Class Instinct?

In a comment on Avakian's Three Alternative Worlds, which was the most widely distributed radical essay at the recent antiwar march in Washington, Zamora posed a question that opens a few lines of discussion on what she calls "class instinct". Maybe I'm old fashioned for thinking in terms of "class consciousness", but the underlying questions of what materialism is, the nature of leadership, the role of passion, and the relationship between identity and solidarity are a lot to unpack. Zamora writes:

In my own communist training, and in conversations with fellow communists, I have always understood ‘class instinct’ or ‘class feelings’ to play some sort of indeterminate role in the formation of a class stand that allows us to apply our scientific method in the interests of the proletariat and not, as many have done, in the service of just understanding the world better and perhaps furthering their own personal interests in the process.

Class feelings has never been understood, in the context I have encountered it as a revolutionary communist, as a ‘Jimmy Higgins’ type attitude. Rather, I have understood it as the sort of feelings and emotions that lead us, even in many cases before gaining our broader understanding of MLM and world history, and then deepened on the basis of that understanding, to oppose the police and to oppose the various crimes and wars of imperialism. That somehow, there is this visceral, emotional component to our understanding that allows us to make sacrifices and to wield the classless knowledge (i.e., truth that, as truth, has no class character per se) for a partisan class cause.

And yet, I can’t but feel a little uncomfortable with that.

Class Instinct?
By Zamora

I have a question I would like to put forward for discussion. This seems like about the only place in the world where an open discussion of this question might take place, and my question has partially been stimulated by some of the ways in which the concept of ‘class instinct’ has been recently criticized here.

One thing I have always found attractive about Maoism, and this is a point that has in particular been stressed by Bob Avakian at different times, is how someone doesn’t become a Maoist leader, or become the person in charge, just because they have more education or general intellectual training and aptitude. I believe this line that Maoists oppose is often summed up as “the person who has read the most books leads.”

And I have had a lot of unity with Maoist criticisms of that line, both in Mao’s own work and in Avakian’s further elaborations and corrections to Mao on that point. (And here I see Avakian as taking on some secondary anti-intellectualism that comes out in Mao at times, particularly on this point.)

Obviously, if someone becomes a leader, as I think happens in many petty bourgeois political trends, because they “have read the most books” (perhaps not literally, but I think it is a useful shorthand), i.e., they have the most intellectual capital and training and use that to dominate an organization, I think that is a real problem. I have seen it in practice in many cases and I don’t think it represents a political orientation that puts the liberation of the masses first. Rather, it tends toward more narrow forms of politics depending on the precise form it takes.

Now, sometimes in taking up opposition to the line of “he who reads the most books leads” (and somehow it almost always seems to be a he, except maybe in the case of Raya Dunayevskaya), Maoists can fall into a sort of obvious opposite error of anti-intellectualism. But I think that is something everyone here would recognize as an error, and is not what I want to discuss.

What I do want to discuss is the more sophisticated ways in which Maoists oppose themselves to this “he who reads the most books leads” line. It has always seemed to me, that the way as Maoists we oppose this line, is to stress the importance of political line leading, and that correctness of political line is based not on how many books you read (although study would be an obvious element of that), but on a combination of understanding the world through the grasp of our science and applying that science in the process of understanding the world (through various forms of investigation, some participatory but mostly not) and taking a strongly partisan stand (based on the material interests of the international proletariat) in applying that understanding to changing the world.

Which leads me to my question. In my own communist training, and in conversations with fellow communists, I have always understood ‘class instinct’ or ‘class feelings’ to play some sort of indeterminate role in the formation of a class stand that allows us to apply our scientific method in the interests of the proletariat and not, as many have done, in the service of just understanding the world better and perhaps furthering their own personal interests in the process.

Class feelings has never been understood, in the context I have encountered it as a revolutionary communist, as a ‘Jimmy Higgins’ type attitude. Rather, I have understood it as the sort of feelings and emotions that lead us, even in many cases before gaining our broader understanding of MLM and world history, and then deepened on the basis of that understanding, to oppose the police and to oppose the various crimes and wars of imperialism. That somehow, there is this visceral, emotional component to our understanding that allows us to make sacrifices and to wield the classless knowledge (i.e., truth that, as truth, has no class character per se) for a partisan class cause.

And yet, I can’t but feel a little uncomfortable with that. Is this a privileging of the irrational within the wielding of the rational and scientific? Isn’t there a problem with something irrational having any role within an overall rational and scientific process? And I can easily see how this more ‘revolutionary communist’ understanding of class feeling could degenerate into an economist way of understanding class instinct. On the other hand, what we are called on to do does require intense passion, emotion and sacrifice. Despite being in contradiction to the scientific character of our project, it is objectively called for. Is it wrong to say that ‘class instinct’ has no role to play in spurring us on?

So, can we really throw out the concept of class instinct or class feelings altogether? Or is there some way in which we need these things as a (contradictory and problematic) part of the overall process of communist revolution?

I would like to invite some more wrangling on this question.

Comments

[Kazembe]

The beauty of Mao's writing is that he was one of the first communist theorist who realized the importance of the social and the subject. If you read an essay like "Combat Liberalism" or "Remembering Norman Bethune"(?)Mao plays the role of a greater teacher, both pointing the way to "objective" truth and how that truth plays out in real ways. For example, In "Combat Liberalism" all of the examples he cites are from communist work, but he doesn't come at the reader in a didactic way, but begins with human emotions (i.e."To let things slip beacuse of friendship..", etc.) The essay of Bethune is interesting because it speaks to a "communist" spirit, not as an other-worldly phenomena but the ability and vision of certain people to see beyond the bullshit of everyday and train to provide a transformative vision on the ground.

