Posted by John, December 21st, 2010 - under Party, Socialist organisation, Socialists.



The power of the capitalist class and their loyal representatives in parliament is backed up by nothing less than massive stockpiles of military hardware, an extensive and well-resourced state apparatus and the title deeds for almost every factory, office block and stretch of land within their national boundaries.

Yet despite this, our rulers do not rely solely on this economic and political dominance to ensure that the billions of workers around the world turn up to work every day and keep the system ticking over. They also rely heavily on the ideology that legitimises the status quo and their privileged position within it.

This ideology is imparted to us through many and varied means. Children are rewarded for obedience, taught to respect authority and to know their place. When they get older, school teachers enlighten them about the great and important politicians and industrialists who are supposedly responsible for all the advances of modern society, and about the futility, or worse, of efforts by individuals or political movements to seriously challenge the status quo.

Later, the inequalities of the workplace are justified as natural and a product of human nature: there will always be those at the top and those at the bottom, with individual talent the main determinant of where people end up.

Then there is the legal system, which devotes untold hours to prosecuting people over unpaid parking fines, petty theft and disorderly conduct, yet struggles to even admonish those who administer unsafe workplaces, lock up refugees or wage wars in which millions suffer and die.

And the mass media – which convey as much through the assumptions and pro-capitalist prejudices they are imbued with as they do through the purported facts they report – do their best to distract people from or legitimise the profit-driven priorities of those in charge.

All this means that the ideas that justify the status quo – that the rich are entitled to their privilege, inequality is a product of human nature and those who are particularly disadvantaged are responsible for their lot – are more or less taken for granted amongst the majority of people in society. Or as Marx put it, “the ruling ideas in any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class”.

Why then do Marxists insist that working class revolution is possible? How can those who have been socialised to accept capitalism also overthrow it?

They can because the ideology that backs up the economic dominance of the capitalist class, the legal establishment and the state apparatus is not the only factor impacting on working class consciousness. Many aspects of working class life and experience counteract and contradict the received wisdom of the capitalist system.

The high degree of cooperation between workers that is necessary for any workplace to function effectively undermines the idea that we are all individuals ready to take advantage of each other at the first opportunity, and helps to break down barriers between workers.

The shared pressures of trying to exist on a wage, while bosses and managers swan about on yachts and reward themselves with bonuses, creates a sense of class identification and resentment towards the rich as well as their loyal allies in parliament.

And the indignities and pressures in the workplace to work more for less pay give workers a common cause around which they can rally and organise.

This means that as much as there is a pressure for workers to accept the status quo, there is a countervailing pressure on them to challenge those with power, and to do so in a collective way. The result of this contradiction is that most workers have mixed ideas, some which support capitalism and others which reflect their oppressed position within it. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, writing from his prison cell in fascist Italy, described this phenomenon in considerable detail.

This variance of ideas within the working class is what underpins the argument for a revolutionary party. In order for workers to unite and overthrow capitalism collectively, or even to win higher wages or better conditions at work, there needs to be a high degree of class consciousness. Workers need to be aware of their power, prepared to act to exert it and steeled against those determined to undermine them.

The revolutionary party is a tool by which class consciousness can be strengthened, reactionary ideas combated and workers organised to take action. The party aims to involve and organise workers who are at the most class-conscious end of the spectrum in order to influence other workers in a left-wing, class-conscious direction.

By pooling the experiences and ideas of the more radical workers, the arguments they make about the next step in the class struggle can be clearer and more compelling, and their efforts to win these arguments with other workers better coordinated.

This is why newspapers or other types of publications have formed the core of most revolutionary organisations. They not only create a link between socialists in different locations or workplaces, but also put forward a coherent argument to other workers about what might be needed to challenge capitalism and advance the workers’ movement at any particular point in time.

Importantly, these arguments come from a revolutionary point of view. Trade union leaders or social democrats can see the need to raise class consciousness at certain times, perhaps in order to win an election or to strengthen their bargaining position with the employers, but they are only prepared to take matters so far.

Revolutionaries by contrast want to follow through to the logical conclusion of working class struggle – the overthrow of the system and its replacement by workers’ democratic control over industry and society.

For a revolution to be successful, it must involve large numbers of workers, even those who have not entirely broken with pro-capitalist ideas. Revolutionaries aim to lead these workers, not just those who are already socialists. The revolutionary party is therefore not intended to separate the more class-conscious workers from others, but is instead aimed at influencing wider layers of workers away from reactionary ideas.

So whether it’s the need for strike action, the need to show solidarity with refugees or the need to fight for equal pay for women, the arguments socialists make are informed by a hostility to every last idea and institution that supports capitalism, and a desire to convince more workers of this position. Being organised, rather than atomised as disparate individuals, makes this endeavour infinitely more effective.

Those on the other side of the class divide are acutely aware of the need for organisation. From outfits like the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation right down to individual industry organisations, the bosses and their representatives in governments around the world leave nothing to chance. They attempt to mobilise the economic weight they can to assert themselves – sometimes against each other, but also in order to better wage their side of the class struggle.

They campaign against increases to the minimum wage, organise to undermine unions and strike action and lobby governments for more anti-worker employment laws. Given that our side does not have the media empires, the state schooling system or billions of dollars at our disposal, it is even more important that we get organised. The power that comes from workers’ numerical superiority vis-à-vis the ruling class, and the fact that they do all the work to keep capitalism ticking over, is meaningless without coordination and organisation in action.

Nor is it enough to be part of struggles around discrete issues without also building up an organisation for the future. Individual struggles, though important, are by their nature temporary. At some point, either demands are met or struggles are defeated. If the experience is left at that, it has only very limited value in the long run.

If instead more people through the process are won to the need to challenge all forms of injustice and oppression, the need to organise in the workplaces to change society and the need for solidarity between oppressed groups against the rich and powerful – i.e. to revolutionary politics – then it has a lasting benefit to both future struggles and to the long-term goal of overthrowing the system in its entirety.

The argument for a revolutionary party is a central one to the revolutionary Marxist movement, as central as the theory of imperialism or Marx’s critique of bourgeois economic thought. The party is a crucial weapon in the class struggle, without which revolutionaries and other working class militants are much weakened.

The existence of revolutionary parties, or the lack thereof, has been a significant factor in the victories and defeats of workers’ revolutions over the last 150 years. The part played by the Bolshevik Party in the Russian Revolution proved crucial to the success, however short-lived, of the 1917 revolution there. It also vindicated the arguments made by Lenin in the preceding decades about the need to build an organisation on the foundations of clear, revolutionary ideas.

The wave of resistance currently underway in Europe highlights the pressing need for such organisations today, and the difficulty associated with building them in the thick of struggle. Radicalisations can grip masses of people relatively quickly and unexpectedly, and they can just as easily dissipate without leadership and politics to back them up. A larger audience may be opening up for radical ideas, but without sufficient numbers of revolutionaries prepared to argue and fight, it may not be reached.

It is therefore essential to begin the task of getting organised around revolutionary ideas today if we are to make the most of the inevitable reaction against the horrors and inequalities of the capitalist system in the future, and to overthrow it for good.

This article, by Louise O’Shea, first appeared in Socialist Alternative.