content, personal comfort, and hurt feelings. Tellingly, the only talk of this kind would come from the management, and would be aimed squarely at quashing workers’ solidarity and returning us to a mass of powerless individuals.

Every player in our struggle, whether the organizers, the managers forced to work against them, the avowedly neutral, the scabs hired to break our strike, the handful of scabs from our own ranks, the bourgeois friends of the boss brought in to make us feel ashamed, the rats who forwarded our communications to management, all the way up to the boss himself, can all be classified by the abstract economic category “99%”. This distinction bulldozes nuanced analysis and obscures the real mechanisms of class domination in the name of a false sense of cohesion which is destined to dissolve in urgent moments of struggle, reaffirming with a vengeance the antagonisms which a false sense of universal solidarity seeks to conveniently ignore. In this way the trajectory of Occupy seems to be no coincidence, but was contained within it from the start. The conveniences its big tent afforded in the early days foreshadowed its necessary demise. There is no such thing as “the 99%”. The self-conscious working class has many enemies within this massive demographic, both ideologically and materially, and perhaps most of all in those who seek to neutralize socially-necessary conflicts and denounce precise analysis and necessary sectarianism as unduly divisive.
Practical-Critical Activity

The correct analysis necessary to our struggle was not something alien to our daily lives, to be imported from without. No external body was needed to educate us about our position. No pre-existing model could have been neatly fitted into our situation by self-understood organizing professionals. We didn’t need the guidance of “trained facilitators”, or training on how to talk to each other, or to be “reached out” to. Instead, our analysis developed through discussion and cooperative problem solving, through the dynamics already in place, enacted each day in our labor and the social relations it created. This social activity not only built trust and nurtured a cooperative spirit, but provided us the venue for articulating our grievances and honing an understanding of our particular situation. By the time our discussions assumed the form of “organizing” there was little controversy. After all, the objective conditions of our workplace leave little room for disagreement. Our employer aims to minimizing wages and control the conditions of our work. We aim to maximize wages and control the conditions of our work. Our employer’s obsession with low wages imperiled us in our work, along with our material situations, and in an irony which was not lost on our ranks, wasn’t even efficient from a business perspective. “This is like an intervention for someone who can’t run his own business” one worker joked.

Our material conditions are facts. Nobody in our shop has the privilege of such a distance from the daily reproduction of capital necessary to be able to deny objective conditions, facts, or realities of this kind. All that was required was to understand the particular instances which comprised our grievances in the context of the totality outside which they would be disconnected, unrelated, and remediable on an individual basis by concerned individuals. Such abstractions can reduce every social phenomenon to endless particularities, every empirical reality to so many subjective perspectives, and all political positions to “opinions” equally equivalent in relation to one another. In this conception the consideration of particularity, doubtless necessary for analytic and strategic completeness and for consideration of the human element involved, becomes an end in itself and leads to obfuscation, obstruction, and ultimately, paralysis.

Against this, we developed a conception of how our particular workplace functions in the context of the capitalist totality of which it is a part, in which labor and capital are necessarily posed adversarially. The most basic form this antagonism takes is the fight over the conditions of the working day, and it is here, in the wage relation and the conditions of the day’s work, that this antagonism is displayed irrefutably. We vowed that whether or not we liked, or believed, or ever had a drink with our boss or field manager, this was the fundamental structure and that is what would dictate action. We decided quite uncontroversially that nothing would ever change if we continued to act individually. As individuals we lacked the sufficient power to demand higher wages and better conditions. Our only subversive option as individuals was to quit, which sadly some would take in response to the effrontery of the boss as the situation progressed, but this would simply lead to our individual replacement by another desperate worker to be exploited in kind under the same conditions or worse. We decided that the practice of low wages and high turnover which our company had grown far too comfortable with, untenable as it was from our individual perspectives, must be made untenable in the eyes of the boss, and this could only be accomplished by a collectivity acting in active antagonism. From there it was only a matter of determining our course of action.
Precarity: Its Obvious Weaknesses And Surprising Strengths

We were preoccupied from the start with the problems unique to organizing so-called precarious workers, e.g. those without the guarantee of work, without benefits, employed for the short-term, “off the books”, underemployed, and easily terminated (or simply withdrawn from the schedule unceremoniously). Some of us attended a “general assembly” called for precarious workers, and we found that our problems were shared the city over. The downsides of this type of work and their corollaries in organizing were obvious: minimal job security, workers materially unable to miss work or risk firing, and a general climate of alienation which seemed magnified compared even to that of the typical workplace. From the premise that precarious work was a unique form of alienated labor and posed many particular obstacles for organizing, we decided to isolate, inversely, its unique strategic benefits. It is our contention that the most potent weapon against precarious work is the very precarity it engenders. This is an ongoing effort which must be explored in every specificity of this kind of work. In our particular case we found a few strategic advantages, contained within ostensible disadvantages, which benefited us immensely. These are primarily applicable to our shop, but not necessarily.

Primarily in our case, behind the unreliable stream of work synonymous with precarity lay the scheduling flexibility necessary for maintaining workers who could not be promised a steady schedule. At our shop, we make ourselves available, and are given work accordingly. Therefore, a collective work stoppage would not even technically be a strike; it would be a collective vacation! It would be impossible to penalize us for simultaneously requesting time off. To do so would mean rewriting the entire employment policy, and most likely including such benefits as a minimum pay per week in order to require any kind of promise of availability from the workers. This is how we circumvented for a time the traditional fear mongering (and the valid fear) of firing or retribution that plagues workers solidarity in the face of a proposed work stoppage. This was fundamental to building strength at the very onset.

Further, as we began to approach more and more coworkers with a cautious tone anticipating the kind of panic we were expecting, we discovered that this job pays so little, demands so much, and is so interchangeable with any other menial Craig’s List gig that there was very little fear of termination by just about anyone. It must of course be noted that, though not negligible, the amount of workers with dependents, or without documentation, or required to work as a condition of parole, benefits, etc. at our shop by no means reflects the general population of precarious workers. Our shop is mostly (though not completely) male, a majority of whom are without dependents, or legality issues. We do not claim that a universal devil-may-care attitude toward termination can be expected in every precarious field. However, the nature of the job itself must not be underestimated when weighed against fears of termination. In our particular case we quickly discovered that the undesirability of the job, the low wages, lack of benefits, and interchangeability with numerous other jobs of its kind so common to precarious work was reflected in our coworkers’ attitudes towards termination. “Getting fired from this job would be the best thing that ever happened to any of us!” one worker joked. Our debased condition had actually created a situation in which we had nothing to lose except our chain to an easily replaceable menial job.

Finally, the flexibility, mobility, and de-centered nature of our workplace, an obstacle to traditional organizational models, provided us with the ability to work outside the purview of the boss and field manager for some time. This was the case in our trucks, of course, where the groundwork for organizing was laid. It was also true of our garage, which is open 24/7 due to the vast allocation of responsibility to petty managers, drivers, and foremen, which we were able to use as a site of meetings where theory and tactics could be discussed openly.

This is not an exhaustive list, only an indication that in the specificity of precarious work, there lies potential strategic benefits complimenting its uniqueness as a form of the organization of labor.
Building A Movement

From the perspective outlined above, it was clear that the only course of action would be to make demands for higher wages and better conditions supported by the threat of paralyzing the company should they not be met. Generating consensus for this was easy, as the majority of the workforce had become disillusioned (if ever enthusiastic) by the company’s this veneer, and the venting of grievances was a this point common to all and done openly on a daily basis. The initial stage consisted of a series of informal discussions, not scheduled or forced, but rather stemming from these gripe sessions, which germinated the idea that a remedy to the problems we faced in common was possible and could succeed. The demand of higher wages was articulated specifically, so that our meetings at the very onset were framed by specific demands and not the long-term imperative to meet for its own sake. The company policy of rotating staffing accommodated this nicely, as a few weeks of work was sufficient for a handful of organizers to speak intimately and informally with a large percentage of the field and garner their support. A handful of workers planning to quit were convinced to stay around for a while and give this a shot. The need for immediate change and the necessity of radical means for its implementation, rooted in our empirical situation, was not very controversial in our shop, and our analysis only articulated this and made it irrefutable.

