Socialist Practice: Histories and Theories (Marx, Engels, and Marxisms) 3030350657, 9783030350659

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MARX, ENGELS, AND MARXISMS

Socialist Practice Histories and Theories

Victor Wallis

Marx, Engels, and Marxisms Series Editors Marcello Musto York University Toronto, ON, Canada Terrell Carver University of Bristol Bristol, UK

The Marx renaissance is underway on a global scale. Wherever the critique of capitalism re-emerges, there is an intellectual and political demand for new, critical engagements with Marxism. The peer-reviewed series Marx, Engels and Marxisms (edited by Marcello Musto & Terrell Carver, with Babak Amini and Kohei Saito as Assistant Editors) publishes monographs, edited volumes, critical editions, reprints of old texts, as well as translations of books already published in other languages. Our volumes come from a wide range of political perspectives, subject matters, academic disciplines and geographical areas, producing an eclectic and informative collection that appeals to a diverse and international audience. Our main areas of focus include: the oeuvre of Marx and Engels, Marxist authors and traditions of the 19th and 20th centuries, labour and social movements, Marxist analyses of contemporary issues, and reception of Marxism in the world. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14812

Victor Wallis

Socialist Practice Histories and Theories

Victor Wallis Liberal Arts Department Berklee College of Music Boston, MA, USA

ISSN 2524-7123     ISSN 2524-7131 (electronic) Marx, Engels, and Marxisms ISBN 978-3-030-35065-9    ISBN 978-3-030-35066-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35066-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Photograph by Tom Hoover / Moment / Getty Image This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Alan and Byron

Series Foreword

The Marx Revival The Marx renaissance is underway on a global scale. Whether the puzzle is the economic boom in China or the economic bust in ‘the West’, there is no doubt that Marx appears regularly in the media nowadays as a guru, and not a threat, as he used to be. The literature dealing with Marxism, which all but dried up twenty-five years ago, is reviving in the global context. Academic and popular journals and even newspapers and on-line journalism are increasingly open to contributions on Marxism, just as there are now many international conferences, university courses and seminars on related themes. In all parts of the world, leading daily and weekly papers are featuring the contemporary relevance of Marx’s thought. From Latin America to Europe, and wherever the critique to capitalism is remerging, there is an intellectual and political demand for a new critical encounter with Marxism.

Types of Publications This series bring together reflections on Marx, Engels and Marxisms from perspectives that are varied in terms of political outlook, geographical base, academic methodologies and subject-matter, thus challenging many preconceptions as to what ‘Marxist’ thought can be like, as opposed to what it has been. The series will appeal internationally to intellectual communities that are increasingly interested in rediscovering the most powerful critical analysis of capitalism: Marxism. The series editors will ensure that authors and editors in the series are producing overall an eclectic and vii

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stimulating yet synoptic and informative vision that will draw a very wide and diverse audience. This series will embrace a much wider range of scholarly interests and academic approaches than any previous ‘family’ of books in the area. This innovative series will present monographs, edited volumes and critical editions, including translations, to Anglophone readers. The books in this series will work through three main categories: Studies on Marx and Engels The series will include titles focusing on the oeuvre of Marx and Engels which utilize the scholarly achievements of the on-going Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, a project that has strongly revivified the research on these two authors in the past decade. Critical Studies on Marxisms Volumes will awaken readers to the overarching issues and world-­changing encounters that shelter within the broad categorisation ‘Marxist’. Particular attention will be given to authors such as Gramsci and Benjamin, who are very popular and widely translated nowadays all over the world, but also to authors who are less known in the English-speaking countries, such as Mariátegui. Reception Studies and Marxist National Traditions Political projects have necessarily required oversimplifications in the twentieth century, and Marx and Engels have found themselves ‘made over’ numerous times and in quite contradictory ways. Taking a national perspective on ‘reception’ will be a global revelation and the volumes of this series will enable the worldwide Anglophone community to understand the variety of intellectual and political traditions through which Marx and Engels have been received in local contexts. Toronto, Canada Bristol, UK

Marcello Musto Terrell Carver

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Titles Published 1. Terrell Carver & Daniel Blank, A Political History of the Editions of Marx and Engels’s “German Ideology” Manuscripts, 2014. 2. Terrell Carver & Daniel Blank, Marx and Engels’s “German Ideology” Manuscripts: Presentation and Analysis of the “Feuerbach chapter,” 2014. 3. Alfonso Maurizio Iacono, The History and Theory of Fetishism, 2015. 4. Paresh Chattopadhyay, Marx’s Associated Mode of Production: A Critique of Marxism, 2016. 5. Domenico Losurdo, Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History, 2016. 6. Frederick Harry Pitts, Critiquing Capitalism Today: New Ways to Read Marx, 2017. 7. Ranabir Samaddar, Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age, 2017. 8. George Comninel, Alienation and Emancipation in the Work of Karl Marx, 2018. 9. Jean-Numa Ducange & Razmig Keucheyan (Eds.), The End of the Democratic State: Nicos Poulantzas, a Marxism for the 21st Century, 2018. 10. Robert Ware, Marx on Emancipation and the Socialist Transition: Retrieving Marx for the Future, 2018. 11. Xavier LaFrance & Charles Post (Eds.), Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism, 2018. 12. John Gregson, Marxism, Ethics, and Politics: The Work of Alasdair MacIntyre, 2018. 13. Vladimir Puzone & Luis Felipe Miguel (Eds.), The Brazilian Left in the 21st Century: Conflict and Conciliation in Peripheral Capitalism, 2019. 14. James Muldoon & Gaard Kets (Eds.), The German Revolution and Political Theory, 2019. 15. Michael Brie, Rediscovering Lenin: Dialectics of Revolution and Metaphysics of Domination, 2019. 16. August H. Nimtz, Marxism versus Liberalism: Comparative Real-­ Time Political Analysis, 2019. 17. Gustavo Moura de Cavalcanti Mello and Mauricio de Souza Sabadini (Eds.), Financial Speculation and Fictitious Profits: A Marxist Analysis, 2019. 18. Shaibal Gupta, Marcello Musto & Babak Amini (Eds), Karl Marx’s Life, Ideas, and Influences: A Critical Examination on the Bicentenary, 2019.

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Titles Forthcoming Igor Shoikhedbrod, Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism: Rethinking Justice, Legality, and Rights Kaan Kangal, Friedrich Engels and the Dialectics of Nature Juan Pablo Rodríguez, Resisting Neoliberal Capitalism in Chile: The Possibility of Social Critique Alfonso Maurizio Iacono, The Bourgeois and the Savage: A Marxian Critique of the Image of the Isolated Individual in Defoe, Turgot and Smith Antonio Oliva, Ivan Novara & Angel Oliva (Eds.), Marx and Contemporary Critical Theory: The Philosophy of Real Abstraction Jean-Numa Ducange, Jules Guesde: The Birth of Socialism and Marxism in France Kevin B.  Anderson, Kieran Durkin & Heather Brown (Eds.), Raya Dunayevskaya’s Intersectional Marxism: Race, Gender, and the Dialectics of Liberation Vesa Oittinen, Marx’s Russian Dimension Terrell Carver, Engels before Marx Kohei Saito (Ed.), Reexamining Engels’s Legacy in the 21st Century Ryuji Sasaki, A New Introduction to Karl Marx: New Materialism, Critique of Political Economy, and the Concept of Metabolism Giuseppe Vacca, Alternative Modernities: Antonio Gramsci’s Twentieth Century Francesco Biagi, Henri Lefebvre’s Critical Theory of Space Paresh Chattopadhyay, Socialism in Marx’s Capital: Towards a De-­ alienated World Gianfranco Ragona & Monica Quirico, Borderline Socialism: Self-­ organisation and Anti-capitalism Marcello Mustè, Marxism and Philosophy of Praxis: An Italian Perspective from Labriola to Gramsci Spencer A.  Leonard, Marx, the India Question, and the Crisis of Cosmopolitanism Satoshi Matsui, Normative Theories of Liberalism and Socialism: Marxist Analysis of Values Tsuyoshi Yuki, Socialism, Markets and the Critique of Money: The Theory of “Labour Note” Francesca Antonini, Reassessing Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: Dictatorship, State, and Revolution

Preface

This book complements my books Red-Green Revolution (2018) and Democracy Denied (2019). In Red-Green, I explore the politics and technology of ecosocialism, raising questions of political strategy in the context of planetary emergency; in Democracy Denied, I discuss obstacles to revolutionary transformation in the United States. The present work, while retaining the sense of urgency that drove its predecessors, steps back to examine the broad contours of recent history (Part I) while also going more deeply into certain particular struggles (Part II). The constituent chapters (or parts of chapters) were originally written at various times over a period of more than 40 years, but I have reworked much of the material and have updated data and references throughout. Only in two cases (Chap. 3 and the first full section of Chap. 4) was it essential—because of historical interest—to preserve the texts in their original form (changing only the titles and, in Chap. 3, reformatting the references and adding section-headings). The book’s temporal vantage point is thus for the most part consistent— grounded in the present—but there remain among its chapters differences in style of argumentation that correspond to the varying original venues and audiences for which I was writing. I have tried to make the chapters uniformly accessible and (with the noted exceptions) current, yet without smoothing over their distinctive polemical textures. While the book covers a lot of ground, it lays no claim to completeness. The narratives, although spanning many countries and multiple issue-­ areas, are illustrative rather than exhaustive; they reflect in part the range of my own direct experience, which I allude to in the Introduction. No xi

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individual vantage point can comprehend the totality of human perspectives and strivings, but any of us can begin to grasp the underlying reality if we keep in mind a pair of partly clashing principles: On the one hand, in a relationship of domination, the oppressed knows the oppressor better than vice versa. This is because the oppressor has an outsized role in the life of the oppressed, which makes understanding the oppressor’s modus operandi a matter of great importance—sometimes a matter of life and death—to the oppressed. On the other hand, each of us has the capacity, through interaction with and historical knowledge of others, to at least partly transcend the limitations arising from our own origins, whatever these may be. This brings us to an observation that is not made often enough (at least not with full reflection on all its applications): namely, that oppression harms not only the oppressed but also the oppressor. It has always done so in the sense of cutting the oppressor off from his (and sometimes her) full humanity. But it now does so in an additional way, in that the structures generated by oppression threaten, through their ongoing destructiveness, the continuation of all human life. Socialist practice has thus come to focus centrally on addressing environmental breakdown, but in doing so, it must engage—as it has always had to do—every dimension of human activity. Within its limits, this book seeks to stretch our thinking both about what needs to be done and about what can be done. It does this not only by reminding us of why the rule of capital must be overcome, but also by discussing, as dispassionately as possible, the strengths and the weaknesses of various approaches that have been taken to carrying out that task. The political rhetoric around environmental restoration often invokes the opposition between the Global North and the Global South: the North destroys the environment and the South suffers the consequences. This is a reasonable first approximation to history, in the rough sense that the great conquering powers and the societies of mass consumption are situated mostly in the Northern temperate zone while a disproportionate share of global poverty is concentrated elsewhere. But the correspondence is imperfect, as suggested most strikingly by the power of the current fascist ruler of Brazil—in collaboration with imperial capital—to wreak destruction on what have aptly been termed “the lungs of the world.” The point is that the geographical placement of oppressors and oppressed does not fall into any simple spatial pattern. There are oppressors in the South and there are victims in the North.

