The
Real Movement
The following article was prompted by an email discussion with a
comrade from Britain questioning the use of the term, "The real
movement."
I. The quote from Marx and Engels The German Ideology where
the term first appeared.
II. The statement introducing the Red & Black
Notes web page.
III. A comment by Red & Black Notes on the use
of the term.
I Marx, Engels & the "Real Movement"
"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."
------ The German Ideology, 1845
II Red & Black Notes web page introduction
Communism is not a party programme or a one party state.
Communism is simply the movement to overthrow the conditions of life
imposed by the rule of capital. This statement is as true today as
when in 1848 Marx wrote that workers had nothing to lose but their
chains.
Yet 2001 is not 1848. The spectre of communism still haunts
capitalism, but capitalism has evolved. This evolution has not
ameliorated the need for revolution only the way the workers respond
to it. The old' workers movement was composed of parties,
unions and mass organizations. By and large those organizations have
disappeared or been swallowed by mass' society. Those who seek
to rebuild the left, to see a new 1917, or 1936, are chasing
conditions which have long been superseded by the process of
capitalist development. As against looking to such formal indicators
as union membership, party votes or newspaper sales as indices of
class struggle, rather look to strike figures, wildcats, sabotage and
above all resistance to capitalism in all its forms.
III The Real movement
The expression "real movement" is used by a number of groups and
individuals, among them Antagonism, Gilles Dauvé, and
Aufheben. Red & Black Notes' use of the term is
quoted above. While the phrase is found in Marx, is it used in the
same way today, and if not how does it differ?
Marx and Engels' own use of the term "real movement" appears
in The German Ideology. The book is part of a
remarkable intellectual journey from The Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts, through The Holy
Family and The German Ideology to The
Communist Manifesto. In their development from what might
awkwardly be called a left-Hegelian humanism' to communism,
Marx and Engels were concerned to differentiate their doctrine from
other socialist and communist theories. In particular they sought to
establish that socialism was not simply a product of intellectual
theories, but a logical deduction from premises apparent in
capitalist society. While "utopian" socialists such as Fourier,
Saint-Simon and Owen, whatever their merits, saw socialism as a "good
idea", Marx and Engels tried to prove that their politics and
conclusions were rooted in the actual conditions of capitalism. As
The Communist Manifesto noted: Capitalism produced its
own gravedigger in the proletariat.
As against those like Louis Blanqui, who believed that a small
conspiratorial group could carry out the revolution, or Ferdinand
Lassalle who saw role for a progressive state, Marx argued, in the
statement of aims of the International Workingmens' Association "the
emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working
class themselves."
It seems clear that for Marx and Engels, the term real
movement' was both a recognition of the "seeds" of socialism present
in capitalism that made its overthrow both a possibility and a
necessity, and the movement of the class toward that
self-actualization.
Have those ideas become less relevant today? In order to answer
this question it is necessary to examine the ideas of Lenin. Lenin,
it will be remembered, is the Russian social democrat who is, perhaps
more than any other person, responsible for the course of twentieth
century history. Among Lenin's contributions to revolutionary theory
was that of the vanguard party, which was based on his concept of
class consciousness.
Lenin believed that, the working class could not attain a
"revolutionary consciousness" by itself. Rather, it would only be
able to reach a "trade union consciousness." Revolutionary theory,
without which there could not be a revolutionary movement, was the
prerogative of intellectuals who would bring this to the working
class. In all fairness to Lenin, this was hardly an original thought;
it was the hallmark of the Marxism of German social democratic leader
Karl Kautsky, who had in turn discovered it from Ferdinand
Lassalle.
To a critical eye, Lenin's comments are in direct contradiction to
Marx's third thesis on Feuerbach. There Marx wrote "that the educator
needs to be educated and [that]. .. . the coincidence of the
changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and
rationally understood only as Revolutionary practice."
In other words, those who would "teach" the working class to be
revolutionary merely divided society into two parts, the teacher and
the student, and ignored that fact "the educator must himself be
educated." As Marx argued it was through revolutionary praxis that
the working class would acquire the ability to transform society and
itself.
Of course, Marx and Engels died before Lenin wrote his celebrated
text, and so their words cannot literally be taken as an indictment
of his; nevertheless, Lenin's movement is much different than the one
envisaged by his professed teachers. Latter-day Leninists also suffer
from the tendency to reduce the class struggle to the manifestos and
statements issued by their own little groups. A tendency amplified
over the course of the twentieth century as Leninist groups have
become more and more isolated from the class they aim to lead.
In direct contrast to this idea, Rosa Luxemburg wrote in her
celebrated brochure Organization Questions of the Russian
Social- Democracy that "historically, the errors committed by
a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the
infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee."
Yet, all of this begs the question of what exactly is the real
movement? In the quote at the head of this article, Marx and Engels
argue that the real movement is one which leads toward communism.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many socialists saw that
movement in the official organizations of the class, the trade unions
and the political parties. Yet even as these organizations grew, they
were never able to encompass a majority of the class; moreover as
they gained strength they displayed a marked conservatism and
tendency to become assimilated into capitalist structures. This
tendency became complete in the twentieth century. Henceforth it
became impossible to speak of mass working class organizations. This
is why many look toward such occurrences as mass strikes and wildcats
which are often against the unions as the real movement of the
class.
It would be worse than sectarian though, to draw a distinction
between "real" struggle and "unreal" struggles, since there is no
absolute barrier between them. One can become the other. And as Marx
noted in The German Ideology, struggle in a necessary
part of the transformation of the working class.
However, it is important to try to address the way in which
struggle in often viewed, especially by the left. In the Red
& Black Notes statement there is a distinction made
between the official' indices of the level of working class
resistance, such as union membership or votes to social democracy,
and actual resistance to capital. In my opinion, the "real movement"
against capital can be seen in measures such as strike days, work
stoppages, wildcats and so on. Actual resistance to the rule of
capital, both official and unofficial.
It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss in detail the
hidden transcript,' but I would say the following: Resistance
to capital can be seen in various ways: Absenteeism (the so- called
refusal of work); petty theft; sabotage; non- collection of fares on
buses or reduction of prices in shops; For the organized leftist
these actions do not exist. Yet, in some ways they constitute a
guerilla struggle against capital in the same way that a strike can
represent a full frontal attack.
And while most everyone would prefer large visible uprisings
against capital, it must be recognized that this is not always the
case. Almost every workplace, contains, even embryonically what might
be called cultures of solidarity; identification with other workers
simply because of the conditions of the workplace. True, capital
moves to erode and break up these well springs of solidarity, but as
they do so, the working class finds new ways to get around it. On
this note, the article in the current issue of Collective
Action Notes, "Fragile
Prosperity, Fragile Peace" is highly recommended.
(CAN #16-17, 2000).
The role of this magazine is not to judge which actions of the
working class constitute the movement toward communism, as would
numerous vanguardist groups. We end by concluding that the resistance
to capital must be the prerogative of those who struggle against
it.
Dave Elswith
January 2002
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