Though we sought full participation, strategically speaking it was most necessary to ensure the participation of the most principle workers, a core of about twenty, without whom the company could not function (especially the drivers, who are always in short supply due to their insulting starting rate, and the foremen, one of whom is necessary to each job). It is important to note that according to certain dogmas of workplace organizing, “foremen” would be excluded due to the authority they wield on the job, as would petty “managers” responsible for hiring and training. In our particular workplace, comprised of about fifty workers with a core of about twenty, foremen are simply the most experienced and adept workers, and are promoted (too) quickly to this role as a necessity. Beside them is a class of petty “managers”, foremen who in addition to their moving work, had been entrusted in exchange for minor raises with basic functions the office couldn’t be bothered with, such as hiring, or unpaid training sessions which workers are encouraged to attend on their own time. But as workers of the field, there was never any question of where their allegiance lay. This was confirmed in the struggle. Only the “field manager” responsible for staffing, the only actual manager by definition, was excluded from the action, given the impossibility of his situation.

A core of the most active and concerned workers emerged, consisting mostly of those with the most experience and investment in the job, along with a periphery of those less active who pledged support though minimal time or energy, and were kept in the loop by repeated invitations to meetings, word of mouth, and direct contact by phone and e-mail. We did not confuse the unwillingness of the latter to engage in unwaged work-related work outside of work with their lack of desire to improve and take control of the conditions of their work at work. In the interest of maintaining the strategic element of surprise and protecting our interests, a handful individuals deemed likely to scab, rat, or otherwise act against the interests of the workers were kept in the dark until the last minute. As events unfolded, this would prove to be warranted in every case. Notably, the kind of “slacker” worker—habitually late, drugged out, always shifting the burden of their work to those around them—fetishized in certain trends of anarchist theory as a latent revolutionary through these “defiant” acts typically proved to be equally apathetic and unreliable in the struggle. Thankfully, this was a small percentage.

We had no formal organizational structure, which proved advantageous at the beginning, particularly since we didn’t have any “movement” fetishists taking meeting minutes, boring everyone with procedure, telling us all “its not the right time”, that we need to “build a movement” etc. However, as time wore on and time-sensitive decisions became necessary, scheduling for open meetings proved difficult, and an inevitable hierarchy began to emerge, the disadvantages of this kind of association were revealed, and we are currently addressing this through self-critique.

Our understanding of the company’s specific organization and functioning allowed us to isolate a particular time for action in which it would be most vulnerable and we would be the strongest. The week of August 1st is one of the busiest moving weeks of the year, and right after September 1st (which was never off our radar, nor is it at the time of writing), is when much of the surplus capital the company requires in the slow Winter months is accrued. We had caught wind that a pitiful system for gradual and far-off wage increases was about to be announced in order to stem the growing discontent in the field which had begun to bubble over in advance of our action. The idea of incremental raises itself was unprecedented though the proposal was insultingly low. We knew it was time to impose our own.

We formulated a plan to withhold our availability for the first week of August, which would amount to a work stoppage during one of the busiest weeks of the year. In advance of this we would demand immediate raises for everyone, the equalling of pay for drivers and foremen (the former being pitifully underpaid), and a system of progressive raises to follow. We would also demand an incentive program promising bonuses for workers not culpable for damages (though this was more rhetorical than practical, aimed at highlighting the absurd practice of paying off clients to cover the bungling of untrained helpers), and the option of a health care policy for those ineligible for Medicaid and soon to be forced by the tragic Affordable Care Act to purchase policies of their own.

Our delegates were workers held in the highest esteem throughout the whole company, three individuals who had racked up a combined 200 hours of work in one week in the previous cycle, and one of whom just happened to be moonlighting as a NY bar certified contract lawyer. (This detail in particular almost gave the boss a heart attack.) As the deadline for submitting August availability approached, these representatives met with the boss, outlining the situation as we saw it. In one of the myriad contradictions of workplace organizing, it was our firm conviction that the proposed changes of company policy would in fact serve the interest of capital accumulation while simultaneously improving the quality of life for the workers. This does not by any means diminish the value of our struggle for the class. Instead, it is now no mystery to any of us how worker’s struggles can be co-opted by the interests of capital, and this contradiction must be kept in mind in the ongoing process of self-critique, as well as in posing questions of whether and how this struggle can extend beyond our particular workplace. Nonetheless, the boss reacted more as one immediately concerned with the discipline and control of his workforce than one seeking the maximum profit. Though of course, in the end, these cannot be separated.

The Boss Gets His Feelings Hurt

Due to the discipline of our ranks, the delivery of demands caught the boss completely by surprise. This was strategically necessary to ensure that a sufficient amount of scabs could not be hired in anticipation of the planned stoppage. Based on our knowledge of the success rate of hiring at such a low starting rate, we knew it to be impossible to hire enough replacements unless, we joked, our demands were met and applied to new hires. (This joke would be borne out by reality in a least one case, when a worker was hired at two dollars above the starting rate—completely unheard of—due to his previous experience as foremen and willingness to scab.) We had calculated that the boss would likely spend the first of the two weeks we had afforded him trying frantically to find scabs from within the shop and hire them from without, and the second scrambling to meet our demands once he found the former to be impossible. But things moved faster than we had anticipated. He immediately began placing calls to individuals he knew to be involved with the action, accosting them on a personal level, complaining that he had been “ganged up on”, that we hurt his feelings, that we were trying to ruin his company, etc. It was his intent to force workers to speak to him as individuals, thus breaking our ranks, and opening inroads for his strikebreaking efforts.

The boss attempted to shift the discussion in our ranks from the content of the message that we delivered him to the form it assumed: the harsh way the representatives had spoken to him, that we had not sought a cooperative resolution (a bald faced lie obvious to anyone who had brought our myriad concerns to management, who he in turn threw under the bus when confronted with this fact), and the confrontational nature of our tactics. In our confrontational and resolute presentation of the facts we had attempted to sew division, he claimed, when we were simply revealing the confrontation and division rooted firmly in place by material reality. This is the same critique brought against those with precise articulated politics by “movement” bureaucrats (especially, in our experience, “The Student Movement”) and other liberals in radicals clothing seeking “consensus” completely devoid of political content. Having heard this language so many times from self-proclaimed radicals, it was perversely thrilling to at last hear it right from the boss’s mouth in the explicit language of strikebreaking and undermining class consciousness. And equally so when he spoke of this not being “the right time”, which we had heard before from those whose faith in the working class is limited to its ability to be trained, organized, and lead by professional intellectuals. These obfuscations did not work. As if a workplace struggle would not hurt the boss’s feelings!
“Tell Them To Fuck Off”

In a turn of events that should not have surprised us, e-mail technology added a dimension to our struggle that took on a life of its own. Our company had never before had an e-mail chain comprised of the entire staff, who opted instead to gripe in private, in the trucks, as discontented individuals. Some of the core organizers had of course been e-mailing to discuss tactical points and plan meetings, but responses were scant and the consensus was that nobody wanted to be deluged by work-related e-mails in their time away from work, any more than they wanted to attend meetings without specific actionable content. When the boss began the phone calls, however, we decided it was time to get ahead of his message with point by point rebuttals. The company’s online staff directory was nice enough to furnish the e-mails of all active employees. Our initial communique, “A Plea For Solidarity”, is included in the appendix for those interested.

Shortly thereafter, having been forwarded this message by a goddamned no good rat, the boss addressed a mass e-mail to the entirety of the field, omitting only the representatives who had delivered the demands, in a deliberate disregard for our ability to engage with him as equals. This message announced a new policy for wages which he had suddenly decided to institute, which were in themselves breathtaking concessions to our demands, and he melodramatically wondered in parentheses if the company could even survive. (“We’ll find out!”) By way of a conclusion he accused the organizers of being a “gang” intent on “ruining his company”, thumbing his nose at the negotiation process by declaring the issue to be resolved, and inviting everyone to a work party we had agreed to boycott, in order to celebrate. In the same breath as he conceded much of what we wanted, he had attempted to reinstitute a power structure at the company which was simply no longer possible. And it would not succeed.