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Similarly, within the US, despite the prevalence of white racism in the power structure, there are individuals of European descent who live in abject poverty while a very select few of African lineage have entered the ranks of the top “1 percent.” The dividing lines, in terms of policy-­ interests, are neither geographical nor “racial,” but are the expression of class division. One often hears it said that the Global North owes an environmental debt to the Global South. It would be more accurate to say that capital and its agents owe such a debt to the human species as a whole, as well as to the intricate systems of biodiversity that they have done so much to destroy. This is not to claim that the scope or urgency of the requisite compensatory steps is everywhere the same, but it is to identify who is currently responsible for taking those steps. It is also to suggest the pattern of alliances or antagonisms that will shape the struggle to obtain their compliance or – ultimately – to replace them. What humanity now needs is education, discussion, and action on a massive scale, informed by this awareness. If the arguments in this book contribute in any way to advancing such a process, my goal in putting them together will have been met. Somerville, Massachusetts October 2019

Victor Wallis

Acknowledgments

This book would not have come into being without the initiative of Marcello Musto. Thanks to his confidence in me and his patient insistence, I was inspired to weave together the disparate themes that have drawn my attention since the mid-1970s, with real hope that the resultant whole would be more than the sum of its parts. Babak Amini and Terrell Carver provided important advice and encouragement along the way. Michelle Chen and Rebecca Roberts, at Palgrave, helped me navigate the final stages of submission. Arumugam Hemalatha, at Spi Global, provided indispensable assistance in assuring accurate production. I am extremely grateful to all the colleagues, comrades, and friends who, over the years, solicited or encouraged or facilitated publication of the explorations that underlie this book: Tamara Awerbuch, Dario Azzellini, Edmund F. Byrne, Mat Callahan, Hester Eisenstein, Salvatore Engel di Mauro, Johanna Fernández, Milton Fisk, John Bellamy Foster, David Gilbert, Wolfgang Fritz Haug, F. Abiola Irele, George Katsiaficas, Teodros Kiros, Chuck Kleinhans, Julia Lesage, Harry Magdoff, Eric Mann, Patrick J. McGeever, Lindsay Michie, Suren Moodliar, Immanuel Ness, Patrick V. Peppe, Aníbal Quijano, Mary Ratcliff, Joseph G. Ramsey, Frank Rosengarten, Stephen M. Sachs, Paul M. Sweezy, Zhao Yulan, and Zhuo Mingliang. I thank also the journals/publishers who kindly gave permission for me to adapt material that previously appeared in their pages. These include ABC-CLIO, Haymarket Books, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, Monthly Review, SAGE Publications Inc., and The Pumping Station. xv

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My special thanks go to Jeff Cohen, Johanna Fernández, and James H. Stam for their enormously valuable comments on several chapters. Of course, I take sole responsibility for the final text. Finally, all my work has been nourished by the wisdom, the advice, and the moral support of my life-partner, Inez Hedges.

Praise for Socialist Practice “Socialist Practice: Histories and Theories is critical reading for all who care about the future sustainability of humanity. At a time of planetary dystopia, Victor Wallis offers a sweeping intellectual contribution to understanding the global economic, political, and ecological fissures threatening humanity. Drawing on impressive knowledge of Marxist and socialist discourse, Wallis masterfully unifies essential themes of the production of material and cultural resistance to the impending cataclysmic future through socialist transformation. Essential reading for all students of the politics and history of socialism.” —Immanuel Ness, Professor of Political Science, City University of New York, USA, and author of Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class (2016) “Wide-ranging, eloquent, accessible and inspiring, Victor Wallis’s collected essays in this volume embody an optimism about future political action, along with a fierce realism about the challenges we face as a planet. This is required reading for Marxists, socialists, organizers, feminists, Black Lives Matter folk, and anyone else who still hopes to avert the ecological/capitalist catastrophe now bearing down on us.” —Hester Eisenstein, Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies, Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA “Victor Wallis, an exemplary activist-scholar whose solidarity work with prisoners has lasted for decades, brings to light the political orientation that guides his efforts. He notes that ‘the oppressed knows the oppressor better than vice versa’ and that oppression cuts all of us off from our full humanity. His book seeks to illuminate ways to restore balance to the earth and to all our lives. His history of liberation movements’ theory and practice is instructive. I hope his call for ‘action on a massive scale’ resonates widely.” —George Katsiaficas, former Visiting Professor of Sociology, Chonnam National University, South Korea, and author of The Global Imagination of 1968 (2018) and Asia’s Unknown Uprisings (2012, 2013)

“Today socialism is experiencing a remarkable revival under the mantles of democratic socialism and ecosocialism. But what do these new conceptions of socialism mean, what issues are being raised, and how are they related to the fundamental struggles of our time encompassing numerous forms of oppression and threats to human survival? In search for concrete answers, one could hardly do better than to read Victor Wallis’s concise and comprehensive book on Socialist Practice.” —John Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology, University of Oregon, USA, and editor of Monthly Review “Victor Wallis presents us not with the answers but with a framework through which we can look at the successes and failures of the global socialist movements and conceptualize a way forward. This book rejects despair and cynicism with an emphasis on facing reality. But this is also a book designed to provoke debate rather than shutting down principled exchanges. Agreement is not the requisite for reading this book. Rather, a desire for deep and substantive engagement toward the reconstruction of emancipatory politics.” —Bill Fletcher, Jr., Senior Scholar, Institute for Policy Studies, USA, Executive Editor of The Global African Worker, and former president of TransAfrica Forum

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Part I Issues in Applied Marxist Theory  11 2 Marx After a Century of “Real Socialism” 13 3 The End of First-Epoch Socialism and the Problem of Transition 37 4 Marxism and the Struggle for Social Justice 63 5 The Dialectic of Humanity and Nature 73 6 On “Market Socialism” and the Soviet Experience 83 Part II Social Movements and Political Leadership  95 7 Workers’ Control and Revolution: History and Theory 97 8 The Politics of “Lesser Evil”: Historical Reflections125

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9 The US Left of the 1960s and Its Legacy139 10 From Black Liberation to Mass Incarceration: A Documentary Journey171 11 Revolution and Counterrevolution in Latin America: The Filmed Experience185 12 Song and Vision in the US Labor Movement205 13 Conclusion225 Index239

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The Present Moment and the New Discourse About Socialism Historian Eric Hobsbawm titled his book on the twentieth century The Age of Extremes. For the twenty-first century, this would be an understatement. No rubric can convey the level of emergency in which our species now finds itself. We live, both now and into the future, under a threat of geological proportions.1 The magnitude of the danger is clearly seen—and acutely felt—by young people the world over. The discourse of the powers that be hovers far from the storm-center, mostly waging (especially in the United States) a relentless campaign to keep everyone’s eyes shut—if not to the reality of the eco-crisis, then at least to the idea that we might be able collectively to do something about it. My own sense of the danger is longstanding but becomes more pressing with each passing year, even as capitalist politicians and corporate media squander precious time with their contrived emergencies, their self-­ indulgent jousting, and their endless flow of distractions.2 The longer this hegemonic denial continues—and, along with it, the aggressions of powerfully armed governments and their vigilante shock-troops against largely 1  Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth-System (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016). 2  See Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff, United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2019).

© The Author(s) 2020 V. Wallis, Socialist Practice, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35066-6_1

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defenseless populations—the more urgent becomes the imperative to sweep from power all those who keep it up. The scope of the required changes has all along been of revolutionary proportions, but beyond this, the amount of time we now have for securing a future that is to any extent livable—for the majority of our species—has become desperately short. The revolutionary implications of this crisis were the theme of my 2018 book Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism. In it, I developed a wealth of considerations showing that the long-run changes necessary to our collective survival are inconceivable unless the capitalist economic calculus gives way to one grounded in the common good of both humanity and nature, as determined by a thoroughly informed democratic process. The transformation cannot come all at once (although there may be abrupt upheavals at particular moments along the way), but the incremental changes that are made in the near term must all be in tune with the ultimate goal; that is, they must be steadily creating structures—whether parties, educational networks, or governing apparatus—that embody the common interest of humanity as a whole and of a healthy environment. Empowering such structures is crucial to guaranteeing both the initial shift in class-power and the equally necessary permanent governing machinery grounded in universal participation. The concept embodying this agenda, that of socialism, has an almost 200-year trajectory. But its most recent turns of historic fortune came, first, with the collapse or devolution, through the 1980s, of the majority of regimes claiming to embrace it, and subsequently, with the unexpected revival of popular interest in socialism in the United States in the years following the financial meltdown of 2008. In the wake of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement (2011), surveys have consistently shown, despite decades of anti-socialist indoctrination, an openness to socialism on the part of majorities or near-majorities both among African Americans and among people under 30. Of course, this does not yet reflect a precise notion of what socialism means, nor of what has shaped the historical attempts to implement it. But at least the S-word has ceased to be taboo for a great many people.3 As a consequence, it has become a target of ferocious attack not only from the governing Trump cabal but also from the “loyal opposition” of corporate Democrats, whose consistent pattern over the years has been to prefer defeat at the hands of the Republicans to any 3  See John Nichols, The “S” Word: A Short History of an American Tradition … Socialism, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 2015).

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scenario that, while promising near-term electoral success for their own party, would entail the activation and mobilization of its popular base. The dynamic of Democrat/Republican collaboration is now long established. On the one hand, Democratic electoral strategists rejoice in the most outlandish (racist, misogynist, etc.) conduct of Republicans, as this allows the Democrats to present themselves as guardians of rationality and decency. On the other hand, Republicans, having no policies to address the economic needs of the majority, revel in being able to tar the Democrats as “socialists,” thereby setting firm limits on the degree to which Democrats, recoiling from the dreaded “red” label, can legislate an authentically popular agenda. The result is that whichever of these two parties working-class people vote for, they are voting—except in rare cases of individual candidates—against their own best interests.4 This dynamic affects the way activists sympathetic to socialism define themselves in the political arena. Given the systematic bias of the electoral system and the mass media against third-party challengers, there are powerful inducements for socialists to seek office as Democrats. This leads them to water down their conception of socialism to the point of rejecting any explicit challenge to the power of capital. What remains, typically, is an invocation of Franklin D.  Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and his 1944 “Economic Bill of Rights.” Although these expanded the scope of social welfare, thereby strengthening the economic power of the working class (for which they were widely denounced as “socialist”),5 they stopped short of questioning the legitimacy of the profit-system as such. The resulting political order has been variously dubbed “mixed economy,” “welfare capitalism,” and “social democracy,” but some of its advocates in the US—notably, Senator Bernie Sanders—refer to it as “democratic socialism.” Given that the New Deal agenda did not entail dissolution of the capitalist class, the practice of implying that it was somehow socialist is highly misleading. Its socialist aspects, although real enough (as far as they went) in terms of their benefits, were in the nature of partial and transitory concessions. What the New Deal meant was that capital gave up a portion of

4  For more detailed discussion, see Victor Wallis, Democracy Denied: Five Lectures on U.S. Politics (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2019). 5  An accusation that prompted President Harry S.  Truman to say, in October 1952, “Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.”