The reason I bring up Mao and these works is because it speaks directly to Zamora's questions about class instinct. I think instinct is bit of a harsh term since it brings connations of something that people are born with. I think in the course of revolutionary struggle, people should be imbuded with a sense of "soul" caring and loving for the people. I think that these aspects of care are what drives people first to movements and help movements grow. If we think about the Chinese revolution and to a certain extend the anti-colnial struggles in Africa and Asia, one sees a dilectic between scientific socialism on one hand the actually application of building new human relationship on the other. In many ways, the movement to "Serve the People"(even seen in the Panthers and the Young Lords) was in fact inspired both by love of the people (soul) and the actually theortical groudning within the context of socialism.

[the burningman]

What is "class consciousness"?

What is the proletarian subject?

Marx was never one to romanticize the working class, either as artisans and petty producers or as they were proletarianized.

Going back to the 19th Century in Europe, then as now on a global scale people split in their orientation between trying to defend the privileges of the pre-capitalist era (anarchism, medieval "socialism") and the Marxist tendency towards developing "out" of the changes happening.

Maybe one way of approaching this is whether we are trying to "proletarianize" the world or facilitate and lead the class suicide of the proletariat... in that sense, a "historical mission".

The concept of a "proletarian line" is that the immiseration, alienation and dislocation of the proletariat contains all the contradictions of the world. The proletarianization of capitalism is the Gordian Knot that only socialism can cut.

But to reify the proletariat, "the workers", is to engage in the original identity politics: economism.

What's in it for us?

Here was the second major split in social-democracy between the "working class parties" of the old "Orthodox" Marxist sense that saw the improvement of the living standards of the "advanced working class" as the objective. So imperialism was good for German workers (etc.) because it brought them real material gains.

Think about those 6-week vacations, medical care, effectiely guarnateed housing for productive workers and a modicum of democratic rights.

That's Europe today!

Or put in a different light, it's not that the "last shall be first" because the "last" is never ending.

This is one of the places where dialectics gets clear.

Those who speak of the simple, felt needs of the working classes reduce their needs to material goods within capitalism.

Those who speak of the proletariat as historical subject demand the complete revolutionizing of all the relations of production and social relations that accompany them.

What seems to be simple and "obvious" ends up being reformist and bourgeois. On the flip, that which appears "intellectualized" ends up as the greatest material force.

Things turn into their opposite quicker than you'd imagine.

[TFG CASPER]

First off to get out of the way BMs comment here:

"Going back to the 19th Century in Europe, then as now on a global scale people split in their orientation between trying to defend the privileges of the pre-capitalist era (anarchism, medieval "socialism") and the Marxist tendency towards developing "out" of the changes happening."

A summation not at all agreed upon. Anarchism as a "defense of pre capitalist era privileges"? One element perhaps, but not at all the rule, in a similar sense that 19th Century Marxism can be seen in part as a defense of intellectual, coordinatorist privileges. Id like to hear an elaboration of this. Beside the point though, I guess.

What is "class consciousness"?

Its much simple than the arcane elaborations put forth by your run of the mill academic Marxist. Its simply a consciousness of "class". The question is really who determines the definition of class, what's a legitimate class and what is not. And of course the implications of actually paying attention to those who are defining it, and those who are "broadcasting" it, etc.

The question is also NOT, as Zamora states, that "he who reads the most books leads", but rather a question of he who reads the most books, summarizes his knowledge into a doctrine, and utilizes his position to advance this knowledge. And then the question becomes, who will follow, and why?

Leadership ALWAYS comes down to the followers. It is NEVER a question of leadership, paradoxically. How many brilliant, talented Chinese revolutionaries were murdered by the KPT before the Mao could formulate a single commentary? And all this talk of class consciousness vis a vis Mao smacks of hindsight anyway, that was a Nationalist revolution, not proletarian.

So those who are properly "class conscious" will follow the best and brightest of their class? I.e. their historically determined leaders?

And what revolutionary would NOT adopt a "love for the people", a "serve the people" stance? It's moot, because there's no way to prove it. How many revolutions have gone astray regardless of the fact? The question is always a structural one, not a moral one. How do you ensure that those who love or hate the people, can't abuse the people? THAT"S the question.

Che said "revolutionaries are guided by great feelings of love", or some such comment. Yea so what, love can go wrong as often as hate goes right.

And finally, of course, Avakian is certainly not any more of a prole leader than I am. So the implication of the essay that Avakian is a leader not by books but by "... a combination of understanding the world through the grasp of our science and applying that science in the process of understanding the world ", in other words, hes smarter than yall, i.e. has read more books. Not much by way of distinction.

Which still leaves me confused as to what Zamora is actually saying, a typical condition of this kinda writing. Say a whole lot without actually meaning anything.

[the burningman]

As always, recognition is different in kind from "defense"... Recognizing a class society in order to overturn it is not naturalizing it to excuse.

[saying something?]

I think she's asking something.

[kazembe]

"Those who speak of the simple, felt needs of the working classes reduce their needs to material goods within capitalism."

How does this conflict or fit into a concept of serve the people?

[saying something?]

"what revolutionary would NOT adopt a "love for the people", a "serve the people" stance?"

Uh, Hezbollah... or anyone who's ever attended a large activist gathering and heard constant bitching about how "everybody" is a "zombie watching TV" . Or where people are judged by their diet, not their politics as if they were the same thing.

Trotskyists think the people are an object to fill their perfect "forms," lest they be degenerate.