Our response, “An Agreement Has Not Been Reached…”, is included in the appendix for those interested. Most important here, beyond the particular rhetoric, is that these exchanges opened up a venue for discussion which our company had never experienced. Many workers who had been silent and removed from the struggle spoke up and voiced their concerns, and overwhelming support. Messages of solidarity from workers currently away from the field began to trickle in. Workers spoke freely and in colorful language, voicing their thoughts with impunity on the company, the boss, and the situation in general, in terms that would have got them fired a week prior (as it was now obvious that as soon as we began to address the workplace as a whole, a rat in our midst was forwarding our every public communication to the boss). In direct response to our communique, which had not been addressed to him, the boss followed up the next night with an even more despicable attempt to turn the ranks against the organizers, which he incorrectly imagined to be two distinct entities. This document, entitled “Don’t Believe The Hype” (which offends us as Public Enemy fans perhaps more than as proletarians), is included in the appendix for those interested in a thoroughly entertaining piece of stream-of-consciousness strikebreaking literature.
“Let’s Just Have A Drink And Forget All This…”

Despite its trappings of cavalier bohemianism and a healthy dose of insanity, this message is at its core Management 101. The main tenets of strikebreaking ideology are present beneath its bipolar veneer, especially the fear-mongering trope that a handful of outsiders were attempting to bring in a union which would ruin the culture of the workplace. To some degree the seemingly childish language of this message was in fact calculated, aimed in particular at a small group of workers deemed likely to scab, as the dumbed down language and everyman emphasis on alcohol abuse and political apathy indicated to us all too clearly. In fact, “Let’s just have a drink!” now seems to be a universal call for diffusing workplace struggle, as it relies on the weakening effect drugs and alcohol have on emotional strength and resolve, the position of dependence that substance abuse places the individual with regards to their employer, and the general effect sharing a few drinks can have of glossing over irreconcilable differences where they should be addressed in a confrontational manner.

Following this correspondence, the “scab party” became a litmus test for our struggle, especially since it had been initially conceived, we learned, as an effort to “boost morale in the field” with an investment of $500 worth of beer. And the party was a bust. We scheduled a meeting to coincide, and our meeting drew the numbers. We discussed tactics and theory, and evaluated our strengths. As in our previous meetings, nearly nobody was drunk, in a group for whom the sun rarely sets on a sober worker in ten. Drunkenness, however, bit hard across town, and we returned home to find a correspondence from a past manager and friend of the boss who had quit the company due to low wages several years prior, and now attempted to stick his snub nose in our business and shame us for taking control of our situation.

This correspondence is an outstandingly putrid example of fear-mongering strikebreaking ideology, particularly relevant to workers in the “creative” sphere, as well as the “non profit” sector, as it argues for the exceptional nature of our company, exempting it from the paradigm of exploitation. This unreadable dreck typical to its author is included below. Its content is so transparent, with his various scattered points conveniently numbered in the manner in which small intellects are required to think, and was so ineffective in its desired aim, that no further criticism is required here. His message was met with an outpouring of hostility and mockery from our ranks, not the least of which due to the outsider status of its author with regards to our daily work, which for many transcended its content.

By this point, the e-mail form of communication had begun to reveal its downsides, and quite publicly manifested our own growing problems. One worker in particular, a young bourgeois writer quite popular in the shop, though in the painful throes of substance abuse which had shifted his burden of work to his coworkers, experienced a quite public “break down”, conducting open schizophrenic debates between his sober and intoxicated selves. These consisted of meditations on his own class privilege and his ambivalence about political radicalism, and relied heavily on the misinformation the boss had attempted to spread about “unionizing” and the personal nature of the struggle. It was the usual pacifist nonsense about how everyone should just get along, as if it were possible for all of us to abstract from the reality of class domination as this particular individual’s own privilege allowed him to do. But he could not even convince himself of this. The hopeless contradiction of the petty bourgeois intellectual, materially invested in a social arrangement to which an above-average intellect is unable to resign unproblematically, were given a painfully conflicted voice through this sad young man.
“This Has Gone On Long Enough”

This uncomfortable experience gave a quite public expression to the increasing tension which was being felt within each worker, and within the larger social dynamics which comprised the shop. The exaggerated emphasis afforded by all to the case of this young bourgeois demonstrated that this was no individual occurrence and that the struggle was beginning to take its toll on our ranks as the confrontation became more serious. “This has gone on long enough” proclaimed a veteran whose support was central to our action from the onset. We had premised our action on the assumption that the boss would never run fewer than the maximum amount of trucks for August, but the company had proven more resolute than we had expected, and now planned to run half that number, five instead of ten, which could conceivably be covered by scab labor. This was also contrived to turn the office workers, who relied on sales commissions for their pay, against our efforts, which the boss vocalized to them in no uncertain terms. We had decided early on that the dissimilarities of our working conditions necessitated the exclusion of office workers from our particular struggle, but we had pledged them solidarity should they attempt their own.

And as days wore on, it became increasingly clear that it would be possible for the company to proceed without us. This necessitated a serious analysis of our forces, and our capacities to conduct a long-term work stoppage. We had to consider tactically whether to whether to publicize our struggle as a tactical act, and whether seek solidarity from outside our shop. Thankfully none of us had any illusions about the “neutrality” of the press (whatever that even means), especially those of us who had witnessed the behavior of liberal journalists over the past year of struggle in the United States, and the few requests we received from friends for coverage were politely rebuffed. It was decided that the specific nature of our shop, being so small, so reliant on public opinion so as to furnish work that would in turn keep us employed, necessitated discretion. This was not a situation of total war; we wanted to go back to work, and we wanted the workplace to be standing. The involvement of the press was deemed a nuclear option.

The issue of picket lines and solidarity networks was broached. It was hard for most of us to conceive of an effective picket line at the current stage of our struggle and in our particular shop. This was due in no short order to the fact that many of our ranks were not prepared for an actual work stoppage, and needed the work. What’s more, the importing of bodies from the outside in the form of a solidarity network would have further alienated many of our coworkers who had begun to lose momentum, and would have supported the narrative that the core organizers constituted an outside force seeking to corrupt the company’s dynamic. Picket lines were taken off the table for the short-term (in no small part to preserve their viability in the long-term), and the numerous hardworking and dedicated radicals from outside the company who pledged support were heartily thanked and assured that for the time being, this was up to us.

At a subsequent meeting with the boss, our reiterated demands were almost completely rebuffed, except, importantly, for a promise to institute a health care policy, which was a major victory. The wage increases beyond the astounding concessions already made were deemed unaffordable. One of our own negotiators began to believe that to be the case and to sympathize with the company’s position. The deadlock of this meeting left us feeling demoralized, as scheduling problems inherent in our daily work schedules made it difficult for us to meet en masse, and the e-mail medium proved increasingly antithetical to the immediacy of the situation. August 1st was approaching and the company was not only planning on proceeding without us, but we had it on good authority (and through deductive reasoning) that the boss really hoped we’d all just “fuck off” as he put it so eloquently in his letter. He was ready to take a short term financial loss in the name of replacing us with a workforce that would accept the conditions he imposed without putting up a fight.

We had staked our claim on a purely rational understanding of our company’s functioning, as completely subservient to the demands of capital accumulation, and underestimated the importance of control to the wage relation. From this perspective it was more desirable for the company to lose its core of experienced workers, lose tens out thousands of dollars from missed jobs, and pay the untold thousands more in damages associated with training new workers in our places, than to concede to some minor monetary demands and confirm our power within the workplace. The reality of the struggle, which had gone on long before we even began to organize, presented itself in its naked form. We had already gained so much, in monetary terms, in terms of solidarity and the creation of a new power within our workplace, and in terms of affirming our humanity from a debased and demoralized position. We wanted to keep this momentum alive, and not squander it on a Waterloo which would pick off our ranks one by one and disempower subsequent actions and associations. From this perspective, we decided to take what we could get for the moment and keep the struggle simmering, rather than force it to boil over and extinguish the flame. A final communique summarizing this decision is provided in the appendix.

Moving Forward

At the present, our struggle continues, but we are different. Materially we are more comfortable. More importantly, we have gained the conviction that we are capable of taking the conditions of our lives into our own hands, without external forces educating us, organizing us, or training us how to organize ourselves. The power that we had long brought to bear on accomplishing tasks in our daily work was just as viable when wielded toward asserting our interests as a class. This is not to say that everyone in our shop now gets along harmoniously, even compared to before. Necessary antagonisms emerged in the course of struggle, which had been glossed over in more tranquil times, and this was unavoidable. Anyone who seeks to gloss over antagonisms and shame those who point to them is an enemy of the working class, which knows antagonism as its fundamental condition of life.