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its power in order—as Joseph P. Kennedy said at the time6—not to face the prospect of losing all of it. But when the historical moment was right, capital struck back. The first phase of its counterattack was the post-World War II anticommunist drive. This not only broke up the Left’s organizational infrastructure, it also had a long-lasting cultural impact, stigmatizing class consciousness on the part of workers and enshrining at the mass level—especially via racist suburban development planning7—an ethic of unalloyed individualism. The resulting conformity would be disrupted by the radical movements of the 1960s, but once again without diminishing the basic power of capital. The second phase of the capitalist counterattack is what has been increasingly in place since the mid-1970s, a period now generally known as the neoliberal era—referring to the systematic assault on every variety of welfare protection, along with widespread privatization, deregulation, and mass incarceration. The evolution of this whole complex of hyper-capitalist policies— beginning in the late 1940s and with a fresh thrust since the mid-1970s— should decisively discredit any impression that the achievements of the 1930s brought some kind of systemic break (as the term “democratic socialism” might lead us to think) with capitalist power. In this sense, as Senator Sanders himself often insists, his core proposals, which typically revive New Deal-type priorities, are in no sense radical. They would bring the working-class majority certain obvious benefits, but (as he also says) would not threaten the decisive economic role of private capital, which he does not propose to replace. In fact, in the US political context, programs even far more limited than that of Sanders do not escape the accusation of being socialist (recall the attacks made beginning in 2008 against Barack Obama). It therefore makes political sense for Sanders—especially considering the more fully socialist (including anti-imperialist) position he staked out earlier in his career, as well as his lifelong public admiration for Eugene Debs—not to disown his association with the word socialism. What his acceptance of the word ultimately reflects is the fact that socialism, despite any negative 6  Quoted in G.  William Domhoff, Who Rules America? 1st ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 153. It should be noted that the most significant reforms under FDR, those of the so-called “second New Deal,” came in response to the massive labor organizing drives (including sit-down strikes) of the mid-1930s. 7  The explicitly racist and anticommunist agenda of postwar federal home-loan policy is documented in Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 171–200.

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­ istorical baggage and (above all) despite its sustained stigmatization, h embodies the positive social goals that most people seek. Given its broad albeit partly latent popularity, one might envisage socialism having ultimately a rather straightforward and successful faceoff with capitalism. Even granting the obvious military power of the capitalist ruling class, we could at least anticipate an embrace of socialism at the level of mass working-class opinion, which could possibly in turn sway some of capital’s intermediate-level operatives. The reality, however, is not so clear-­ cut. Important divisions exist within the potentially socialist constituency. Some of these reflect longstanding strategic divergences, foreshadowed in the Marxist/anarchist clash during the First International (1864–72) and in continuing antagonisms between reformist and revolutionary currents within the working-class movement. Added onto these we now find, especially since the 1960s, an intricate web of partly overlapping demographic groups (ethnic, cultural, religious, or defined by gender, sexuality, age, or ability) that occupy definite political spaces, corresponding to multiple structures of oppression. These crosscutting interests magnify all the habitual difficulties of forging a popular majority that would be sufficiently unified to overwhelm the tiny yet all-powerful capitalist class. So, how do we come to terms with all the complexity? What insights and what proactive steps will be required in order to surmount the initially unavoidable, yet now steadily heightening, fragmentation of the popular forces? The response to these questions must be a collective one. If it is effective, it will ultimately take the form of a hegemonic Left project—one to which all who are not viscerally wedded to capitalism will be naturally drawn. The components of the response will come from at least as many directions as there are social and demographic differences among people. Some of the inputs will be individual, while others will be from groups. The forums within which they interact will be equally diverse, ranging from household, neighborhood, or workplace to national or international convergences. Some will be face-to-face while others will use all manner of electronic channels. Whatever the mix, there will be exchanges among the various levels. The point is that such processes are continuously unfolding already, but that the directions they have so far taken within the US are, in their totality, so chaotic that one is hard pressed to envisage any uniform message, let alone a clear outcome. On the other hand, however, there are conditions—both historical and geological—that are so universally relevant and yet so far beyond the

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c­ ontrol of any single human agent, that we will be compelled, sooner or later, to become aware of the common danger and, insofar as we recognize its scope, to see a narrowing of the range of available options that would assure our collective survival. No single intellectual intervention into this process can expect to offer definitive guidance. At the same time, however, any set of reflections that spans a sufficiently broad range of issues, while drawing out the connections between them, may at least advance some moments of the larger dialectic. That is my hope for the discussions in this book, which are the fruit of several decades of observation, reflection, and interaction.

The Perspective of This Book Having thought about or studied issues connected with socialism for most of my life (I was born in 1938), I can say that while my advocacy has been constant, the surrounding political environment has undergone major fluctuations. An account of these fluctuations—and my responses to them—will help ground and situate the arguments of this book. Long before I could imagine becoming politically active, I experienced the pall of the post-World War II repression that was unleashed in the US against any challenge to capitalist orthodoxy. This had several immediate effects on me during my teen years. It made me apprehensive about sharing my thoughts with anyone in authority. It meant that when I went to college, I could not find any organized group of likeminded students. And it meant that my education proceeded along two largely separate tracks— one defined by formal course-requirements and the other by my political drive. The latter in turn was nourished, at that stage, more by theoretical study and book-learning than by practical experience. I felt myself to be cut off from ordinary humanity, especially because my anti-capitalism stemmed not—as would be “normal”—from personal material hardship inflicted by the system but rather from the malaise of seeing myself as the recipient of unmerited privilege. Within this constricted framework, my readings broadened the basis for my opposition to capitalism8 but left me unsure about the alternative. The Soviet model—especially what I could then see of it—did not inspire me, and the threat of war between the two great powers created a feeling of 8  On my formative readings, see Victor Wallis, “Ecosocialist Struggles: Reminiscences, Reflections, and Danger Signals,” Capitalism Nature Socialism, 25:1 (March 2014), 44.

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helplessness. The first hint at a way out, on the global canvas, came with the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Cuba signaled that a break with the rule of capital did not necessarily have to produce the same outcome that it had done in Russia. (The Chinese case was not at that time within the scope of my awareness.) Cuba’s revolution was, at its outset, entirely self-­ generated—an unexpected intrusion into a hitherto bleak order, embodying the surprising (as it then seemed) assumption that every country had the potential to set its own course. The opening created by Cuba told me that political reality was less resistant to change than I had feared. Other factors as well helped draw me out of my pessimism. During my last undergraduate year at Harvard (1959–60), I studied US labor history and wrote my Honors thesis on “Sit-down Strikes.”9 Just as I was finishing this work, which highlighted the factory-occupations of 1937, a similarly defiant action erupted onto the world stage with the first lunch-counter sit-ins of the US civil rights movement. In those same months, I discovered the Monthly Review (MR; then in its 11th year of publication) in the Harvard library. Here was a journal that conveyed a solidly grounded socialist perspective in a jargon-­ free style that could perhaps bridge the painful communication-gap that I felt in talking to people unfamiliar with my positions. Not incidentally, MR was the first US publication to give a full analysis of the political direction that the Cuban Revolution was taking.10 It was at the suggestion of MR’s co-founder Paul Sweezy (in 1962) that I chose Latin America as the focus for my doctoral studies in political science. The year I subsequently spent in Chile (1966–67) strengthened my sense of being in tune with the majority of humanity, as I found myself for the first time at public events among thousands who resonated with the same calls that I did. By the time I returned home at the end of that year, I was able to enjoy similar occasions of solidarity in the US. The leftist wave of the 1960s was what finally freed me of concern that my politics might be seen as arising from personal “deviance” rather than from a general commitment to human decency (amplified by the evident desperation of particular populations and by the permanent threat of catastrophic war). It now no longer mattered how I had come to my views; they would henceforward define me as part of a project much bigger than  Unpublished text from 1960 available at Harvard College Library.  Leo Huberman and Paul M.  Sweezy, Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1960). 9

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myself. Even so, however, my particular trajectory set me apart, during the ’60s, from the newer cohort of activists, who were on average several years younger than I was. They were less restrained by the kind of fear that I had grown up with. They seemed to constitute a community, of which I was not a part. Although I had more background than most of them did in socialist theory and history, I was not well placed to apply my knowledge to their ongoing debates. I supported and even drew inspiration from the broad thrust of their efforts, but I played no leadership role, and I felt torn as the student movement—riven by conflict between direct-­action and base-building factions—blew apart. I carried my uncertainties with me when I joined the New University Conference (NUC) in mid-1969, after my first year of college teaching.11 This was a multi-tendency radical organization, which embraced a wider age-range than had the then-disintegrating Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). I felt at home in NUC, which inspired me when I lost my first teaching job (in late 1969) to take my second one at a state university in Indianapolis, where I would remain (apart from three foreign stays) from 1970 to 1994. In this conservative city of the US Midwest, I was re-immersed in some of the repressive 1950s culture, though now less at its mercy. NUC dissolved itself in 1972, but not before having helped me acquire a public platform in Central Indiana as an authority on Latin American issues—which became especially relevant in 1973 with the US-­ supported military coup in Chile; again in the 1980s with US interventions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Grenada, and finally in the early ’90s when the Soviet collapse prompted speculation that a similar fate might be in store for Cuba. Through most of my time in Indianapolis, I continued my activities in the face of a largely antagonistic atmosphere produced both by the local media culture and by the national priorities of the Reagan/Bush era. But thanks to my experience of the 1950s, none of this really surprised me. I no longer enjoyed the political “high” of the ’60s and early ’70s, but I retained the benefit not only of having experienced that fleeting (illusory?) moment of collective empowerment, but also of having developed, during my earlier years of isolation, some of the intellectual tools I needed to resist the once-again dominant paradigm of repression. I was now helped in this by two unforeseen openings. One was my discovery (in 11  For more detail, see my interview in Victor Cohen, ed., The New American Movement: An Oral History, in Works and Days 55/56 (2010), 263–272 (available online).