Democratic revolutionaries often veiw the working people as a problem to be finessed, not who we serve.

"Serve the people" has been a slogan of exactly those revolutionary communist movements that cut against the "service the people" model so in vogue a few years back.

I think sister Zamora made no special claim about Avakian's leadership beyond footnoting where some of her own questions were provoked.

But for the record, Casper, Bob Avakian has helped build a national party and an international trend that's developed revolutionary communist thinking through some dark years up to the time of opportunity we live in right now.

Not knowing you, I'm not aware of any other leader in the US who has done anything like this. Unless you've got a whole herd of rabbits in your hat that you're just getting ready to pull...

Maybe the issue being teased at here is the difference between being a leader of the proletariat, understood as the sum total of proletarians, and a proletarian leader – that is, one who synthesizes the proletarian interest, the end of class exploitation.

Aside from the silliness of your generic claim that "hey, we're all leaders (or at least I'm sure Avakian isn't)" – I'd gladly contrast what Avakian is doing with a Denis Rivera.

Who is the "proletarian" leader?

The man elected by the rank-and-file of New York's hospital workers to arbitrate their contracts – or the man who says the people must rule?

I know my answer.

I do hope, vainly I bet, that we could have a discussion of these ideas without the peanut gallery introducing every tangent about the irreplacability/irrelevence of BA – and deal with the open questions Zamora put out.

[Christopher Day]

The question I think Zamora raises here is whether the feelings or instincts she describes are somehow peculiar to the proletariat or are they more broadly felt and only called "class instinct" simply because they are aligned with the historic mission of the working class.
Since I think revulsion against the crimes of capitalism can be found in varying degrees among all classes, it seems to me that what is really at issue is the existence among the proletariat of a sort of proto-communist consciousness that arises spontaneously from their experiences under capitalism that serves as some sort of a defense against bourgeois or petit-bourgeois ideology. Anarchists are drawn powerfully to this sort of thinking as a way of getting around the question of leadership, but it seems to also play a role in the thinking of many communists.

This seems like a dubious proposition. If proletarian class instinct means anything here more than a reflexive humanism or desire to rebel it would seem to open the door to valorizing, a la Engels, the disciplinary virtues of the factory floor. I say no thanks.

I like Burningman's description of Economism as the original identity politics, but I think Lukacs's analysis of the effects of reification (or commodity fetishism) on the consciousness of the proletariat is critical here. Capitalism trains us all well from an early age in its logic. Generally speaking, the pre-communist ideology of the proletariat is capitalist ideology, and the supposedly spontaneous instincts that arise in response to the conditions of capitalism should be presumed to be drenched in the stuff.

While I think the HUMAN revulsion against oppression offers us a starting point in winning people over to a consciously revolutionary outlook, I think appealing to the idea of a distinctive class feeling or instinct probably sabotages the task of winning people over to conscious revolutionary communist politics.

[the burningman]

Casper – on China, if the process described in Fanshen tells us anything about the revolution, it's that it was a New Democratic/Socialist revolution AGAINST the "Nationalists" of the KMT. It's first two orders of business were women's emanciapation and land reform against domestic feudal tradition.

The three main Maoist upsurges were the Great Leap Forward, the 100 Flowers/Anti-Rightist campaigns, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

But what's kind of funny is that Casper isn't really disagreeing with anything Zamora is writing...

She's saying, among other things, that the point isn't that we are communists because it's "good for proletarians" or that the point is simply to lead proletarians. And if that's the case, which I think it is, what is "class interest"? Or what she here calls "instinct".

I think it would be productive to counterpose "class consciousness" to "class instinct."

[ShineThePath]

But alas, this is a question that the whole communist movement and all Marxist theoreticians and commentors have found themselves into at one point or another. I think essentially the idea here of "instinct" is a rather simplified understanding of why the Proletariat and the masses of oppressed are force and vechile to undermine capitalism. I think what she broken down here is the idea of consciousness/ideology with interest. There is a consciousness and an ideology and then there is interest.

Further I will say that the idea that consciousness and ideology is ultimately another "subjective" product of the class struggle should be rethought. Essentially, there is no "false" consciousness as Marx understands it. The "bourgeois consciousness" is in fact the ideology of capitalism and it ingrains itself into all facets and structures of the given society. The idea of a "false consciousness" is wrong because there is no way to know what is a "false" or "true" ideology of class. All we can know is subjectively there interest of a class or other sectors of a population.

Worker interest, the interest of masses can be a material phenomena (but of course even that is ultimately understood through ideology, the interest of the masses for liberals and communists are fundamentally different). However workers, the masses, and oppressed people shouldn't be treated as some cogs that need to be trained and educated to understand themselves (understand their "consciousness") or to understand their interests. Many already know very well what their interests are, even though it is conveyed in struggle within the ultimate Bourgeois framework.

It comes down essentially to this. Class Interest (pesky "day-to-day" issues) are the everday fights against Capital... a righteous fight in a communist ideological framework...In this sense, the class consciousness of the masses, even if it is worker consciousness in the bourgeois system, is the most revolutionary form of a MASS consciousness. There is an understanding of anatgonism with capital.

Of course, Communist ideology is indeed the most revolutionary form of ideology, that has a historical project to destroy the existing structure and systems of capitalism. But where are we to find the history of this ideology, where does it come from? Does it just come form the mind of Marx or does it have basis in the existing class struggle, the workers movement of his time?