Due to our prudence, we emerge from this action in a position of power, and now, on a practical level, we are faced with moving our association forward through self-critique. This is particularly important in questions of organization, which we largely avoided at the onset, and though this provided us with the advantage of not being mired in bureaucracy and endless “movement building” for its own sake, it became obvious to us in times of crisis that a more effective structure for decision-making was necessary in order to ensure that the power dynamics which inevitably emerge in social situations are not ossified under the false auspice of “no leaders”. We face the challenge moving forward of establishing a loosely organized structure within which we can work effectively. Conveniently, one strategic wager in particular necessitates this imperative. In our final negotiations with the boss, we decided to accept an open-ended promise for incremental wage increases which he promised would “not be worse” than what was on the table previously. Though this of course raised some suspicions, it was accepted in the strategic interest of keeping the necessity for collective pressure urgent and active. So in a very immediate sense, the struggle is ongoing.

Recently, a new hire remarked that reading our correspondences and talking to his coworkers about this whole experience was a crash course introduction to the social dynamic of our company. It can only be replied that this entire experience was the crash course introduction of the social dynamic of our company to itself. And moving forward, there will be no more illusions.
Elsewhere

Our workplace is touted as a “boutique company” in which creatively inclined workers can enjoy scheduling flexibility and lax codes for personal comportment and dress. Most importantly to our ranks, this means the camaraderie of kindred minds engaged in the daily problem-solving and improvisation required in our physically and mentally strenuous occupation. In appearance, management makes minor concessions to petty individual freedoms in exchange for our acceptance of low wages, no benefits, and minimal job security. However, behind the “freedom” of scheduling flexibility one finds the unwillingness of the company to provide a reliable work schedule with a minimum pay, benefits of any kind, or a living wage, and behind the encouragement of “self-expression” one finds a brand identity based on the quirky individualities and shabby, poverty-driven bohemianism of its exploited workers. There is however one undeniable truth in our workplace, and it is the social character of our labor, which was the root of our struggle, comprising it in advance, and continuing to provide the only hope for realizing real freedom and true self-expression beyond their meager parody within the parameters of exploitation.

Despite our undeniable particularities, this basic model for exploitation and its accompanying ideology is common, especially among employers of the young urban precariat in advanced capitalist societies. It is especially successful where a strong “brand” affords the exploited employee a social status rooted in their production, offered as a poor substitute for dismal material compensation, along with the bittersweet opportunity to identify with the product of their alienated labor and the social nature of their production—inauthentically, through the mediation of this brand identity. (Management will wield this ruthlessly against organizers, as demonstrated in items #3 and #4 in the appendix below.) This strategy is ever strengthened by the general social tendency of increasing synchronicity of consumptive identities and personal identities, or “lifestyles”. This can be seen especially in the creative, “non-profit”, and lifestylist (health and fitness, “DIY”, consumer activist, spiritual, etc.). These are sectors of commerce which attract and mislead so many workers disgusted by the pure manifestations of a brutish and inhuman market which one finds in the sectors of capitalist accumulation unadorned with pleasant and comforting liberal-humanist trappings. However, this general tendency can be presently observed trickling into every aspect of commerce under the mantle of an “ethical” response to economic and environmental crisis. Its American exemplar may be Apple’s notoriously underpaid though patronizingly celebrated “geniuses”, though this ideology is even more effectively disseminated in the hallowed “small business” of our reactionary folklore, and certainly throughout the Guilty Industrial Complex which is the “non-profit” sector.

When contrasted with the material reality of the worker’s daily existence, however, the longwinded mission statements, half-assed acts of hipness, benevolence, and charity, and “alternative” marketing strategies of these enterprises are revealed to be so much ink and recycled paper. The true community of the workers is rooted in the relation of production which places them at odds with the owner of the means of production, and not in the fanciful ideology imposed from above, which obscures this relationship. Even before our most preliminary attempts to organize our shop, this obfuscation was threatened by its own sagging weight, and it was not difficult to decimate altogether. What was needful in our case was to isolate our particular situation and locate it within the universal, in a movement toward action. The farce of the company’s exceptionalism could only persist in those who could materially afford to ignore this obvious duplicity. Without illusions as to our place in the capitalist totality, and with a tactical eye to our particularity, we wielded our precarity as a weapon against itself. Once this can be accomplished, one may be amazed at how quickly the whole situation can be turned on its head.

—James Frey, August 2012

Appendix: Documents

The following documents have been edited slightly, indicated by brackets, due to concerns of privacy and the sensitivity of an ongoing workplace struggle. They have been included due to their theoretical value to our struggle, a component which must not be discounted at any level. Theoretical clarity should never be sacrificed to a fetishized conception of “consensus” or pure “tactics” which entails the evacuation of politics from struggle. The voice of reaction has also been allowed to sound its flatulent notes, as this is a cacophony for which we must all prepare our ears.

1. A Plea For Solidarity At [Cosmodemonic Moving Company]

Most of you know that, this week, three of your colleagues – [Vladamir], [Eragon], and myself – met with [Chairman Meow], boss of [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] – to discuss demands made on behalf of all movers, demands made under the understanding that each of us would not work for the first week of August were these demands not met. This action – the act of collective bargaining – is not wrong, not illegal, not immoral, but well within our rights as free workers in a democracy.

As of tonight, our demands are still unmet. This is where the real work begins. After some discussions with both [Chairman Meow] and [Field Manager], I am more than optimistic that [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] will meet our demands. Until then, however, management will be putting a lot of pressure on individual employees to soften their stance and break ranks so as to weaken the conditions they must meet. As their tactics begin to take shape, it is extremely important that we understand where our power lies.

I. [Chairman Meow] has complained that we are creating a divide between management and the field. Most of you will not have to be reminded that this divide already existed. Every time you were pressured to work extra days, every time you asked about raises and were dismissively rebuffed, every time you made a complaint about improper staffing, you experienced this divide. We all love and respect [Field Manager], many of us like [Chairman Meow]. They are trying to make this personal, but we must remember that this divide exists because of the material conditions in the company.

The way I see it, there are two divides: the first is the unbridgeable divide between those who sell their labor by the hour and those who purchase it; the second is the divide that exists between two parties unable to negotiate under fair and equal conditions. It is this second divide which our actions will close. I am confident that we will still be [employees at Cosmodemonic Moving Company] this fall.

II. [Chairman Meow] complains that we could have done this less adversarially. Three consecutive field managers and dozens of movers have called these conditions to his attention over the past four years, acting as individuals and not “adversarially”. And yet, during that same time we have seen wages consistently fall while the cost of living has risen. [Chairman Meow] is delusional if he believe we opened this discussion in conflict. The conflict has opened because of his persistent inability to provide his workers with what is fair. More importantly, any agreement reached between management and employees acting as individuals is inherently unfair because individuals are negotiating from a position of weakness. There is always a hundred reasons why one worker can’t get a raise. Together we can give him around thirty reasons why we should get a raise – one for every one of us. This is not a war, this is collective bargaining. It happens in workplaces across the country and it is the only way that a wage-worker has a chance to get a fair deal.

III. We have been told this is the wrong time. We hear this every season. It’s the wrong time in the winter. It’s the wrong time in the fall. Always for different reasons. We think this is the perfect time. [Chairman Meow] wants to make this a boutique company, he should start by paying boutique wages. He has said that he wants to build the company up first, but – apart from the absurdity that this company has been around for 10 years – let’s think about what that means. He means that we the workers should work harder, work longer, work more skillfully for an indefinite period of time before we see any returns in wages. Meanwhile, the company collects higher profits. Yet, it is clear to us that dignified and respectable labor can only be realized by dignity and respect from our employer.

IV. [Chairman Meow] will try to scare everyone into thinking that they will lose their job, that [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] will go out of business, that we can’t afford to raise wages. We know that [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] has paid higher wages. [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] currently pays the lowest wages in its history. It survived many years with better pay than we are even asking for. [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] can afford to give customers free moves at the slightest complaint. And [Chairman Meow] will never cancel jobs or shut down [Cosmodemonic Moving Company], its too profitable. He will, on the other hand, say and do anything to avoid giving us the raises. We all know that now is the right time for us to claim what is ours.