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Indiana University’s statewide catalog) of a course-listing for Marxist Theory. The class was not being offered at my campus, so I was able without any formality to make it my own and, in so doing, to greatly expand upon my earlier forays into its subject matter. The second opening resulted from what I now view as a compensatory effect of being in a city where the Left community was so small, namely, that my Chile solidarity work brought me into contact with local prison activists, thus introducing me to a dimension of vital support work which would later mushroom in importance while all along linking me to a constituency of irrepressible revolutionary commitment. Prospects remained grim, however, at the macro level. They suffered what seemed to many to be a coup de grâce with the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the ensuing collapse of East European Communist regimes and eventually (1991) of the Soviet Union itself. Somewhat to my surprise, much of the US Left felt initially crushed by the orgy of bourgeois triumphalism that these developments unleashed. It was widely claimed that socialism and Marxism had been decisively discredited. I recall having had to argue in two organizations—successfully, as it turned out—against dropping the S-word and the M-word (respectively) from their names. I was sustained in my conviction by having lived through the earlier period in which those concepts had been targeted. The general argument that I formulated in 198912 turned out to be my first contribution to the journal Socialism and Democracy, with which I subsequently worked editorially (from my new base in the Boston area), serving as managing editor from 1997 through 2017.13 A major portion of my own writing during this period (for various journals) focused on the ecological crisis; this is reflected in my above-mentioned 2018 book on ecosocialism. My editorial work with S&D, however, required me to delve into a wide range of other issues, as did also (1) the classes in Political Thought and Contemporary History that I have been giving since 1996 at the Berklee College of Music; (2) my participation, also dating from 1996, in the work of the Berlin-based Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism; (3) occasional commentaries on current issues that I was invited to write for online publications; (4) correspondence with prisoners and

 Originally published as “Marxism in the Age of Gorbachev” (Chap. 3, below).  See Suren Moodliar and Victor Wallis, “Socialism and Democracy: A Conversation,” Socialism and Democracy, 32:1 (2018). 12 13

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support of their struggles for basic rights; and (5) a lecture-series on US politics that I gave in 2018 at Renmin University of China.14 This whole complex of engagements can be discerned in the chapters that follow. In terms of the fluctuating relationship of my socialist outlook to current realities, my experience of the last two decades has revolved around the issues discussed at the beginning of this Introduction. In sum, the current period is one of heightened movement in opposed directions: on the one hand, an accelerated march to destruction; on the other, an alarmed but still only partial and inchoate mass awakening, still very much shackled by preoccupation with particularistic concerns. In addressing this situation here, we begin (in Part I) by looking at the basic body of theory that has evolved for guiding revolutionary movements. I first offer an overview (in Chap. 2) of the history and meaning of Marxism. Chapters 3 and 4 comprise arguments I developed in immediate response to the crisis surrounding the so-called “end of communism” (1989–91) and the ensuing drive, within the US Left, to jettison Marxism as a framework for combatting the persistent injustices of capitalist society. This leads into the issue raised at the international level (discussed here in Chap. 5) of how we may view the environmental crisis in relation to class struggle. Finally, I address in Chap. 6 some perennial questions of economic policy—notably, planning vs. the market—as they arose in the context of twentieth-century socialist practice. Part II presents some historical applications of the approach developed in Part I. Chapter 7 examines via case studies the core tension between revolution “from below” (at the level of the workplace) and “from above” (at the level of the state). Chapter 8, with its focus on “lesser evil” politics, explores the classic strategic question of when a revolutionary movement can be proactive and when it must prioritize defensive considerations. In Chap. 9, we attempt to interpret the course of the US Left through its successes and failures of the past half-century. Chapters 10 and 11 examine, through the medium of film, the depiction of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary moments in the recent history of, respectively, Black Liberation in the US and social revolution in Latin America. And Chap. 12 explores a century of US labor and social history through the prism of its musical expressions. In the concluding chapter, I reflect on how these experiences, in combination, may inform our collective response to the current global emergency.  Published in Wallis, Democracy Denied.

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PART I

Issues in Applied Marxist Theory

CHAPTER 2

Marx After a Century of “Real Socialism”

The Relevance of Marxism Today Karl Marx’s original contribution was to analyze human society on the basis of the historical development of class relations. As long as class differences exist in society, there will be the need to understand them—not only as a matter for scientific investigation, but also with the goal of ending the domination of one class over another (or others). The need for Marx’s particular approach arose in conjunction with the development of capitalism. In the case of earlier forms of class society, the relations of domination were visible and transparent. What was new under capitalism is that domination—in particular, the exploitation of labor— was hidden behind contractual and market relations. Bringing to light the structure of domination therefore required the kind of complex analysis that Marx undertook in Capital. Marx was the first thinker to view capitalist relations (1) as having developed historically, (2) as setting in motion definite global trends, and (3) as creating the conditions under which those relations would ultimately break down. This was in contrast to earlier thinkers (notably, Adam Smith) who viewed capitalist relations as the triumphant outcome of a process whereby markets, having been liberated from previous restraints, could routinely—and presumably forever into the future—perform the functions for which they were ideally suited.

© The Author(s) 2020 V. Wallis, Socialist Practice, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35066-6_2

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Under capitalism, in contrast to precapitalist societies, the market permeates every sphere of economic calculation—not only trade in goods and services, but also large-scale decisions about the organization of production and the availability of labor power. Marx’s analysis pertains to the entirety of capital’s sphere of operations. It provides the theoretical framework within which, by definition, capitalism is viewed as a whole, in all its manifestations. For as long as any trace of capitalist relations persists, therefore, “Marxism” will be relevant. I put the term Marxism in quotation marks here to reflect the fact that the concept is understood in a variety of different ways, in the context of different national experiences. What is more important than any particular version of Marxism, however, is the approach to social reality—and to political action—arrived at and formulated by Marx himself. In terms of “relevance for today,” those who have proclaimed that Marxism is “dead” have based their argument on the collapse—or reversion to capitalist practice—of particular regimes whose leaders purported to be implementing Marxian principles. What such arguments disregard is that all those regimes—notably, those of the Soviet Union and of the People’s Republic of China—evolved under particular conditions, both internal and external, that reflected the continuing weight (military as well as economic) of private and corporate capital. Thus, insofar as capitalist relations have been restored in settings where they seemingly had been transcended, we are once again confronted, on a global scale, with conditions similar to those that provoked the anti-­ capitalist movements in the first place. But there are several ways in which present-day conditions differ from those that prevailed before 1917, making future transcendence of capitalism at once more difficult and more urgent (globally) than in the earlier period. What defines the global urgency is now, above all, the environmental crisis—the absolute limits of resource-extraction (including most especially the supply of clean air, clean water, healthy oceans, and fertile soil) beyond which human survival is impossible. The basic insight here is that it is not possible to have infinite growth on a finite planet. Since capitalism is inherently defined by the goals of expansion and accumulation, this means that the rule of capital must necessarily be overcome if the world is to remain livable. We must clearly understand, here, that the “rule of capital” is not a question of whether decision-making lies in the hands of corporations as distinct from govern-

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ments; it has to do, rather, with the basis upon which priorities are defined. If a government, even while calling itself “socialist,” accepts economic goals entailing infinite expansion, then it is acting in accordance with the same dynamic that drives capital. In terms of Marx’s own relevance, it is important to note, as has been shown in great detail by John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett,1 that Marx himself, especially in his analysis of capitalist agriculture, strongly emphasized the contradictions between capitalist priorities and sound criteria for such matters as soil-conservation and waste-disposal. The practical requirements for addressing the environmental crisis can be worked out within a framework in which decisions about production are no longer made on the basis of profit-calculations but instead are made on the basis of long-term sustainability. This will mean combating certain capitalist-induced assumptions as to what is desirable (such as universal ownership of private cars) and replacing them with socially evolved plans on how to satisfy legitimate needs in ways that do not deplete the natural resource-base. This in turn requires a return to Marx’s conceptualization of the alternative to capitalism as consisting in the “society of associated producers.” On this point, we are brought to a second major way in which the present period differs from pre-1917, namely, in the whole accumulated experience of “first-epoch socialism” or, socialism of the twentieth century. This is a topic of vast complexity, but its essence can perhaps be summarized in two observations. 1. Capital was never completely vanquished by the regimes in question. It continued to exert its influence not only through military, cultural, and market pressures from abroad—reflecting in part the significant material advantages enjoyed by the capitalist/imperialist powers—but also through the continuing influence, within each supposedly socialist country, of sectors imbued with capitalist values, which were only waiting to be able to reassert their dominance. 2. Any new attempt at building socialism will have to be grounded, from the outset, in structures that institutionalize massive popular

1  John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009), ch. 9; Paul Burkett, Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective (Chicago: Haymarket, 2014 [1999]), ch. 9.

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participation in formulating and implementing day-to-day decisions about production, distribution, and consumption.2 Both the environmental crisis and the experience of twentieth-century socialism are illuminated by Marxian class analysis. Plunder of the earth’s resources is standard capitalist practice. So also is the political aim of distorting, suppressing, or destroying any manifestation of opposition to capitalist rule, whether a nascent revolutionary movement, a government seen as moving toward socialism, or an established revolutionary regime (even if installed through legal processes). A third major development of the past century must also be mentioned (in addition to the environmental crisis and to socialist movements or regimes), and that is the extraordinary technological transformations that have taken place. Some have been beneficial (e.g., progress in the treatment of illnesses), some have been clearly harmful (e.g., weapons of mass destruction), and many have provided the illusion of benefit while being harmful in the long run (e.g., blanketing the earth with private automobiles). Here again, Marxian analysis is important because Marx was acutely aware that science and technology are not neutral. The choice of where to look for solutions to practical problems is socially determined. Much of the technology developed under capitalism has been devised for such purposes as maximizing capitalist control over the work-process (e.g., through the assembly line) and over nature (e.g., through genetic engineering) and maximizing the numbers of commodities that could be sold. Seemingly benign inventions, as in the field of communications, may have unknown negative health-effects, may have disruptive impacts on human interaction, and may consume inordinate amounts of energy.3 The point here is that technology is a double-edged weapon. Marx recognized this, and his approach alerts us to ways in which society could collectively decide which technologies can be used to advantage (or developed further) and which ones should be rejected.

2  See Michael Lebowitz, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010); Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (Chicago: Haymarket, 2012). 3  See Victor Wallis, Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism (Toronto: Political Animal Press, 2018), esp. ch. 4.

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More generally, what is needed is to continually develop and apply the type of critique pioneered by Marx himself. If anything within the Marxist tradition deserves to be rejected, it would be certain types of strategic choice made by activists or power-holders that have led to political failures. Whether or not those choices should be blamed on Marxism is, in my view, not a worthwhile debate, because it does not affect the usefulness of Marxian analysis for understanding the broader framework within which all political activity unfolds. And in terms of political activity, Marx’s direct work, for example, in his organizing efforts for the First International (1864–72), again provides some valuable positive examples, encapsulated in his insistence that the revolution of the working class must be achieved by the workers themselves.4 Whether and to what extent this is possible in any period—with all the historical changes that may occur in the social make-up and geographical placement of the working class—will be for all of us to determine.

The Historical Experience of Socialist Revolutions When we come to consider the trajectories of particular countries, we must recognize that the original body of Marxist theory is always used by revolutionaries in a selective way. Part of such use may be legitimate adaptation, consistent with the criteria and the goals embraced by Marx. But it may also happen, in such a process, that Marx’s approach is fundamentally modified or even violated. Particular national experiences must be examined in the light of Marxist method. This has several implications. First of all, capitalist relations are global in scope. Therefore, any sizeable project to create an alternative system of relations will inevitably face a repressive response on the part of capitalist regimes. Second, the individuals who comprise the new leadership will inescapably embody, to varying degrees, personal aspirations as well as ways of dealing with people (especially in organizational matters) that reflect pre-revolutionary habit. Third, this means that, as Marx said of individuals, we cannot necessarily accept a regime’s self-characterization as a description of its true nature.