In the end there is where it comes down to. There is certainly an effort to erase the history of Marxism, to eliminate the roots of class struggle. Turn the class struggle into another form of "identity politics." Of course it is Identity politics, but it identity politics that fights Capital...it is a struggle of the masses against the existing forms of its oppression and exploitation. Why not engage these struggles? Just because they haven't understood synthesis A?

All revolutionary movements must ask this question...in purely practical terms. Who will be the force of revolution, who does the vanguard lead? And how do you expect that group to recognize you. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao talked to this greatly...as well as many other communists and "fellow travelers" over the last century.

It is indeed the deeds of communists, there work to build the necessary consciousness to change society. Yeah...perhaps Touissant won't be the revolutionary leaders, I think that is obvious. But was it the task of "revolutionary" consciousness to ultimately ignore them or was it their task to try to "create public opinion" amongst them.

It is very weird how the "economism" of working with people on their day to day needs is ultimately attacked...but when bourgeois liberal reform is suggested...that is ultimately an act of "polarization." The quick fix of course to "seize power."

[ShineThePath]

"I think it would be productive to counterpose 'class consciousness' to 'class instinct.'"

But in doing so, you will find CLASS conciousness is indeed the same as class interest, in fact, the consciousness of a specific class can be more reactionary than their actual interests.

Essentially, what are mistake is, is substituting CLASS consciousness with Communist Ideology...there is a difference. This is the classical mistake of historicism to assert that a the "true" consciousness, as opposed to "false" consciousness, of a class is predetermined by the historical necessities that give them root.

Consciousness of a class is not determined by World Spirit in other words. The interest of workers, for the most part, when played out in their spontaneous struggles are the most advanced form of their consciousness.

Communist ideology is something other, it has roots in the class struggle, but it indeed has a historical project relatively independent of a class struggle that would naturally continue to play. Class Interest, or the "consciousness" of the most 'advanced' (using this term in connection to its relation to communist ideology) represents usually a struggle within the bourgeois system...or what communists have called here "identity politics," "workerism," or "day to day." Communist ideology on the other hand is radical in the sense that the fight against capital should be turned into a victory over it, ultimately changing the grounds for which a struggle occurs. The end of the class relations that give rise to it, to class interest and the sort...or as Burningman has said elsewhere, a "class suicide."

[Class Suicide]

This term comes via Amilcar Cabral, though Jed's use of it as "proletarian class suicide" is novel.

Cabral was talking about the need for the advanced among the middle and upper classes to commit "class suicide" and serve the people.

Huey Newton also talked about "Revolutionary Suicide". But I think he meant this differently, in the way that in becoming a conscoius revolutionary you "die" in the sense that your life is no longer your own. Kind of a "born again" for the people rap which I don't remember nodding to when I read it.

[ShineThePath]

I made reference to "class suicide" in the way Burningman has been using it in the past in juxtaposition to the stalinist/trotskyite idea of "proletarianization."

I know fully well that Jed didn't coin the term. Sorry for that confusion.

What I meant solely is that what communism ultimately achieves is the end of class relations, and through this process the "class interest" of a group is fundamentally changed from merely "class" interest to a newer phenomena outside class or it doesn't exist. No class interest, no class consciousness without class. I think oddly enough that CLASS INTEREST is bound up to class suicide (why I am indeed a Communist)...this is why I think the idea of "class suicide" on this board is ultimately ironic, because it is pushed against "Workerism" or "Proletarianization." It is exactly that that leads to "class suicide."

Isn't that the logic of the Stalinists of the past? Proletarianization was ultimately an act to have class suicide. Of course that didn't work, but it didn't work not because Stalin was playing some sort of game to deify the worker.

[jibaro]

many thoughts crowd in, and i'll try to make this initial post to the point:

first, I think "class instinct" simply doesnt exist. And it is wrong to equate "class instinct" and "class stand."

The idea that a certain consciousness is "instinctual" for workers is a wrong epistemoligy, and flies in the face of reality. But it is (instrumentally) a useful idea for notions of economism and for a particular (and wrong view) of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The working class exists as a historical class, emerging from the middle ages and increasingly transforming human society over the last century. However that is not the same as the working class that exists, as a specific group of people, in any given society at any given time.

The former is a historical abstraction, with historic interests. The latter is a reified working class of specific people at a specific time.

In other words, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the society led (through various instrumentalities and institutions and revolutionary processes) to transform in the historic interests of the proletariat. It is not "let the workers decide" over everyone else.

Our communist world view consist of class stand, method and theory. And of the three, theory is the dynamic force.

And class stand is where your feet are planted, who you serve, from what position you judge and act. It is not instinctual (certainly there are workers who don't have a correct class stand, and would find it bizarre even if you explained it.) It is a result of consciousness -- and people from many different classes can take (or be won to) a correct class stand (i.e. it is not something special to the working class, though there are reasons why among oppressed proletarians there is a material basis for large numbers to view things correctly in this way.)

Now it is important to point out that theory is the dynamic force. I.e. you can't build or lead a movement around class stand. You can't decide what to do based on class stand. When people make errors or develop a wrong line -- it is not simply or mainly a matter of "just having a wrong class stand" (though a wrong class stand inevitably developes as a wrong line and center emerges within the struggle).

This is why the classic anti-intellectualism of the economist-influenced and revenge-line influenced communist movement is against the insterests of an advance to communismn.

To reach communism, proletarians need to increasingly grapple with and work with ideas. These are skills that under capitalism are restricted (in many ways) to intellectuals -- and so it is important for class conscious proletarians, under the leadership of the p., to learn these skills (working with ideas) and help spread them broadly among the people.