Furthermore, we know that [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] cannot survive as it is. It will continue to lose good employees, incentivize the tiniest efforts, pay out large numbers of claims until it is buried beneath is meaningless and empty brand. We believe that the only way to save [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] is to institute our changes. Respect for workers means a higher quality of work.

V. Management will appeal to us with personal pleas. “How can you do this to me?” But we are not acting as individuals and there is nothing personal about this. We are acting in concert to gain what is rightfully ours. To personalize this situation is to obscure the cold hard economic relationship, which we have no illusions about. Anyway, if we wanted to make this personal, we could say “How could you have done this to US, and for so long!”

I want to close by saying that I have never worked at a company with better co-workers than I do at [Cosmodemonic Moving Company]. Going out everyday to bust our asses together, especially this time of year, we learn to trust, encourage and support each other. We do that for our wages, for our tips, for our customers and for our company. Now, I hope that we can depend on that trust, encouragement and support for the sake of ourselves. I have incredible respect for all of you who have stuck your necks out for us and I hope that you feel the same about each other. Please try your best to make it to our meeting this Sunday – [315 Bowery], in Manhattan at 8 pm. I promise that it will be fun as hell and all of your concerns will be met.

2. Urgent: No Agreement Has Been Reached In The Ongoing Labor Dispute At [Cosmodemonic Moving Company]

Surely you’ve received an absurd and condescending e-mail that gives the impression that an agreement has been reached in the ongoing struggle for higher wages at [Cosmodemonic Moving Company]. This is not true. In addition, this message takes personal shots at some of our most dedicated workers and committed organizers, namely those who put themselves at risk by delivering our message to [Chairman Meow]. This message further insults us by refusing to engage with us in negotiations. Finally, it patronizingly suggests we should all just get drunk at some office party and forget this ever happened.

This could all be expected. Management will seek to divide the workforce by pitting us against each other and thus dividing our strength. If we accept this proclamation as the resolution to our ongoing negotiations, we are conceding the power that we have taken into our own hands, and will return things to business as usual at [Cosmodemonic Moving Company]. This will also reinforce a climate of discrimination against the workers who were brave enough to deliver our message. This retaliation has already begun in various forms, and we need to make it clear that this is unacceptable.

Notice that this letter mocks us for not taking our concerns to him or a manager (?) before organizing ourselves. This is simply not true and the author of the letter knows it. The past three field managers have brought up this issue many times, as have office workers, and other managers and movers, but always individually. They were always ignored. It was never “the right time.” Well, it must be the right time now! Because now that have formed a working persons association that holds the power at [Cosmodemonic Moving Company], we have been taken more seriously in one week than all of these well-meaning people put together for the past 4 years. And this is why they are fearfully conceding to us. And we all must admit, these concessions are tempting, but we all must decide when this has been resolved, not management.

If we accept these terms we will be accepting the lie that we are nothing but a “gang” seeking to “ruin the company”. We will agree to a plan that panders to “managers”, setting a higher wage cap, and one that’s lower than what we asked for. We will be agreeing with the demonization of our coworkers, which seeks to divide us. We will be taking health care off the table completely, at a time when an increasing number of us have children to provide for. We will return the power to the hands of management, so that it may resume ignoring our pleas, only at a slightly lower rate of exploitation.

Even if we end up settling for what we have been offered, we need to make that decision ourselves, and not have it made for us. We need to demonstrate the difference between a “gang” seeking to “ruin the company” and a disciplined and determined association of skilled workers who have taken the conditions of their lives into their own hands in an act of collective bargaining.

The concessions we have been offered demonstrate that our power is stronger than many of us imagined. There is no more doubting that we are in a position to get what we want. We just need to decide, as a collectivity, what that is. This will not be decided for us. We propose an emergency meeting tomorrow night to decide how we are going to proceed. If this motion is accepted we can find a venue.

Do not forget: We have the power.

3. Don’t Believe The Hype

Ok this time I’m a little drunk – but my aim was to start a company that would like a message from it’s owner when he’s a little drunk.

This is the Preface:

There are three kinds of people in this world when it comes to being forced to do things they don’t want to do:

1. There’s the kind that does it because they’re too afraid to do different from the status quo..
2. There’s the kind that does it because they think they’re clever enough to fuck over the status quo later.
3. There’s the kind that just says “Fuck off” – and for the most part – this one gets killed or just plain loses.

But that’s the one I’ve always loved – for better or worse. The “Fuck Off’s” of the world. And I’m going to be dead soon. So “Fuck Off”.

End of Preface.

[Cosmodemonic Moving Company] is in a live or die transition right now. Why? Because a few people are trying to unionize the company. Why? Because they like that kind of shit. They’ll use words like “solidarity” and “demand” and “proceed” and “fuck knows what else”. Why? Because they’re trying to convince you that I don’t give a shit. Because if you believe that I don’t give a shit then you’ll be more willing to fuck me when I’m not looking. But why? I’ve been trying to answer that all week. You tell me. You know who they are. Some of these people I considered friends – or at least supporters. I supported them anyway – but maybe they didn’t see it that way. Maybe they thought it was some kind of cheap pr – me showing up to their shit – fuck knows what they thought – but my heart was in the right place – I was there because I believed in them.

So here’s the scoop. They lied to you. If they told you that I refused to increase wages – they misled you. I’ve been racking my brain all week “why didn’t they just talk to me?” And now I know. They didn’t talk to me because if I gave them what they wanted – it wouldn’t have been conducive to forming a union – and that was their goal. The last time anyone asked to sit down and talk about wages with me was more than a year ago. But we were going bankrupt a year ago. We were. We really fucking were. (I emphasize that because I know that some of you don’t believe me – but what I am supposed to do if you don’t trust me? I mean – you don’t all know me – but ask someone who does – I wouldn’t fuck you over. They’ll tell you that. They’ll put their life on it.) And what sense does it make to give raises when you’re staring at bankruptcy. It didn’t make sense.

But that was more than a year ago. And yeah we’ve survived. We’re not coasting, but we’re still here. And I wish you could feel how amazing that is. So now you’ve got these guys telling you that [Chairman Meow] won’t give an inch unless you come together and force him. It’s bullshit. They never asked. The wage increase has been in the works for a while and they’d have known had they talked to me. It’s my fault though. I’ve got some shitty ass field managers – except for [Field Manager]. You all should fucking love [Field Manager]. If you don’t, you don’t belong here. [Field Manager] is one of the purest people I’ve ever met, and he even still loves the dumb asses who betrayed him for their own interests. [Field Manager] has blown me away. Good people. Good Good People.

Closure.

[Cosmodemonic Moving Company] (I) will not be under the tyranny of a union. I do this because I love it. Because I believe in it. As soon as the architecture of this company is dictated by a union – I will stop loving it.

And I will not do something I don’t love.

Save [Cosmodemonic Moving Company]. Tell Them to Fuck Off.

I do hope to see you at the party tomorrow.

I’ll be there.
Wasted and talking shit.
Come talk shit with me.

xxx
[Chairman Meow]

4. A note from the 1st Field Manager of [Cosmodemonic Moving Company]

1. The person you are referring to in this correspondence has a name. His name is [Chairman Meow], and he employs not only a number of movers, but also a cleaning lady at [Independent Art Space Unrelated To Our Work], an office staff, a sales staff, and those that help out at the gallery.

[Chairman Meow] lives in Williamsburg, BK with a roommate. He is the only person of solitary leadership at [Cosmodemonic Moving Company], with a handful of managers. He doesn’t have a CEO, a CFO, a Director, a Sales Manager, or anything like that. He, I promise you, is not a fat cat either. [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] has almost “gone under” many times, and will almost surely if there is a mover sit-out for the first week of August. When and if [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] fails, the coolest moving company I have ever worked for will fail as well.