4  Karl Marx, “Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association” (1864); available in many collections, but see Marcello Musto, ed., Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014).

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My assessment of the Soviet experience is a mixed one. On the one hand, Soviet society made great material and cultural advances within a relatively short period of time, and its government to some extent provided a protective shield—including material assistance—to peoples around the world seeking to liberate themselves from imperialism. It also, during the Second World War, bore the decisive military burden—at enormous cost and with little help from its allies—in defeating the Nazi assault and ultimately crushing the Nazi regime. And yet the Soviet Union had negative impacts as well. The negative dimension emerged long before the regime’s final collapse, as the revolutionary leadership that came to power in 1917 was soon overwhelmed by the enormity of its tasks. Being incapable of generating sufficient active/ creative popular participation, it resorted to highly repressive methods to retain its hold on power, to industrialize rapidly, and to build its military capacity to repulse an anticipated foreign invasion. Moreover, lacking any support from other governments (prior to the transitory and imbalanced World War II alliance with the US and Britain), it exercised unwarranted power over the strategic decisions of Communist parties all over the world, with generally adverse and sometimes disastrous results. Regarding Marxism as such, I should note that although it was officially enshrined in Soviet ideology, it was applied in rigid and formulaic ways, for example, positing a crude equivalence between individuals’ social backgrounds and their opinions. Work relations were not transformed in ways envisioned by Marx.5 And, within the country’s leadership, the kind of open debate that was normal during the early years of the revolution was replaced by a climate of dogmatism and fear. Marx’s own early writings on alienation, which stressed the psychological impact of capitalist production on workers, were not widely diffused. This whole complex of factors tended to offset whatever material benefits the system had achieved for the people. In combination with the external factors I have mentioned, it led important sectors of the population to feel that they were not well served by socialism. With regard to China, I would offer a similarly mixed assessment. At the broadest level, I believe that Mao adapted Marxism, whereas his first 5  Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), 3–24; Michael Lebowitz, The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”: The Conductor and the Conducted (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012).

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major successor, Deng Xiaoping, repudiated Marxism. However, the very fact that Deng’s approach could so quickly gain ascendancy after Mao’s death points to the incomplete nature of the transformation that had been carried out under Mao’s leadership. Despite the extraordinary mobilization of the peasantry’s revolutionary zeal in the years leading up to 1949,6 there remained an enormous cultural gap between the upper levels of the party leadership and the popular base. On the one hand, the party included elements, personified by Deng, that did not share Mao’s identification with the masses. On the other hand, Mao’s own leadership style did not point toward developing the kind of regular participatory structures that would have enabled the masses to routinely and systematically guide the formulation of policy. Mao recognized the danger posed by those party-leaders whom he referred to as “capitalist roaders,” and he attempted to dislodge them by means of the Cultural Revolution (1966–69). The idea that culture needed to be transformed had a precedent in revolutionary Russia,7 but Mao carried it further. However, because of the lack of democratic structures, the process was one that consisted essentially of unleashing the fury of the masses and then, when the process had burst too far out of control, suppressing it. In this sense, both the initiation of the Cultural Revolution and its termination were steps taken entirely from above, reflecting the continuing absence of effective structural links—mechanisms of accountability—between the leadership and the base. With the masses once again pacified, with the “capitalist roaders” rehabilitated, and with continuous market-pressure from global capital, there was no longer any obstacle to the revival of capitalist-type economic practices in China and to the eventual consolidation of a class of large-property owners inspired by Deng’s widely propagated slogan, “To get rich is glorious.” The outcomes of this reversal include (1) integration of the Chinese economy into global financial markets, (2) the proliferation of foreign-­ owned corporations in China, (3) the extremely harsh working conditions 6  William Hinton, Fanshen: Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966). 7  William G. Rosenberg, Bolshevik Visions: First Phase of the Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984).

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in these enterprises, leading to alarming numbers of worker-suicides, (4) the reintroduction of fees for health services, (5) the consequent rising inequality, and (6) the fostering of a consumer culture including a mass market for private cars. Despite these capitulations to capitalist practice, there remain certain beneficial legacies of China’s socialist revolution. The antagonistic trends are being fought out within the current framework of Xi Jinping’s leadership. On the positive side has been official recognition of the ecological crisis, and consequent steps toward reforestation and promotion of solar energy. Also positive is China’s refusal to honor US embargoes on anti-­ imperialist regimes especially in Latin America. On the negative side are (a) the exploitative practices of Chinese private companies in other countries8 and (b) repressive measures taken within China against activists who, inspired by Marx and Mao, have supported efforts at working-class organizing.9 All socialist revolutions, including those whose regimes have survived, have come under extraordinary pressure—whether economic or military—from capitalist powers. Vietnam, even more than China, has largely restored capitalist practice. Beyond this, the toxic residues of the decade-­ long US military occupation have left the country and its people permanently scarred. North Korea, while resisting capitalist restoration, has done so at an unspeakably high cost. An estimated 20 percent of its population was killed and its industry demolished by US bombs (1950–53)—a fact too often forgotten in present-day US media coverage. The price paid by North Korea for its continuing resistance has been international pariah-­ status, economic hardship, and a harshly repressive regime. The case of Cuba remains distinctive, inasmuch as its revolution was partially shielded from external disruption, during its first few decades, by Soviet military and economic support. In addition, Cuba has been sustained politically by solidarity from the rest of Latin America, which has largely offset US efforts to isolate it. But the market pressure of capital 8  See the 2019 Netflix documentary, American Factory, about a Chinese-owned manufacturing enterprise in Ohio. 9  https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/11/students-assaulted-amid-crackdown-on-marxist-activism/. For background, see Jude D. Blanchette, China’s New Red Guards: The Return of Radicalism and the Rebirth of Mao Zedong (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).

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remains a powerful force, augmented more recently by redoubled US sanctions, and the clash between capitalist and socialist precepts remains a constant of Cuban politics.10

Gravediggers of Capitalism? What about the role of the working class in capitalist countries, and in the United States in particular? This question needs to be approached first at the level of the capitalist system as a whole, and then at the level of the particular history of the US. The role of gravedigger, as evoked in the Communist Manifesto, is one that the working class can potentially play. But capitalist power, as Marx and Engels already recognized, is global in scope—even though (as they also observed) the primary sites for workers to organize politically are within their respective national territories. We have already noted how capital, whether through the market or through political intervention, can continue to affect societies where socialist revolutions have taken place, and which are thus beginning to move out of the capitalist system. Needless to say, capital also causes changes within the regions in which it remains dominant. Most importantly, it shakes up the global geographical distribution of various occupational sectors. In Marx’s day, manufacturing industry—which, together with mining, has always generated the highest levels of working-class organization—was concentrated in close proximity to the centers of capitalist power. In two subsequent successive phases of history (partially overlapping, but also manifesting themselves at different times in different countries), the working class’s gravedigger function has been offset by factors that have weakened its capacity to organize politically. In the first of these phases, when imperialist power was at its peak, the profits accruing to the imperial centers were great enough to make possible certain material concessions to the working class, which in turn made the latter receptive to chauvinistic ideologies, whereby many workers identify more with “the nation” than with their own class interests. In the second phase, by contrast (especially since the 1980s), the proportion of manufacturing activity that remains in the imperial centers has been greatly reduced, as corporations have moved significant parts of their 10  See Al Campbell, “Updating Cuba’s Economic Model: Socialism, Human Development, Markets and Capitalism,” Socialism and Democracy, 31:1 (March 2017).

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operations to the formerly colonized regions of the world (in Asia, Africa, and Latin America), where wages are lower and environmental regulations less strict. In some of the former colonized countries, there have indeed been movements that have challenged capitalist power, with varying degrees of success. But such efforts are made difficult by various combinations of (1) severe restrictions on working-class organizing, (2) the instability of employment (sometimes, as in the Persian Gulf states, because the workers are foreigners without citizen rights), and (3) the vulnerability of any initially successful working-class forces—for example, the elected governments in Chile in the early 1970s and in Venezuela since 1999—to the kinds of disruptive external pressure I mentioned earlier. At the same time, the increase in manufacturing activity in the neocolonial regions reflects a huge reduction in the number of well-paying working-class jobs in the imperial centers. Although this creates discontent in these centers, the affected workers are typically less able—compared either to earlier generations or to workers in poorer countries—to organize on their own behalf. Union membership goes down, contingent or “precarious” jobs become more common, and workers are under pressure to find individual solutions. We thus find a somewhat contradictory situation in which workers are at once in a worse condition and yet at the same time are less prepared to respond to it politically. This may make them vulnerable to demagogic, xenophobic, and racist appeals. But it may also make them more open to moving in a positive political direction. Which of these outcomes prevails will depend on the particular mix of experiences and characteristics that have marked a given individual, a given workplace or neighborhood, or the wider culture. It will also depend on the approaches taken by the various political forces. In the case of the United States, the obstacles to class consciousness have on the whole been more severe than in other countries, although there have been moments of intense struggle. The US working class has been particularly weakened by the long history of racial divisions, shaped by the institution of slavery. Marx recognized the importance of this factor, as expressed in his celebrated statement (in Capital), “Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.”11 11  Capital, vol. 1 (Moore & Aveling translation) (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959), 301.

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That original racial division within the US working class has been repeatedly re-imposed, as steps toward overcoming it have constantly had to face new measures aimed at neutralizing any gains. Thus, although legal segregation was ended in the 1960s, its effects were perpetuated through extra-legal discrimination (in employment and housing), criminalization (via the “war on drugs”), disproportionate prison terms (based on discriminatory sentencing laws), disenfranchisement of former convicts, and other barriers to political participation (including voter-identification laws, gerrymandering, and failing to put sufficient numbers of polling places in densely populated districts).12 Who, then, will be the gravediggers of capitalism? All these developments, combined with the environmental crisis and with conditions of perpetual war, have modified the options available for challenging the rule of capital. There is still a common class basis to the rule of capital and therefore also to any movement opposing capital and seeking a socialist alternative. The basis for such opposition may still be understood as the working class, which remains a majority of the population in the US, as elsewhere.13 But given the displacements and the internal divisions I have mentioned, its political expression will have to develop along new paths. In the first place, the overcoming of capital has become, more than ever, an international project. Although initial challenges will still take place within particular countries, they will not survive without international solidarity. International awareness can draw strength from an understanding of the ecological dangers, which know no borders. (The fossil fuels that are burned in one place affect carbon levels worldwide; the melting of the polar icecaps affects sea levels everywhere.) International solidarity is challenged by conflicts over immigration. But insofar as immigration points to problems in the countries of origin— whether caused by environmental collapse, by civil war, or by externally imposed hardships (ranging from “free trade” agreements to “regime change” interventions)—it can stimulate, given the necessary political education, an awareness of the need to challenge all those conditions and practices.