The old CP methods are to be suspicious and hostile to "intellectuals" -- to promote a false notion that workers have a "class instinct" (and so don't need theory or the skills of working with ideas, or methods of analysis, or critical thinking etc.) And that they can lord that "instinct" over the intellectuals -- and should treat the questions and speculations of intellectuals as just so much obscurantism and abstraction. (Even the word "abstraction" was treated as somethig suspicious, while "concrete" was given a glorious connotation -- in ways that are all thoroughly anti-marxist.)

Class stand is important -- but it can't be maintained if theory lags or is downplayed. Communist theory is the dynamic factor -- because to maintain a correct class stand under complex and changing conditions, you need to deeply understand the world, in its complexity, from a communist point of view (and no other).

In my own communist training, and in conversations with fellow communists, I have always understood ‘class instinct’ or ‘class feelings’ to play some sort of indeterminate role in the formation of a class stand that allows us to apply our scientific method in the interests of the proletariat and not, as many have done, in the service of just understanding the world better and perhaps furthering their own personal interests in the process.

Class feelings has never been understood, in the context I have encountered it as a revolutionary communist, as a ‘Jimmy Higgins’ type attitude. Rather, I have understood it as the sort of feelings and emotions that lead us, even in many cases before gaining our broader understanding of MLM and world history, and then deepened on the basis of that understanding, to oppose the police and to oppose the various crimes and wars of imperialism. That somehow, there is this visceral, emotional component to our understanding that allows us to make sacrifices and to wield the classless knowledge (i.e., truth that, as truth, has no class character per se) for a partisan class cause.

And yet, I can’t but feel a little uncomfortable with that.

[jibaro]

sorry:

the last three paragraphs above are not mine, but are pasted from Zamora's post.

Burningman: can you please cut those three paragraphs out (starting with "In my own communist training" so it is not so confusing.

sorry. and thanks.

[ShineThePath]

"The working class exists as a historical class, emerging from the middle ages and increasingly transforming human society over the last century. However that is not the same as the working class that exists, as a specific group of people, in any given society at any given time."

I have heard this idea a number of times expressed by RCP supporters and it is quite interesting. It is ultimately a turn right into the worse of Stalinist/Trotskyite orthodoxy. In fact, what is striving here for materialism is really Platonism disguised in the terms of Marxism. A Class exists as a historical class, this is quite true...but a class is continually developing, its very structure in the position of society and its relation to the structure is determined by the "specific group of people" at anytime.

What is being substituted here is indeed similar to a Platonic category, as if there is this "class consciousness" that exists outside of people, exists merely because of the historical development of the proletariat...The class of workers, the proletariat, need not have to have that consciousness, just there mere existence makes that consciousness a reality.

THIS IS IDEALISM.

Where do ideas come from? Where does line and theory come from? Where does the speculative "class stand" develop from? These are questions I have to ask. From my understanding, our ideas and line come from the struggle against capital...a struggle in this country which there is no vanguard leading, and is left to the routes of bourgeois reconciliation. The theory and line of a revolutionary party doesn't merely come to it because it has fallen from the sky of the historical development of the Proletariat, but in the actual struggle and ideological contestation of that struggle...the struggle of consciousness and capital. What then therefore is "class stand?" Isn't it merely the same as consciousness? There is nothing here that creates a division between "class stand" and the role of consciousness itself...in fact, your "stand" is bound up to consciousness...as well as whatever your "instinct" is.

Therefore...a class stand is merely rhetorical flare...it is the same as consciousness. If you stand in some historical project of the proletariat...then I must assume you have "proletarian" or communist consciousness.

Then what is the role of theory? Here I think there is some credit here. It is not only a matter of relying on the consciousness of the proletariat within Capitalism, but developing through struggle and giving them leadership in society, their consciousness. Class interest doesn't merely move to consciousness...the communist consciousness required to develop Socialism move to communism can't be indeed won by merely mobilizing workers and the oppressed like cogs. But that is indeed the rupture that Maoists made with Stalinists with Mass Line.

[ShineThePath]

Reading over what I have wrote...brief correction.

"But was it the task of 'revolutionary' consciousness to ultimately ignore them or was it their task to try to 'create public opinion' amongst them."

should read... revolutionary communists instead of revolutionary consciousness...and ignore them, specifying them, I have meant the Transit Workers from Local 100 in NYC.

[jibaro]

I wrote:
"The working class exists as a historical class, emerging from the middle ages and increasingly transforming human society over the last century. However that is not the same as the working class that exists, as a specific group of people, in any given society at any given time."

Shine The Path responded by saying this is Platonism not materialism.

[Platonic idealism is the view that the matter we see around us is merely a reflection or pale manifestation of ideal categories that exist independently of, and above, these material manifestations – so that the world we see is a mere reflection of the deeper and truer and more ideal essence of things. Hence the famous metaphor of “Plato’s cave” – where the flickering shadows on the wall are all we see, and the real deal exists out of our view.]

Let me deal with STP’s arguments:

STP writes: “A Class exists as a historical class, this is quite true...but a class is continually developing, its very structure in the position of society and its relation to the structure is determined by the "specific group of people" at anytime.”

The heart of what STP is saying is in the last phrases. That the relationship of the proletariat (as a class) to the structure (by which I assume STP means the larger class society) is “determined (!)the ‘specific group of people’ at anytime.”

I don’t agree. To give a simple example: the proletariat, as a historical class, is profoundly revolutionary. But only when seen from the sweep of history.

There are many points where the proletariat (as a “specific group of people”) – i.e. the reified class of actual workers in a specific social formation – are not, in fact, revolutionary – i.e. are not playing that role actively, and are not consciously opposed to the system.