2. Many art gatherings and programs and studios will close if [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] ends in the month of August. It shouldn’t be made a secret or trivialized that the owner of this company has decided that some of the profits of a moving company have gone towards these programs and this space in a supportive role. [Some Photography Thing], studio space for a handful of artists, [Bourgeois Reading Series That Costs Money To Attend] (put together from another former [Cosmodemonic Moving Company employee]) will all disappear. This money hasn’t lined the pockets of a greedy owner, it has gone to support the arts and artists of Brooklyn, NY. I have been involved in many of these projects and am thankful that they have been provided for by an owner who has decided to support the arts. The owner of the moving company I work for now is a jetsetter, who I never see, who has an opulent lifestyle. I started off as a 1st tier mover at [Cosmodemonic Moving Company], and was happy that I was supporting something bigger than a wealthy owner’s bank account.

3. Other people are going to lose their jobs. A willingness to put one’s own job on the line for the sake of other’s (pay) may be altruistic, but the entire office, the office cleaner, the sales force, [Chairman Meow] himself, are all going to lose their jobs. A union -as stated by [Chairman Meow]- is not going to happen. People who moved here to work as an artist are going to have to move back to their home towns. [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] is going to close its doors to those that would come see what we’ve been up to. There are no other moving companies like this. I know them all, well. Some people who work for [Cosmodemonic Moving Company], because [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] has taught them a mover’s skillset will go work for another moving company. That job will suck. You will be at the bottom of a totem pole, working for real conglomerates who truly don’t give a shit about you (or your art).

4. Healthcare it a moot point. Everyone in the US is about to have Healthcare. It’s passed. It’s a dumb thing to barter for something that’s coming down the pipeline. I’ve sat in many conversations with [Chairman Meow] as he’s stated multiple times how badly he’d like to afford to give it to guys that put their bodies on the line. This is no lie, he’s wanted to give it, and once tried to, and the money wasn’t there.

5. Camaraderie at [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] is unmatched. You next job will not have this caliber of dopeness. It won’t. Sucks that that’s going away.

6. I have sat with [Chairman Meow], the owner of this company as he has tried to get back to pre-recession wages. It’s something he’s lost sleep over. He wants to pay his movers more.

7. I just went to a party with a group of movers at the lot who aren’t on board. Many. They were upset. Some of them have been with [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] for more than 5 years. You’re about to end their jobs too, and for that, you are to be held responsible. It’s shameful that movers that don’t want to leave will lose their jobs over some Union Kool-aide. I don’t know many of the new blood at [Cosmodemonic Moving Company], but I know the old blood, and I’m sad their jobs are coming to a close because of some “Organize!” Mumbo-jumbo. [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] is actually easy to close down, because it’s been held together by slim profits, love, spit and hard work for many years. There is no collective bargaining, there is no greater good to be gained, just shutting down one of the coolest fucking companies I’ve ever worked for. That job was never about the wages I did or did not make (which I’ve heard are going up, and were to go up regardless of any Union, or Collective Bargaining talk); it was always about the people. I made my closest friendships in NYC through [Cosmodemonic Moving Company], shame that company may have to hang up its hat.

8. Nobody is forced to work at [Cosmodemonic Moving Company]. Everyone who is upset about their wages could have worked for any moving company in the city. Most of [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] is made up of articulate men, who have citizenship. That’s all it takes to be a foreman at Shlepper’s, OZ, FlatRate, etc. You could have not tried to end a company, and instead worked for a shittier one.

[Unreadable Bourgeois Poet]
5. [Yesterday’s] Meeting

A good sized group met yesterday and decided to accept [Chairman Meow]‘s offer as outlined below. This does NOT mean we are done working in concert to improve the working conditions at [Cosmodemonic Moving Company]. On the contrary, this represents our first victory. This also means that everyone should plan to work the first week of August, which we know was a big concern for some of you. It was incredibly selfless and admirable for everyone to risk not working when you were depending on the money from that week, which most of us were. Now that risk is off the table.

With a few exceptions unworthy of mention, everybody really stepped up in these past few weeks and provided a tangible example of how our workplace could function with the power in the worker’s hands. Together we risked our job security and sacrificed our spare time. We endured taunts, false accusations, and the shameful attempt to make us ashamed. But we stuck together and stayed on message. This was never personal, and those who tried to make it personal demonstrated a misunderstanding of the situation. This was about utility bills, Metro Cards, 10% rent hikes, and skyrocketing food prices. We never had any illusions about that, and its how we were able to hang together even when shit got weird.

Moving forward, it was the overwhelming consensus yesterday that we should have some kind of meeting body (on a monthly basis seems most reasonable) capable of addressing grievances, respond to potential retaliation (which, to be clear, we do NOT expect, but you never know…), managing the ongoing negotiations for raises and pay increases, and generally to give form to the power we have assumed here at [Cosmodemonic Moving Company]. To be clear, everyone has the utmost respect for [Field Manager] and his position. However, these past few weeks have demonstrated that the system currently in place for addressing discontent in the field is broken. [Field Manager] is overworked and it seems that his concerns can go unheeded when voiced singularly. Now we have a multiplicity capable of acting as one, but with more power. We have a lot to talk about in this department. Anyone interested should contact [us]. We’re not going to automatically add people to anymore e-mail chains, so if this isn’t your thing. thanks for being patient and you’re finally off the hook.

In closing, I want to reiterate on behalf of everyone close to this what an overwhelmingly positive experience this has been. We have shown that the trust, solidarity, and friendship which we find on the job every day can just as easily be drawn upon in defense of our interests as a class. This struggle is of course bigger than [Cosmodemonic Moving Company], but here at [Cosmodemonic Moving Company] we have found a concrete victory which gives us a taste of the victories which lay ahead if we stick together and refuse to be afraid or ashamed to take what is ours.

The following piece by JC and James Frey (an independent marxist and labor organizer in NYC, and author of “A Moving Story” ) takes a look at the demand for “transparency”, and presents a critique from the perspective of communist labor organizing.

The demand for transparency will inevitably arise in the course of workplace struggle, especially when liberal organizations, trade unions, and non-profits are involved. “Open the books!” some will demand, “and let us see where the money is coming from, where its going, and just what can be afforded!” The imperative to open the books can be inspired by noble intentions, notably, the desire for radical democracy in the workplace, and it comes as a response to the mystery created by management about the source of the company’s wealth. However, demanding to see our bosses’ budgets suggests that workers are an expense for whom money is to be found, when in fact, we are the most necessary component of production, and the very source of whatever is to be found in the “budget”.

So what is the origin of the demand for an open budget? Demanding transparency seems to promise irrefutable proof of inequality: if we “follow the money”, we can show that the bosses get more of it than the workers, and armed with this knowledge, we as workers can show that so much money is “wasted” in management salaries. This argument is especially prominent when cuts to wages come under the guise of “cost cutting” or “austerity.” “It is management’s wages costing so much, not ours! Cut from the top!” are the cries for the open budget. But for workers demanding equality of this kind, the source of the company’s wealth remains, as management would have it, a mystery. It appears that this wealth comes from activity external to the work itself, such as purchases made and profits gained on the market, from interest accrued in the banks, or from the benevolence of generous endowments. The source of the worker’s misery is, therefore, the subsequent mismanagement of these funds at the hands of greedy bosses. In this view, the poverty of the worker can be easily rectified—move the money around! But workers in struggle against their conditions find something different. The inequality between boss and worker is not incidental, caused only by incompetence or greed; it is fundamental to work in the society we live in. Inequality is inherent in the social relationships between the class of bosses, landlords, and politicians and the class of workers, tenants, and everyday people.

At best demanding transparency seeks to work within the paradigm established by the bosses, and accordingly it reeks of reformism, whether naive or pernicious. At worst, the demand for transparency is the demand for a managerial role for the working class, or, to use a vogue term, its “self-management”. This means that the self-destructive logic of capital is internalized within the working class. Armed with open books, the militant who should be posed adversarily against the bosses and administrators, and their governing logic, becomes instead the self-regulating agent of austerity, pointing to waste and redundancy, and demanding a larger share of money for the workers like a greedy industrialist, by pointing to its misuse elsewhere. The boss’s salary is too high! Too much is spent on some irrelevant item! These are of course true: bosses and high-level administrators are overpaid, money is wasted, and the working class eats shit on a good day. But its equally true that when workers demand higher wages, benefits, lower tuition, etc., it is not our problem where it comes from. The militant worker makes demands, not suggestions contingent on the available facts. Further, the militant worker should not be afraid of making demands that cannot be allowed for in the present budget in its current state; such a demand is instead the essence of radicalism. Of course the current arrangement of capital cannot afford us better wages, benefits, and conditions. That is why we fight! And on a very basic level, don’t we as workers do enough free labor without having to figure out how we’re going to get our own demands?