12  See Victor Wallis, Democracy Denied: Five Lectures on U.S. Politics (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2019). 13  Michael Zweig, The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012).

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Secondly, the social and “racial” divisions within the imperial centers have fostered a heightened consciousness of injustice among the more oppressed groups, for whom the presence of all the other adverse conditions has created a greater receptivity to thinking in terms of common class interests rather than in narrow ethnocentric terms. Sectors of the population that do not suffer from the various special forms of oppression (whether based on “race” or on gender, sexual orientation, or other traits) must be prepared to welcome leadership exercised by individuals coming out of those experiences. To some extent, capital digs its own grave, by increasingly showing its incapacity to satisfy the basic needs of the majority of the world’s population. But this incapacity has to be recognized if the rule of capital is to be fought. More and more people in the US are gaining such recognition, as shown by their new receptivity to some form of socialist discourse. But now that socialism has been “placed on the table,” its true nature and requirements must be made clearer, with due attention to the experiences that have brought different sectors of the population to their present openness. This is a task for activists who can draw on Marx.

Toward Ecological Class Consciousness To be ecologically class-conscious means to understand that the struggle over the environment is a class issue. It is a class issue in the sense that capital has an interest in obstructing the measures that would be required in order to preserve or restore the health of the environment. Capital obstructs both the shift to alternative forms of energy and any effort to reduce total demand for energy. Although some sectors of capital are embracing “clean” forms of energy production (such as solar and wind), it remains true that so long as capital preserves its overall dominance, the drive to exploit fossil fuels will continue. The political will to curb this drive can only come from sectors of society that value our collective survival over preservation of the economic status quo. The most damning proof of the link between environmental devastation and the interests of capital emerged in 2015, when it was disclosed that Exxon Mobil’s own research team had found, in the 1970s, that burning fossil fuels causes global warming. This was several years before the danger became widely recognized. Exxon Mobil (the world’s biggest petroleum corporation) at that time made a policy decision to suppress

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this revelation; it even became, over the next few decades, one of the leading funders of efforts—very influential in the US—to portray global warming as a “hoax.”14 Given the enormous environmental chaos that has already taken place, as well as the even more extreme disasters that can be projected if there is not a radical change of direction, Exxon Mobil’s suppression of the truth and its campaign of lies can be viewed as a crime against humanity (and nature) of incalculable proportions. Although the fossil fuel industry is the most virulent center of anti-­ environmentalism, all sectors of capital share its general commitment to continued economic expansion, independently of any authentic human need. Other sectors (and the politicians who speak for them) may implement specific green technologies and may acknowledge, in the abstract, the desirability of stronger environmental policies. But there is no political will on the part of capital to support concrete ecological measures on the scale that is needed.15 To be ecologically class-conscious means, in practice, to spotlight the distinction between vague pronouncements in support of a healthier environment (which hardly anyone disputes) and serious proposals to reduce the human ecological footprint. Here is where we confront the need for reducing the total demand for energy. Each of the forms of energy has its drawbacks. Solar and wind power both have limitations in terms of the space they require, the steadiness of the energy-supply, and distances for transmission. In addition, the technologies are not without their own adverse side-effects (e.g., hazardous materials in the manufacture of solar panels; dangers posed by wind turbines to birds and bats).16 Although some of the consequent difficulties may be alleviated through technological advances, the notion that such sources offer unlimited safe energy is illusory. We therefore have to reconsider the whole “demand side” of the energy equation, and it is precisely here that capital poses the decisive obstacle, 14  See https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2019/06/26/exxon-climate-denial-americancouncil-science-health/. 15  Witness the opposition of the Democrat leadership to having one of the party’s 2020 nomination debates focus on the candidates’ environmental agendas. 16  See reports by the Union of Concerned Scientists on solar power (https://www.ucsusa. org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewable-energy/environmental-impacts-solarpower.html) and on wind power (https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/renewableenergy/environmental-impacts-wind-power).

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because in order to reduce the demand for energy, society must be able determine its production requirements through a political process—a process of informed democratic discussion—and not on the basis of market indicators and the profit motive. If everyone is to be able to live decently, then what must be reduced are those particular energy allocations which do not serve universal human needs: on the one hand, luxury consumption of the capitalists and their acolytes (for which there is an inexhaustible market), and on the other, the innumerable institutions and practices, whether private or governmental, that reflect the specific needs of capital. These include a vast security apparatus (military, police, the arms industry, prisons, private guards) as well as all kinds of commercial and financial services (banking, insurance, brokerage, lawyers, advertising) as well as the physical infrastructure (buildings, communication systems, hotels, business travel) on which those services depend. Aspects of the regular production cycle that reflect capitalist priorities rather than human need should also be kept in mind. Here, the reliance on private mechanized transport—cars and long-distance trucks, with their highways and parking lots—stands out, along with chemical-­ intensive, soil-depleting commercial agriculture, as well as all forms of planned obsolescence.17 An ecologically class-conscious agenda will be one which is able to target and ultimately break up that whole complex of activities and products whose sole function is to serve the interests of capital. The impetus to push for such an agenda comes from both the environmental crisis and the crisis of capitalism. Capitalism has always been marked by cyclical crises of expansion and contraction, but the long-run trend is one of consolidation (into ever larger corporate entities) and expansion (into every corner of geographical, biological, and even interplanetary space). But expansion cannot go on forever, and when it reaches its limit, a new and deeper crisis is unleashed. Is the environmental crisis a dimension of the capitalist crisis? One can say yes, insofar as the environment sets limits to capitalist expansion. But the environmental crisis is also greater than the capitalist crisis, in the sense that it calls into question not only a specific system of social relations, but also the very existence of the human species. In this sense, one would have to make the inverse statement and say that the capitalist crisis—that is, the  For fuller discussion, see Wallis, Red-Green Revolution, ch. 1.

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drive of capital to push beyond the limits set by its resource-base—is a dimension of the environmental crisis. In other words, capitalism has set in motion certain global trends that are radically changing the environment, to the point that we are entering a new geological epoch.18 The age of capital is the age of big industry. Addressing the environmental crisis involves calling “actually existing industry” into question. This is a hugely complex task, with no guarantee of success. What is clear, however, is that it cannot be done through the market.

The Challenge to the US Left The US Left, at present, is a disparate movement. It lacks coherent political leadership. There are many beginnings of such leadership, but no single formation has yet been able to take on that role. The background to this situation is partly given in the makeup and trajectory of the US working class. We have noted the racial abyss that has plagued it from the beginning. While there have recently been new steps toward healing the resulting disunity, they come at a time when, as we have seen, the objective bases for strong working-class organization have been undercut by the combined effects of technological development, “precarization” (sub-contracting of jobs through “temp” agencies), and the shift of significant production centers to other parts of the world. With these underlying conditions in mind, we can usefully review earlier attempts at forging an effective Left. The first was embodied in the Socialist Party (SP), formed in 1900. This party, with Eugene V. Debs as its five-time presidential candidate, enjoyed major successes—earning 6 percent of the presidential vote in 1912 and winning many local elections—until the wave of repression unleashed beginning in 1917, which included the imprisonment of Debs and the deportation of thousands of immigrant activists. The second major attempt was that of the Communist Party (CP). The CP never had as much electoral success as the SP, but it achieved considerable influence, especially during the Depression years of the 1930s, when it was a big player in the formation of industrial unions. In addition, going beyond the SP and building on the tradition of the IWW (Industrial 18  Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016).

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Workers of the World), it took major strides toward bridging the racial divide; indeed, its work in the dangerous conditions of the South—defying the vigilante violence of the Ku Klux Klan—helped prepare the ground for the civil rights struggles that would emerge in the 1950s.19 The CP’s potential was hobbled, however, by its uncritical adherence to the international line of the Soviet party. This led it, for example, to quash anti-fascist initiatives during the period of the Soviet non-aggression pact with the Nazi regime (1939–41) and then later, during the period of the US-Soviet wartime alliance, to block any working-class economic demands against capital. After 1945, the Soviet link also made the CP vulnerable to the discourse of super-patriotism and thus a transmission-belt for broader denunciations of the Left. The postwar anticommunist repression—known to later generations as McCarthyism—was perhaps the most sweeping such drive ever conducted within the framework of a constitutional (“democratic”) regime. It stigmatized Marxist analysis in a way that would inflame popular prejudice for decades. It was out of this setting that the New Left of the 1960s emerged—framed first by the struggle against racial segregation and then by opposition to the US war in Vietnam. In the attendant ferment, additional struggles came to the fore, representing other oppressed nationalities and other national revolutionary movements (beginning with Cuba), as well as the vital demands for liberation embodied in the women’s movement and in the movements of gay people, people with disabilities, and those suffering discrimination on the basis of age. These newly aroused constituencies had a profound impact on the political culture, winning successes around many particular demands, but they did not generate a cohesive political expression. Attempts in that direction were overshadowed by the urgency of immediate demands and, in the case of the student movement, by the contradictory yet complementary impulses toward ultra-democracy (with its suspicion of structures) on the one hand and unaccountable leadership on the other. The closest approach to a movement on the scale of the earlier SP and CP surges was that of the Black Panther Party (BPP)—which, while obviously rooted in a particular community, embraced a class analysis of capitalism and was open to alliance with other working-class constituencies. At its short-lived zenith, the BPP sold some 200,000 copies of its newspaper 19  See Robin D.G.  Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).

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every week. Launched to defend black people against police killings, it extended its reach with free breakfast programs for schoolchildren, free clinics, and its incipient “Rainbow” (multiracial) approach to organizing. Denounced by long-time FBI Director J.  Edgar Hoover as a grave threat to national security, the BPP was subjected to a more draconian suppression than any of its predecessors, culminating in the FBI’s outright assassination (in a December 1969 nighttime raid) of the young BPP leader Fred Hampton, who, while publicly embracing a Marxist analysis of racism (as “an excuse used for capitalism”), had launched the multicultural Rainbow approach in Chicago.20 Although the movements of the 1960s did not evolve into an enduring Left party, they nonetheless had a notable impact—in abolishing legal segregation, in hastening US withdrawal from Vietnam, in transforming the public image of oppressed groups, in creating a new generation of alternative media, and in discrediting the notion that the government represented the interests of the people. All this raised alarm signals in the ruling class, perhaps most clearly expressed in an influential 1975 report for the Trilateral Commission which spoke of an “excess of democracy” as threatening the “governability” of the country.21 Key measures were taken, over the next two decades, to weaken popular protest and to undo the gains of earlier generations. Democrats joined Republicans in this process, as the Democratic Leadership Council (founded in 1984), which sponsored future president Bill Clinton and future vice-president Al Gore, denounced “big government” (referring to social programs) and explicitly repudiated the party’s New Deal heritage. Steps taken (by one or other of the two dominant parties) included, among others: (1) firing striking federal employees, (2) reducing public assistance to the poor, (3) instituting the “war on drugs,” thereby establishing heavy police presence in poor communities, and (4) establishing mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug offenders. The latter three measures led to the US having the world’s highest rate of incarceration— concentrated, of course, among people of color. One can add to all this the further steps taken in more recent years, which include (5) extending 20  Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013), 292. 21  Samuel P.  Huntington, “The Democratic Distemper,” Public Interest, no. 41 (Fall, 1975), 36.