No one who has lived in the U.S. can miss the fact that this is often (even generally) true in the U.S. for the multinational working class.

Does this historic fact mean that the proletariat (as a historic, world phenomenon) is not a revolutionary class ? No it doesn’t. It means that the consciousness and activity of specific workers does not automatically or inherently correspond to the outlook, interests and goals that are (overall, with historic sweep) characteristic of the proletariat AS A CLASS.

STP writes: “What is being substituted here is indeed similar to a Platonic category, as if there is this "class consciousness" that exists outside of people, exists merely because of the historical development of the proletariat...The class of workers, the proletariat, need not have to have that consciousness, just there mere existence makes that consciousness a reality. THIS IS IDEALISM.”

Every part of this is wrong, and much of it is simply confused.

First, what I am positing is a level of abstraction, not a Platonic category.

In other words, this class (the international proletariat) exists HISTORICALLY (over time) and is distinguished (and even defined) by essentially characteristics and interests that exist (and operate) GENERALLY over the sweep of history -- in ways distinct from the specific CONCRETE ways that this class exists (for example: in the U.S. at this time).

No one has posited a “class consciousness” that exists outside of people. There are no ideas separate from "matter that thinks" – i.e. all consciousness happens in the brains of people. It does not have any other existence.

However, there is an OUTLOOK (a world outlook and ideology) that is characteristic of the proletariat (as a class) – which is independent of what any particular group of workers may be thinking, at any particular point in time.

That outlook is characteristic of the proletariat because (seen in a sweeping way, "from the mountaintop" of history) it is in line with the objective and historic interests of that class in transforming society and liberating all of humanity.

Now, that does not mean that the workers spontaneously create and adopt that outlook – which includes a historical materialist analysis of class society, a philosophical method of materialist dialectics, a view of capitalism and how it can be abolished and so on.

STP asks: “Where do ideas come from? Where does line and theory come from? Where does the speculative 'class stand' develop from? These are questions I have to ask. From my understanding, our ideas and line come from the struggle against capital.”

This is fundamentally wrong. On a number of levels.

First, this outlook has its own specific and concrete history of development – and emerged (necessarily) as the result of the scientific work and struggle conducted by intellectuals – and especially from the processes of synthesis carried out by leading thinkers of the communist movement.

It was once formulated that Marxism emerged from German philosophy, French socialism and British political economy. That was/is a bit simplified, but it is true enough that it stands as a refutation of STP’s very false and mechanistic view of “theory develops from our practice.”

Mao put it like this in his work “On Practice”:

“What actually happens is that man's knowledge is verified only when he achieves the anticipated results in the process of social practice (material production, class struggle or scientific experiment).”

I want to note three things about Mao’s point:

1) First theory doesn’t DEVELOP from social practice, as STP writes. Mao points out that it is verified in the process of social practice. In fact theory developes in a complex spiral-like motion that goes from theory to practice, back to theory and then back to practice.

And the theory is actually developed (synthesized) through an intellectual process. It doesn’t just “develop from” our practice – like dew condensing on a leaf, or like pus oozing from a wound. It is a leap to theory, a process of synthesis and thought. It develops ON THE BASIS of practice -- but through a specific and defined process of scientific synthesis.

It is not like you pile up a bunch of practice, data and empirical results, like a pile of wood chips and then “press them” into a theory.

Much theory is developed before practice has emerged. For example often scientific experiment is conducted AFTER a theory emerges (like the testing of relativity). Another example: Darwin developed a theory (based on extrapolation from other species) that humans descended from apes in Africa, before there was even a single fossil skull or bone to substantiate this.

2) STP limits his view of practice to the “struggle against capital.”

This is wrong on many levels. As I pointed out (and as Mao asserts) there is a wide range of “social practice” that includes science, production AND class struggle (and even these three categories are somewhat limited – and could be expanded on.)

3) And STP’s formulation “struggle against capital” is deliberately both narrow and vague.

First, when Mao (or I) am talking about “class struggle” we are talking about the REVOLUTIONARY struggle of oppressed classes to overthrow ruling classes and create new societies.

Now note: the formulation “struggle against capital” is much more limited than it might seem on the surface: It excludes other class struggle (like the revolutionary struggle against feudalism that is carried out in much of the world).

What is the difference between STP’s formulation “struggle against capital” and the Marxist view that class struggle is the struggle to overthrow one society with another? STP’s forulation is crafted the way it is to because the economist theory focuses the ongoing antagonism and friction between various classes that spontaneously takes place in a social formation. For them, the spontaneous "day to day" economic and reform struggles quickly emerges as the specific “struggle against capital” which they see as CENTRAL to how workers develop and learn class consciousness (i.e. from their own personal experience of “struggle” with their employers.)

(Elsewhere STP called this the "pesky" economic struggle -- actually the economic struggle is practically non-existant. It is not nearly pesky enough. And so economists are doubly reduced: they think THEY need to initiate and organize the largely-nonexistant economic struggle -- because they believe it is the best medium and arena for the workers to learn more about larger society.)

This view has nothing in common with reality, with history, with our present situation or with the communist view of how correct ideas develop.

STP writes: “The theory and line of a revolutionary party doesn't merely come to it because it has fallen from the sky of the historical development of the Proletariat, but in the actual struggle and ideological contestation of that struggle...the struggle of consciousness and capital.”

This is again both narrow and vague. But it is also , in fact, basically wrong:

When Mao said ideas don’t “fall from the sky” – he meant they weren’t planted by god or springing from nowhere.