Once we accede to opening the books, we have entered enemy terrain. We begin to speak the language of the capitalist, to think his misanthropic thoughts, to stroll through his monochrome dreams. And in this foreign terrain we will always be outgunned. It can be demonstrated through the magic of spread sheets that our demands are simply unaffordable. There will be information that cannot be revealed to us, or is beyond our comprehension, which demonstrates this irrefutably. The money just isn’t there! And of course, in the current composition of capital, it’s probably not. But that’s not our problem. The inability of our bosses to meet our demands is why we’re fighting, and we would be fools to shrink away from this fact as if it were fixed for all of time. However, some will be convinced. We can be made to empathize with the ruling class, to feel the heavy burden of spreading around dwindling funds in the age of austerity. We can adopt the forward thinking attitude that thinks in upcoming fiscal periods and not the childish immediacy of the present. We can be made to see the world as it really is, for grownups who have to make tough decisions. The mystification of the budget has returned and chiseled off our fangs.

Most fundamentally, the demand for transparency changes the entire tenor of the struggle. In struggle we demand what is ours: what we have made, and what has been taken from us. Through the demand for transparency, the “budget” once more assumes the fetish character it is given by the bosses to obscure that the source of value lies in the workers. Our demands are something that must be fit alongside the suicidal infrastructures of advanced capital, which of course, is impossible. No longer are we demanding what we have created ourselves. No longer do we pose the promise of a future society against the rotting vestiges of the old. No longer do we speak in a language that bureaucracies cannot understand, and make demands they could not possibly meet without altering themselves fundamentally. Through transparency we become functionaries of a system we have posed ourselves again. And like the countless others before us who attempt to “change the system from within”, we will be swallowed alive, and with us, the radical potential of our struggle.

When workers are engaged in struggle, when we organize, defy the bosses, resist discipline, and go on strike, we reveal the truth of the budget; when workers win higher wages, or stop production, we reveal the truth about the budget. This truth is that the contents of the budget don’t exist without us. Workers win not because we raised awareness from the outside, or because we made the bosses feel bad or scared. We win because our struggle reveals materially what the bosses knew the whole time but tried to keep a secret: they have nothing without us. We need not a transparent budget to elucidate the fundamental condition of our lives as workers who produce value, which is in turn collected by our non-productive bosses. This is the origin of the workplace struggle, already in progress by the time we get around the demanding “transparency” of a relationship already laid bare by our self-activity. And in struggle, the classes confront each other as enemies. The workers meet in secret, circulate documents, plan actions based on the element of surprise, and so forth. The ruling class does the same. Cooperation has no place in this schema.

Faced with the inevitable demand for transparency, we should not be afraid to reply: keep the books closed. It is through our struggle as workers that material reality is made transparent, not through the disclosure of numbers on a page.

************************

The following post represents one part of a larger project on communist theory and revolutionary organization that was begun this past summer. It is an ongoing working project that was not only intended to provide a frame of reference for our own grouping. More broadly, it is meant to be a contribution to ongoing discussions and debate on communist theory and practice, which, in our historical moment, cannot and will not be the product of any single grouping.

The overall project is divided into three main parts 1) Partial synthesis of Marx 2) Critique of the history of revolutionary organization 3) Provisional thoughts on the need for organization today. We are currently in the process of writing a draft of part two, but we wanted to begin to post part one now, which will be serialized over number of months.

The draft on Marx is not intended as a popular introductory pamphlet. Instead, it is meant for an audience with some basic familiarity with Marx. In our own practice we use it as a supplement to study groups and ongoing discussions on Marx, as well as wider revolutionary theory.

It is important to say something about the concept of communism that underlines this series. We understand communism in the sense that Marx wrote in “The German Ideology”:

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.

This passage contains a whole world of thought and historical experience that must be unraveled and put back together again. However, what is important about Marx’s work, including, crucially, Capital, is that it places living human activity at the center of the concept of communism. Communism is the necessary and ongoing struggle of humanity to achieve freedom—to liberate itself from its own alienated existence.

There are a great number of thinkers and political trends that have taken up this mantle and have influenced our own developing thinking. However, we claim no specific adherence to them. While they may have made important contributions, we are not bound by their limitations that arose from their particular historical experiences. Instead, we need a new synthesis that arises out of the social realities of today.

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The Communist Theory of Marx

The history of communist organization cannot be separated from the history of marxism as a critique of its own history. Since the crisis of the revolutionary left is, in part, a crisis of revolutionary theory we must, to some extent, begin again by returning to Marx. The history of revolutionary theory itself is marked by such returns in which revolutionaries attempted to understand their society in the light of past ideas and struggles. This has been a critical and necessary part of communist practice historically.

Since today we again face an impasse defined by a lack of categorical knowledge and analysis we must struggle again to find ground upon which to stand. Only with clarity can we arrive at a more solid foundation for revolutionary work.

The understanding of revolutionary organization must be rooted in a categorical approach and it is for this reason that we attempt to synthesize some of the fundamental premises of Marx’s thought. The aim here is somewhat limited. We have neither the space nor the time at the moment to cover the sum of Marx’s thought. This involves his critique of capitalist society as a whole, including the critical volumes two and three of Capital. Instead, we hope to concentrate on the bare outline of his view of humanity and its relations in capitalist society.

What follows is a somewhat abstract presentation. It is meant to function as a foundation for the further development of theory, investigation, strategy and tactics. The achievement of categorical knowledge and methodology is absolutely necessary to avoid the empirical, pragmatic and economistic perspectives that haunt the American Left – symptoms of its own decay. What follows is meant to provide the basis for the concrete investigation of the actual, real, and moving society. Without clear categories and methodology, strategy and tactics become increasingly delinked from anything concrete, and thereby reified in their abstraction.

Labor and Self-Activity

Since human beings are at the center of Marx’s work we must begin there. From one standpoint Marx views humanity in its essence, or, to put it another way, what is common to humanity across time and place. From another standpoint Marx considers human beings in their actual existence in particular historical moments.

Marx distinguishes human essence in terms of labor. “Labour,” he writes in Capital, “is a condition of human existence which is independent of all forms of society; it is an eternal natural necessity which mediates the metabolism between man and nature, and therefore human life itself” (133). Labor is key to his understanding of human beings. However, what Marx means by labor is not self-evident given the conditions of labor in capitalist society. Therefore Marx’s concept needs some interpretation.

What is Labor?

The idea that labor “mediates the metabolism between man and nature, and therefore human life itself” is put forward by Marx in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. In the essay, “Estranged Labor,” Marx writes that humanity is “part of nature” and can only be understood as in “continuous intercourse” with it (76). At the same time, Marx argues, human beings are separated from the physical world, or nature. As he puts it, humanity is not “immediately identical with its life-activity” in the physical world, but, instead “has conscious life activity” within this world (76). Marx uses the concept of metabolism to understand human essence as the dialectical relationship between its bodily continuum with, and consciousness of the physical world. In using the concept of metabolism, Marx suggests the dynamism involved in the maintenance or reproduction of life. For Marx in its essence human life is characterized by an energetic process of creation. It is a synthesis of substance and therefore the alchemic transformation of the physical world into new substance.

The process of creation, transformation and synthesis Marx calls labor. How labor mediates the metabolism between human beings and the physical world gives further insight into his concept. In “Estranged Labor,” Marx writes:

For in the first place labor, life-activity, productive life itself, appears to man merely as a means to satisfying a need — the need to maintain the physical existence. Yet the productive life is the life of the species. It is life-engendering life. The whole character of a species — its species character — is contained in the character of its life activity; and free conscious activity is man’s species character. Life itself appears only as a means to life. (76)

Human existence is dependent upon the satisfaction of needs on a daily basis. In class society human needs are reduced to bare survival which labor must satisfy. However, Marx argues, in essence labor is more than it “appears” and, from the standpoint of essence, it instead must be seen as “free conscious activity.”