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mass surveillance, (6) using vaguely worded anti-terrorism laws to criminalize peaceful protest, and (7) introducing voter-identification laws (in various states) that would effectively disenfranchise many poor people.22 But no matter how far the ruling class goes in obstructing protest, its own conduct and policies continue to generate popular opposition. In response to neoliberal globalization, movements arose to challenge international “free trade agreements.” In response to corporate abuse and to the government’s global War on Terror, with its practices of “extraordinary rendition,” torture, and drone-killings, whistleblowers have leaked information that has significantly increased public awareness.23 In a slightly delayed response to the financial collapse of 2008, the Occupy movement sharpened the common political vocabulary by focusing on the inordinate power of “the 1 percent.” In response to the spread of poverty, low-wage workers have staged mass demonstrations demanding a living wage. In response to the environmental crisis, activists have induced universities and local governments to divest from fossil fuel industries. In response to the continuing epidemic of police killings (now often documented on video), “black lives matter” protests have drawn attention to the persistence of structural racism. And in response to mass incarceration and the brutality of prison administrations, a new generation of revolutionary organizers is being forged within the prisons. The overall political impact of these developments must be viewed as a “work in progress.” The complex electoral system, together with superimposed restrictions and a prodigious flow of cash to both the major parties, makes it difficult if not impossible for anti-capitalist parties to gain representation in public bodies. Most of the progressive changes that have been won, over the years, have been the result of pressure exerted from outside the formal institutions of government. Organizing is also hampered by the difficulty of sustaining a national movement when for many purposes the arena of demands must be the separate states, which in turn may differ significantly in their laws and in prevalent attitudes. In recent years, a rising trend in Left influence has been suggested by several developments. First was the election and re-election of an openly socialist candidate (Kshama Sawant) to the City Council of Seattle. Then came the unexpected flow of support in 2016 to Democratic presidential  For fuller discussion, see Wallis, Democracy Denied.  The work of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is particularly significant in this regard. 22 23

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candidate Bernie Sanders, who as (previously) an Independent had inveighed for decades against economic inequality and “the billionaire class.” Although Sanders defines his socialism in terms of the New Deal agenda of social reform, and although he does not challenge the imperialist premises of US foreign policy, the mere fact that he accepts “socialist” as a label has created a more favorable setting for discussing what this could really mean. A further development was the heavy influx of young members into socialist organizations in the wake of the 2016 victory of Donald Trump. The biggest of these, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), saw two of its members among a new cohort of progressive Congressional representatives elected as Democrats in 2018. Meanwhile, other avenues for advancing a Left movement are developing at a less visible level. In addition to political organizing within the prisons, I would note the growing diffusion of alternative media (including activist websites),24 the vitality of the cooperative movement, and the increasingly radical thrust of the Green Party, which, although enjoying little national exposure (being essentially ignored by the corporate media), has broadened its social base and could gain more attention to the degree that Democrats water down the demands of newly mobilized progressive activists. Of course, all these developments fall far short of constituting the kind of force that will be needed to supplant the rule of capital. But they at least signal a break with the previously reigning ideological conformity. An eventual revolutionary movement will be the outcome of a complex process in which such gradual steps lay the groundwork for dramatic and ultimately game-changing confrontations.

Toward an Ecological Socialist Society The fact that capital has kept its hold on power longer than Marx probably expected has made the task of transition more difficult. Compared to Marx’s time, there is much more now that has to be undone—not only some of the technological applications that we have discussed, but also the massive damage brought by war, hunger, and environmental devastation. On the other hand, we embark upon the process from a higher level of 24  See especially counterpunch.org, therealnews.com, democracynow.org, popularresistance.org, mronline.org, blackagendareport.com, truthout.org, commondreams.org, truthdig.com, economicupdate.libsyn.com, rootsaction.org.

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general awareness and also with due apprehension about some of the political approaches that need to be avoided. The urgency of a transformation can only increase, although this also magnifies the desperation of the ruling class to tighten its grip on vital resources, by means that include perpetual war. What more can we say, then, about the “gravediggers of capitalism”? We have looked at the working class and, in the US case, at its racial divisions, and we have noted the class basis for a pro-ecological political force. Beyond this, we need to say more about who will make up that political force, how it will be organized, how it will be able to take power, and how it will be able to govern in a manner consistent with its goals. Most of the answers to these questions will have to be found within the framework of particular countries, taking into account all their specificities. But there are a few points that seem to apply generally. We build here not only on Marx’s own work, but also on that of generations of activists, not all of whom have necessarily thought of themselves as Marxists. Marx’s particular contribution is important not so much for any explicit guidelines he gave as for his method of approaching issues and the example of his own work as an organizer. The initial point is that the movement has to be, in the words of the Communist Manifesto, “of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority.” This majority has to be, as Marx and Engels say there, “self-conscious,” which means organized. In particular, the various separate movements against oppression—the “new social movements” that arose in the 1960s—need to reach the stage of linking their struggles in light of a common class interest.25 Their participants can then play leading roles in defining the overall political mission of the working class, although the common struggle will also have to be joined all who share their class interest (i.e., including men, white people, and the hetero-normative). This more inclusive working class will be stronger and hence better equipped to constitute an independent political force. Current Left projects seem to be more aware of this requirement—the need to embrace and embody the demands of the separate oppressed groups—than were their counterparts in earlier generations. From the opposite direction, the separate groups have become more aware of the limits to what they can achieve without being part of a broader movement.

 See the discussion of intersectionality in Wallis, Red-Green Revolution, ch. 8.

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The obstacles to the working class taking power remain daunting, but at the same time there may be new openings. In the face of the manifest failure of capital to address popular needs, the space for a radical oppositional politics increases. As the old self-congratulatory rhetoric loses credibility, electoral victories of radical left-wing parties become possible. These parties will need to be organized, however, not only to conduct electoral campaigns, but also to educate, mobilize, and defend the population on a continuing basis, thereby holding their successful candidates accountable. Because of encrusted bureaucratic and military establishments, there remains a big leap from gaining elective office to taking full state power. Nonetheless, even transitory occupation of high office may permit the setting in motion of new popular institutions, such as Venezuela’s Communal Councils, which can keep alive the newly developed participatory capacities of previously marginalized populations. Given the increasingly severe military imbalance between the ruling class (with its armies and police) and the general population, any transfer of state power will depend more and more on an internal crumbling of the ruling class’s enforcement apparatus. I have in mind here the kind of desertions that Marx and Engels foresaw for a sector of the ruling class,26 and also those which historian Howard Zinn evokes in his chapter-title (in A People’s History of the United States), “The Coming Revolt of the Guards.” We can envisage a tectonic shift of loyalties. In Venezuela in the 1990s, this took the form of mid-level army officers joining forces with progressive civilian movements. In the US today, it is foreshadowed in the emergence of socially conscious whistleblowers within the military and the intelligence establishments.27 All such unforeseeable developments depend on the presence of a broad oppositional culture, which provides encouragement and a promise of support to those who, in defying state authority, risk ferocious reprisal. This wider popular movement must be nourished by continuous disclosure and analysis of state and corporate malfeasance. Fortified with the resulting insight, the movement will be strengthened in its commitment to safeguard whatever new order emerges if and when it is victorious. 26  “Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour,… a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class” Communist Manifesto, Part I. 27  See Victor Wallis, “Ordeals of Whistleblowers in a ‘Democracy,’” https://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/11/20/ordeals-whistleblowers-democracy.

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But what will be the shape of such a victory? A final issue posed here is the question of leadership. Marx’s notion of “associated producers” implies democratic—and, where possible, consensual—self-government, comparable to what is referred to, in workplace settings, as self-­ management. The core principle is universal participation—which in any case will be indispensable to the society-wide task of economic/ecological conversion. This is an approach to governing which, as we noted, has been put forward as an alternative to the ultimately unsuccessful experiences of twentieth-century socialism. On the other hand, the political force that will be required in the near term in order to dismantle the capitalist order (including the capitalist state) will inescapably have the aspect of a vanguard. This refers to the concentrated nature of the leadership that is required in order to turn a diffuse and variegated oppositional social movement into an effective political force. It is widely believed, on the basis of twentieth-century history, that there is an inherent antagonism between vanguard and democracy. One can certainly recognize that conflicting tendencies have crystallized around these respective principles. The emphasis on democratic self-management has been associated with anarchist views, according to which the new non-­ capitalist order must evolve directly from mass oppositional struggles, without going through the “detour” of state power. By contrast, the emphasis on vanguard leadership has been associated precisely with the requirements of taking over and running the state. What I argue is that these two approaches need to be seen as complementary and not necessarily antagonistic. Although there are obvious contrasts in their ways of handling certain practical matters, neither approach taken alone can be successful. While a vanguard is needed in order to dismantle the existing state, autonomous self-managed associations are needed—as “associated producers” implies—for running the new society. In order to overcome the apparent incompatibility between these two approaches, one has to insist on understanding that a genuine vanguard— as opposed to an elite which merely calls itself a vanguard—is defined by its organic grounding in the masses. This understanding was implicit in Lenin’s practice, with its insistence on paying close attention to the actual evolution of workers’ outlooks.28 But such concerns are often overlooked by parties claiming to honor Lenin’s legacy.  See Lenin, What Is to Be Done? (1902), Section II.

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The challenge everywhere, then, will be to constitute both a mass movement and a vanguard, with the latter accountable—structurally as well as organically—to the former. This is a distinct project for the twenty-first century that could take it beyond the achievements of the twentieth.

CHAPTER 3

The End of First-Epoch Socialism and the Problem of Transition

The reflections that follow express my response to the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 1989) in the immediate aftermath of that world-shaking event (with minor adjustments through June 1990). I believe that this argument remains of interest now, thirty years later, as an exercise in viewing “the present as history,”1 that is, applying historical analysis to the forces currently at play in order to project future possibilities. The purpose of these reflections is to put the momentous upheavals through which we are now living [in 1989–90] in the context of a longer view of history and also to suggest their implications for movement-­ building in the near future; the method of exposition is one which stresses the organic connections between history and theory. To give readers some hint as to where this will lead them, I offer the following brief menu of my operating assumptions: (1) the problems facing Marxism are not new but only more starkly posed; (2) there is much remaining to be understood about socialism as a product of capitalism; (3) how socialism can be a product of capitalism and yet also be a new system is a question that takes us back to the core of Marxist method; (4) a renewed attentiveness to this core points the way to a badly needed mutual enrichment of Marxism and existing movements for social change in the United States.

1  Paul M.  Sweezy used this phrase, quoted from György Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, as the title for a collection of his own essays, The Present as History: Essays and Reviews on Capitalism and Socialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1953).