To mockingly rewrite this metaphor, to talk about "dropping from the sky of historical development” is a sleight of hand – since (of course) Marxism DOES emerge as part of the historical development of the proletariat.

And the theory and line of a revolutionary party does not mainly and narrowly emerged from its own practice or from the “actual struggle” of the workers around that party. This is empiricism – and it negates the fact that materialist dialectics and communist theory emerges from the sweeping explorations humanity makes IN MANY SPHERES (philosophy, economics, production, revolutionary struggle, art, and so on.)

The following things STP writes are very confusing, but we can dig into it nonetheless: “a class stand is merely rhetorical flare...it is the same as consciousness. If you stand in some historical project of the proletariat...then I must assume you have 'proletarian' or communist consciousness.”

Well, there are many different kinds and degrees of consciousness. The Marxist theory of surplus value is a conscious thought – but it is distinct from class stand. So class stand is a kind of consciousness, it is one facet of class consciousness, but it is not the same as theory or other kinds and levels of class consciousness.

I have no idea what STP means by saying "if you stand in some historical project of the proletariat," but WHATEVER HE MEANS, it is wrong. You can’t “assume” that someone has communist consciousness because they “stand” in some historical project. (Just one example: Many and probably most soldiers who fought and died in the Chinese revolution did not have communist consciousness but certainly stood in a historical project of the proletariat!)

STP writes: “Then what is the role of theory? Here I think there is some credit here. It is not only a matter of relying on the consciousness of the proletariat within Capitalism, but developing through struggle and giving them leadership in society, their consciousness. Class interest doesn't merely move to consciousness...the communist consciousness required to develop Socialism move to communism can't be indeed won by merely mobilizing workers and the oppressed like cogs. But that is indeed the rupture that Maoists made with Stalinists with Mass Line.”

This is very vague and confusion. In TRYING to concede and discuss a role for theory, STP is reduced to stuttering.

He has to place for mentioning communist propaganda! No discussion of what communist theory does, and where it applies, or how it is promulgated! His remark gives no clue that "without revolutionary theory you can have no revolutionary movement."
There is no discussion of “leading through line”! No discussion of Marx's battle cry that “communists distain to conceal their views”!

These things don’t really come up, because this “credit” given to theory is an afterthought, and a half-baked afterthought at that. And because STP's politics and ideology ACTUALLY don't have any room for communist theory.

If I understand this paragraph correctly (and please correct me if I dont!), STP is arguing that, yes, there needs to be SOME development beyond the consciousness that workers spontaneously develop “within capitalism” – and that this development happens “though struggle” and leadership.

If I understand this correctly, it is a reformulation of the classic economist notion that you lead people in struggle, and then “help” them learn about larger struggles and society (and perhaps even socialism) by “helping them” to “sum up the lessons of the struggle.”

I.e. the development of "consciousness" is believed to develop always and fundamentally in the context of the workers own “struggle against capital" happening "within capitalism.” For the empiricist and economist, this is the main arena through which everything is “learned.”

This “unfolding of lessons” through the prism and context of struggles the workers are already engaged in – does not lead to class consciousness. It never has, it never will.

Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? still stands as as a sharp and very correct thundering polemic against exactly that view.

Class consciousness can only emerge through understanding all the forces in society, their class interests and dynamics. It can only come "from without" the struggle that groups of workers wage against their immediate exploiters and tormentors -- it can only come by looking at all the events (including especially the larger formative events of war, and crisis, and collision of political forces) -- by looking at the world as a whole, and by looking at the history of its development so far.

You literally CAN’T unfold an understanding of socialism and the larger mission of the proletariat through “summing up” a strike, or a cutback struggle, or a housing fight.

And a menshivik economist theory of “mass line” that assumes you can (which STP alludes to) is a gospel of tailing. (It has nothng in common with the communist view of "mass line" -- in fact it is diametrically opposed to the essence of that mass line, which is to connect the masses to the historical struggle for classless society, not to a rehash or extract of their own spontaneous ideas.)

There is more to say about this, of course...

[Tigre del Norte]

Ask a complicated question, with reference to a concept that has been deployed in a variety of ways in the history of the ICM, including very recently within our own trend...

And you get?

A series of comments that seem to have no idea of how that concept has been used in the history of the ICM and inside the RCP itself.

Followed by a name-calling contest by two arrogant little white boys who are big on reified abstractions they can't connect to reality (partly because of their insistence on reification, in this case particularly of 'class consciousness').

Zamorcita, what were you thinking?

[nick]

the reactionary trollish baiting above should be removed.

[ShineThePath]

I shall deal only in little bit with Jibaro.

The idea of a "general sweep of history" such that is outside of us, is indeed Idealism and a reversion back to Hegelian idea of Spirit. There is no, to speak, "sweep of history" that has a objective view of who is revolutionary and who is not that is beyond us. As Marx noted in critiquing Hegel, you are very much apart of the game as well. Your ideology, your consciousness, can never have some sort of "objective" view from the balcony. It is ideology spawned from Capitalism itself.

If a "Sweep of History" did exist, the world would be determinable and the historicism of linear thinking would probably be right, for all the spirals you speak this is ultimately what the Sweep is.

Now what of this outlook that is characteristic of a "class?" The outlook of the Proletariat. That too does not exist, for once again it is based on the assumption that historical forces beyond the class have determined is struggle, its movement, and how it thinks. There is no Proletarian consciousness that needs to be reached, that is out there for us to find and achieve, that has been begotten to us by the spirit of Histomat.