For Marx labor must be more broadly defined as “activity.” The activity of producing the means to satisfy needs is labor, but labor is not only what people do at a job. It is the entire range of needs and “life activity”–everything that makes up a human being–and the satisfaction of needs through activity is an ongoing interaction between labor and the physical world. Activity is a process of satisfying needs–both physical and as objects of the imagination and desire. Marx therefore has something more in mind than mere “labor” as it exists in capitalist society.

Key to Marx’s understanding of labor is that it is “free conscious activity.” By this idea he does not mean that the physical world is simply an object that labor acts upon. Implicit in Marx’s understanding is that humanity is dialectically constituted by material reality and its own subjectivity that arises from and alters this reality. So the physical world is the means of life for labor in that labor only manifests itself by acting upon that world. As he puts it in “Estranged Labor,” the world “appears as his work and his reality” (76). Marx stresses, therefore, the self-reflexive character of labor, or its self-activity. Later we will discuss how this self-activity appears historically as specific forms of society.

For now it is important to focus on the completely new ground that Marx discovers with his concept of labor. He writes, “The object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species-life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he sees himself in a world that he has created” (“Estranged Labor”, 77). If the physical world is the means by which labor is realized and it is within this world that humanity contemplates and acts, then the physical world is an object for human labor through which it materializes, or “objectifies” itself in the world. In other words, the substance or content of human needs is produced and reproduced as particular forms of those needs.

It is not correct to say that for Marx the world is simply subject to change. Instead the world is an extension of human activity and, in a sense, becomes its “body.” The physical world, as an object, becomes an internalized part of human activity whose content as needs becomes externalized as forms of existence. As self-activity, labor is human activity acting upon itself “in a world that he has created.” In their metabolic relationship with nature human beings objectify themselves, creating a second world of social relations. Through this constant process humanity creates and transforms itself as “life engendering life.”

For Marx, then, humanity is an object for itself and, critically, an end in itself. Since self-activity is self-determined, in its essence human labor is universal. It is universal in two interrelated ways. First, the whole of the physical world can be an object for labor and internalized as part of human activity. Second, humanity produces beyond the needs of a bare physical subsistence and, with the ability to control the form of its activity, reproduces itself in an unlimited number of forms. Thus, taken as a totality, this universal production, or self-activity, gives rise to potentially infinite forms of labor. Human beings are not finite creatures, realizing only a limited number of needs in a limited number of forms. Humanity cannot be considered a given substance in a given determination. In the end, its content can only be understood as the quality of self-creation, rather than a finite quantity of unchanging attributes. As Marx says in “Estranged Labor,” humanity “treats himself as the actual, living species; because he treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being.”

For Marx freedom is the uninterrupted process of objectification in which there are no obstacles between conscious intention and its results. Human creation is free when its content – its needs – realizes itself in the forms of its own choosing as an end in itself. In Marx’s view, to put it more abstractly, freedom is the process of self-activity in immediate unity with itself. Self-activity in its ideal state, unrestrained by any forms that do not correspond to its essence, is the state of freedom. The criteria of freedom for humanity must be, Marx concludes in “Estranged Labor,” that “Man makes his life activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness. He has conscious life activity…his own life is an object for him. Only because of that is his activity free activity” (76). Only then does essence correspond to existence.

A Radical Break

Marx’s radical philosophical break is summarized in the “Theses on Feuerbach.” There he identified materialism and idealism as two broad trends in Western philosophy. The problem with materialist traditions, Marx argues, “is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively.” In particular Marx had in mind here the materialist thinkers of the European Enlightenment. These philosophers saw the world as external, something only to be observed and analyzed. Nevertheless, they did open the way for the notion that society was a development of history and therefore subject to change. They thought human society was determined by natural laws, rather than divine order, and that in understanding these laws society could be altered.

The other broad tradition Marx identified was idealism, in the tradition of Kant, which centered on the way the mind shapes the world, rather than the other way around. The most important figure Marx had in mind here was Hegel. Hegel focused on a self-transcending subject in which thought existed and determined itself over and against the objective world. By doing so, he reaffirmed a duality in the history of idealism between human beings and nature, subject and object. While Hegel reaffirmed the concept of the self-determining subject, Marx argued that this “active side was developed abstractly,” independent of its objective conditions, and therefore could “not know real, sensuous activity as such” (Theses).

For Marx the problem of both existing materialism and idealism was that they were speculative in nature. Whether objective reality determines subjectivity as in materialism or, as in idealism, subjectivity determines reality, Marx argued that both approaches ended up in the same place: a one-sided view of human beings. Countering these approaches, Marx put forward the idea that object and subject are not separated, but rather form a unity. His approach is summarized in an extended critique of Feuerbach in the German Ideology:

Certainly Feuerbach has a great advantage over the “pure” materialists in that he realises how man too is an “object of the senses.” But apart from the fact that he only conceives him as an “object of the senses, not as sensuous activity,” because he still remains in the realm of theory and conceives of men not in their given social connection, not under their existing conditions of life, which have made them what they are, he never arrives at the really existing active men, but stops at the abstraction “man,”….he never manages to conceive the sensuous world as the total living sensuous activity of the individuals composing it.

Humanity, according to Marx, is both “object of the senses” and “sensuous activity.” Here we again encounter the dialectic of self-activity in which human beings are both the object and subject. Consequently, as Marx puts it elsewhere, “sensuous objects” are not “really distinct from the thought objects.” Instead it is necessary to “conceive human activity itself as objective activity” (“Theses”). Human beings create the objective world and, in turn, are determined by that world. Where Marx posited a unity of conscious intention and material reality, both materialism and idealism separated the two. As a result, humanity had to ultimately accommodate itself to a predetermined and given world external to itself.

The alternative proposed by Marx has important methodological implications. Since existing philosophy conceived of the world as external to humanity, as something which confronted it as a pre-existing reality, humanity could only exist as an idea unconnected to the world. By establishing an inner relationship between the idea of humanity and “really existing active” human beings, Marx emphasizes a dialectic of essence and existence, the abstract and concrete, content and form. In the “Theses,” Marx argues, “human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual.” He contrasts this idea to that of all previous philosophy, in which “Essence, therefore, can be comprehended only as “genus”, as an internal, dumb generality which naturally unites the many individuals.” Human beings create themselves and their world, they are not given.

As we saw in “Estranged Labor” the character of the product of labor – the objects human beings produce – expresses the essence of labor’s relation to itself – human beings relating to themselves. The product of labor is the materialized form of this essence. What activity produces is an expression of the form of that activity, and what activity produces also makes of itself. The character of the product of labor corresponds to the form of the labor that produced it. As we will see, in capitalist society the relation of the capitalist to the worker and the separation of labor from the means of labor are the form of the relation of labor to itself.

For now what is important is Marx’s methodological point about the subject-object relation. The objectivity of living labor means that activity creates its forms of existence. Activity then mediates itself in the world. From this standpoint it not possible to conceive of form external to the subject. Essence immediately comes into being as existence and therefore the content of activity is only actual in its form. Labor thus relates to itself in an immanent way. Its forms are inherent and intrinsic to its content. In contrast, the dualistic approach leads one to consider the two sides in simple opposition, with only an external relation to each other.

Marx subsumed the materialist and idealist critique into a new synthesis. In this synthesis subject and object are no longer posed against one another, but form an inner relation in which each is constitutive of the other. By doing so, Marx preserved the idealist notion of an infinitely and universally self-determining subject, as well as the materialist notion that subjectivity is objectively determined, subsuming both into a new unity. For Marx, thought and reality are no longer separated, but exist as a unity of activity and thought, which Marx calls “‘practical-critical’, activity” (Theses).

Marx therefore achieves a decisive epistemological break with all previous philosophy. Knowledge, he contends, does not emerge independently from reality, either as observation of external objects or from the mind alone. Rather, as he writes in the “Theses,” knowledge “is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice.” As the concept “practical-critical activity” affirms, thinking cannot be “isolated” from sensuous activity, or practice. The categories of thought arise from the objective movement of activity. Theory can be only be realized “in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.”

Marx disputed the idea that there was a natural separation or duality between thought and the world. Such a division only appeared to arise from nature itself as all previous philosophy had stipulated. Instead, he argued, this separation arose as a historical condition, as a consequence of class society. How Marx came to this conclusion we turn to next.

Next up: History and the Social Forms of Existence