And further to say that you speak not of consciousness divorced of people, but of an "Outlook that is characteristic of the Proletariat" is merely rubbish. What is an outlook, what does this specter accomplish with its proletarian traits...where do such outlooks exist? If it is independent of any group of workers, then it is not real. Maybe you speak here of Communist ideology within the many circles of intellectuals, that rose from Marx's study of Capitalism and the workers' srtuggle against it...but even then, it is not out there, it is not an "outlook" that is characteristic of the Proletariat, it is the consciousness of Communists.

Jibaro states: "That outlook is characteristic of the proletariat because (seen in a sweeping way, "from the mountaintop" of history) it is in line with the objective and historic interests of that class in transforming society and liberating all of humanity. "

Hegel or Plato would be proud indeed. How have you gone to the mountain top and saw the "outlook [that] is characteristic of the proletariat?" Such mountaintops are illusions, what you really are speaking from is the subjectivity of being a communist stuck to the dogmatic ideas that are being broken. Historic interests and Objective interests of the Proletariat can only be understood through you, a man, not the Spirit. Therefore, it is not a historic destiny of the Proletariat, it is the historic project of the Communist to transform society, eliminate class exploitation, etc, etc. The Proletariat and masses have an interest in it, in so much as he is a component of Communist ideology. The Proletariat, workers, the masses are the vechile, so to say, for revolution. It is them, as a class (of people existing in a definite time, not as an abstraction) that can be the only base for such liberation, because the liberation is of them.

Now upon where theory develops. Yes, indeed intellectuals play a part in "synthesizing," recording, etc. However I have not said to the contrary. It is merely assumed because I have said that the roots of theory always comes from social practice...AND hasn't it? The very act of Marx reading in the library of London, researching what Ricardo had to say about economics, what Aristotle's thoughts on logic, or how the Owenites were building their own commune structures is an act of social practice. It isn't divorced in a timeless void, and that these books have spontaneously appeared. Ricardo, NY Times, Hegel, or whoever else Marx was reading was itself a product of scientific and social practice in the real world, it wasn't merely introspective "aha!" moments for all of them. Empirical data comes from somewhere, does it not?

Further...theory is based on social practice, and the knowledge of what is reality (truth), and the scientific outcome in the past. If not, it would usually turn out erroneous results. Since anyone could have told you the theory as wrong to begin with, without testing it. Theory is verified by science and experiment, practice...and it comes from it.

"And the theory is actually developed (synthesized) through an intellectual process. It doesn't just “develop from” our practice – like dew condensing on a leaf, or like pus oozing from a wound. It is a leap to theory, a process of synthesis and thought. It develops ON THE BASIS of practice -- but through a specific and defined process of scientific synthesis."

Cognitive sciences knows not so much of how knowledge develops! Of course it is true that ultimately theory needs us being there for it to be. There can be no theory without consciousness, but this is assumed since we are always. Meaning when I speak of theory coming from practice, it is always from the medium of the human being..we assume that. So in the end, of course there is an intellectual somewhere doing the work need for us to move from A to B. However, as Jibaro admits in the end...this is all on the basis of what is recorded understood, observed, and so. Meaning theory comes from it.... it may condense with any metaphorical flares you like...but theory is created from the understanding of practice past.

"STP limits his view of practice to the 'struggle against capital.'"

This is simply false...I said the struggle against capital as apart of social practice, and where Marx learned much from. I never said this is the only practice.

Since I addressed part two of this, I shall deal with little of part three since it is based on this false presumption.

[Chuck Morse]

It's weird to see you two cast idealism in negative terms, when the basic maxim of Maoism couldn't be more idealist (i.e., "the correctness or incorrectness of the ideological or political line determines everything.") If you're opposed to idealism, you'll need to break with Maoism.

[shinethepath]

There is a difference there though Chuck.

I don't consider myself harsh on most idealist trends, there is a still lot to learn from various "idealists." What does Hegel, Kant, Descartes and other ontologists have to tell us? Hell, what does Plato have to say? What I take exception to is the Platonic categories here that Jibaro uses and disguises in terms of Historical Materialism. It is essentially theology, not grounded in anything beyond because it is thought of.

But Ideology and consciousness has through most of the history of the revolutionary trend has been ignored. It got Lukacs, Gramsci, and other communists the label "Hegelian" by Zinoviev and the Comintern. I think an important component of Maoism is the emphasis that ideology is just as important as the phenomena outside of the mind, that ideology and phenomena are intricate with each other.

A break essentially with the old base/superstructure notion of how things work.

So the "correctness" or "incorrectness" of ideas are important (what is a matter of correctness is another question). A revolutionary consciousness is necessary for revolution itself, it is more fundamentally important than questions of the general economic collapse of Capitalism on its very own.

[Chuck Morse]

Well, yeah, the "correctness" or "incorrectness" of ideas are important (as you say), but they don't "determine everything" (as Mao says). Big difference.

[the burningman]

Do you believe we live in a common shared reality, and that ideas refer and relate to that reality more or less correctly?

That some are correct? Most incorrect?

That breaking a chicken egg over your head might not lift the evil eye that just might not exist?

Or put another way, you seem pretty convinced that the state cannot be an instrument of liberation, let alone a necessary objective for revolution.

You seem fundamentally concerned with the incorrectness of Marxism (and certainly Leninism, by extension Maoism) and intent on debating it.

I mean, this has been a major factor in your life and intellectual choices, no?

If getting to a correct socio-political idea isn't possible, let alone necessary – why have you invested so much in these discussions? (and I'm not talking about blog comments.)

Of course the correctness or incorrectness of political line determines EVERYTHING.

Bullshit reaps bullshit, even if you can sow dragon's teeth and harvest fleas.