© The Author(s) 2020 V. Wallis, Socialist Practice, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35066-6_3

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Victory in Defeat? The old phrase from Dickens about “the best of times/the worst of times” applies well to socialism as we enter the last decade of the twentieth century. Perhaps, though, one should reverse the order and put the bad news first. The bad news is all too familiar. The failures of “real socialism”—most notably, its authoritarian/repressive dimensions—have been a burden to socialists everywhere for a long time. Almost equally burdensome has been the ability of capitalism to either repress or absorb or incapacitate its radical opposition within the industrialized countries. Both these handicaps seem now to have been reinforced. More specifically, much of the discontent that we acknowledged to exist in the socialist countries has now taken shape as a rejection not just of bureaucratic rule, but even of the idea of socialism.2 The gloating of capitalist governments and media finds a disturbing echo in the reactions of many people whose interests are quite different. The effect, at this level, is to strengthen the capitalist status quo. For a long time, the only factor on a world scale that could puncture all this was the resilience of the people of the Third World. More recently, however, counterrevolution seems to have been getting the upper hand, if not by complete overthrow (as in Grenada), then by sustained sabotage (as in Nicaragua and Mozambique). A particular consequence of the changes in the socialist world is the weakening in that quarter of traditional international solidarity. Revolutionary internationalism increasingly gives way to considerations of cost and to a desire for the official goodwill of the United States. The result is that newly established revolutionary regimes may find less help than they need in trying to defend themselves against external attack. All this is on top of the physical weakening of potentially revolutionary populations by the effects of their worsening material situation. An oppressive status quo thus seems to be gaining in strength in ways that have nothing to do with any capacity on the part of those in power to 2  I use the terms socialism and socialist sometimes in a loose sense and sometimes in a strict one. The double usage is inherent in the complexity of the phenomenon, but the particular sense intended at any given moment should be clear from the context. The “loose” sense of the term refers to any arrangement in which the major means of production have been taken out of private or corporate hands; the “strict” sense entails the additional requirement that the control of large-scale decisions should be genuinely social, that is, exercised through participatory mechanisms embracing the entire society.

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meet the actual needs of the people they control. All the while, depletion of the world’s natural resources continues unchecked. The dramatic events of November 1989, climaxed by the opening of the Berlin Wall, seem to close out an epoch that began in November 1917. The question we must begin by asking, however, is whether the intervening 72 years constitute the epoch of socialism or only the first epoch of socialism. Despite the apparent stampede away from socialism that is occurring even at popular levels throughout the former Soviet bloc, there is a longstanding answer that continues to point in the opposite direction: To call the recently elapsed period “the” epoch of socialism is to imply that capitalism has suddenly gained the capacity to solve all its own problems. This observation in turn recalls a larger point, which underlines more than anything else the continuing relevance of Marxism. It is, that the case for socialism has never depended on what might or might not be done in its name by those claiming allegiance to its principles. This is not to say that the leaders of failed revolutions should be held blameless, or that their failures should not concern us. The point is simply that the necessity for socialism exists at a more fundamental level, pertaining to the unmet needs of a majority of the human race. A false start may mark a whole historical period, but this still does not justify resignation. The one irrefutable argument for socialism has always been that the alternative is, for the vast majority of people, much worse. What was worse in Marx’s time was the intolerable set of conditions to which the working class was subjected; what is worse today, on top of all the other problems of contemporary capitalism, is the juxtaposition of Third World poverty with the continued voracious devouring of the earth’s resources in the name of economic growth (with “socialist pollution” being simply the extension of its capitalist counterpart, minus the large-scale opposition movements that have arisen in the industrialized part of the capitalist world). Although the exact direction of this evolution could not have been foreseen in Marx’s time, what could be seen—and what he did see—is the general pattern according to which capitalism “solves” each successive problem only by putting a more severe one in its place.3 Some of the original problems (or crises) along with their false solutions have long been recognized within the Marxist tradition. The classic 3

 Communist Manifesto, Part I.

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example is the problem of overproduction, “solved” by imperial expansion, which then eventually provokes wars of national liberation. Here, however, I would like to focus on the crisis/response sequence associated with the appearance and the challenge of a practical socialist alternative. It is still common, even on the left, to describe the unfolding of socialist revolutions without primary reference to the capitalist context in which they arise. To the extent that this is done, all the failures (and even crimes) of the resulting regimes will be attributed in some measure to socialism itself or—not much differently—to an autonomous group of supposedly self-interested revolutionary leaders with whom the socialist project is identified. What is still not widely enough understood is the capitalist contribution to the failures ascribed to socialism. This contribution can take many different forms. What we are most familiar with—though more in a narrative sense than in a theoretical one—is the external military and economic aggression in the immediate aftermath of revolution. But there is much more. There is the entire formative role played by capitalism in the internal make-up of the revolutionary alliance. This can include everything from individual material ambitions on the part of those involved (be they political leaders, technical personnel, or workers) to circumstances constricting their ability to think or act with the necessary level of understanding. Once one begins to contemplate the range of factors that can be encompassed by such an approach, one begins to appreciate the extraordinary difficulty of any genuinely revolutionary transformation coming about. If a breakthrough seems possible in one sphere—for example, through the circumstance of a power-vacuum—it can be offset in some other dimension by the insufficient preparation of the revolutionary forces. On the other hand, if the prior preparation of these forces is too conspicuous, their advance may well be blocked by pre-emptive acts of repression. In some instances—for example, Guatemala in the 1970s—such crackdowns may even be undertaken to block any possible preparatory process. This kind of reflection should remind us of several things. Most generally, it brings us back to a focus on the roots of our theory of revolution. And in practical terms it should prepare us to discover that the full unfolding of the revolutionary process will be marked by a level of intricacy, unpredictability, and paradox that continually outstrips all prior expectations. At a time of rampant bourgeois triumphalism, however, the importance of examining world events in this way can hardly be overstated. The ­alternative is to reinforce the basic assumptions of anticommunism, which,

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in their social-democratic variant, call for the decomposition of any coherent vision of social transformation and its replacement by a hodgepodge of socialist proposals grafted onto a presumedly indestructible capitalist framework.

Dialectics of Transition The most important aspect of our return to “first principles” is the understanding that it refers not so much to unrealized visions as it does to insufficiently recalled methods.4 We are all aware of what is perhaps the biggest unfilled gap in Marx’s original projection of the transition to socialism. On the one hand, he articulated the sense in which capitalism was from its very outset a global system, cutting across all national boundaries. On the other hand, at the same time—and quite rightly—he referred to the actual unfolding of revolutionary struggles in their respective national contexts. What neither Marx nor any of his followers contemplated before 1917 was the coexistence and interpenetration of capitalism and socialism on a world scale. This is the larger process within which the spectacular recent events need to be viewed; but the method for doing so is suggested by Marx’s own structural guide, the dialectic.5 The dialectic as used by Marx is a thought-process that emphasizes the following phenomena: (1) the relation of the subject to its environment, (2) the relation of part to whole, (3) the tension (“contradiction”) or movement involved in such relations, and (4) the resultant transformation of living entities. Because of a common tendency to think of the dialectic as some kind of disposable metaphysical decoration, it is important to explain in practical terms why it is relevant to the theory of revolution or—at a global level— of the transition from capitalism to socialism. The core of this process is the revolutionary agent. In Marx’s terms, it is the class of people from whom all human attributes have been stripped, but which is nonetheless— both despite and because of this condition—the only class that can lead humanity to a higher level of existence. 4  On the importance of method, see György Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971). 5  See Bertell Ollman, Alienation: Marx’s Conception of Man in Capitalist Society, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 52–69.

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The problem is to understand how any human being—or any class of human beings—can have, as does Marx’s proletariat, both these aspects at once. How can an individual or a class be—to use a phrase coined for an earlier revolution—both nothing and everything? The answer to such a question cannot possibly be simple, but it has two essential aspects. The first involves seeing why the question itself is inescapable; the second involves tracing the general outlines of the process by which one condition develops into the other. These two aspects of the answer, in turn, are themselves interdependent. In the case of Marx’s proletariat, the question is posed by the sheer extremity of the situation in which individual working people are placed (e.g., “What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal”6). On the one hand, this situation effectively negates the humanity of real human beings—a contradiction that elicits chronic instability and violence. On the other hand, there is no one other than the victims themselves who can have both the will and the numerical power to bring the situation to an end. For this reason, no matter how impossible the predicament might seem, there is no way to avoid looking to the proletariat itself as the only agency that can have the power to overcome its powerlessness. The actual process through which the proletariat’s power can develop is an intricate one, but Marx gives a preliminary idea of its components. They include: (1) the technological imperatives that bring the workers physically together; (2) the laws of motion of capital, which assure periodic disruptions of otherwise deadening routines; and (3) a continuing supply of individuals from various classes (including the proletariat itself) who together have the time, the experience, the education, the persuasive power, and the resources to facilitate the workers’ progression in class consciousness. The overall process is by no means unilinear. It entails a multitude of specific advances, each of which, depending on its larger context, may end up either accelerating or pacifying the movement as a whole. The movement also suffers setbacks, although the cost of inflicting them may add to the strains upon the established order. But in either case—that is, whether the movement is advancing or retreating—the dynamic is one in which the

6  Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (available in many editions), section on “Alienated Labor.”

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organization (or any of its members) interacts with the social environment in which it has arisen. Having here sketched this dynamic with reference to the “classic” problem of class consciousness (explaining the politicization of the working class or of its individual members), I would now like to show how it applies to the current question of the way capitalism interacts with socialism on a world scale. When Marx wrote of the origins of capitalism, he used the image of a new social order developing within the womb of its predecessor. This image is fruitful to our present concerns in at least two ways. First, it evokes a transition that has the dual aspect of gradual evolution (gestation) and climactic emergence. Second, it points to those ways in which the new society is both generated and conditioned by the old. In the case of the transition to socialism, however, the image becomes misleading if carried too far. The difference has to do, on the one hand, with capitalism’s globalizing character—its boundless appetite for accumulation—and on the other, with socialism’s attribute of being the first system since the beginnings of class society to entail placing power in the hands of the majority. As a result of this combination of traits, capitalist social relations impinge on a maturing socialism not in the manner of a superannuated parent that may eventually make peace with its offspring, but rather in the manner of a desperate enemy for whom the success of the new creature would spell total ruin. It has often been noted that socialism is the first social-economic system in history to be conceived of in theory before being introduced in practice. What is less often remarked upon but no less true, however, is that capitalism is the first system of class rule to be globally integrated and to have, as a result, a conscious worldwide strategy for countering threats to its hegemony by any means necessary and wherever they might arise. Whatever the internal debates about this strategy and however it might dissimulate itself, it is this circumstance that sets the framework within which the socialist project must work itself out. We are indeed faced with a predicament comparable to the one Marx uncovered with reference to the proletariat. The stripping of human attributes from the worker finds its counterpart in the unimaginable accretion of power that has gravitated on a world scale—since Marx’s time—to the capitalist class as a whole. It is not possible to understand socialism’s setbacks or to assess their implications without a full awareness of this factor.

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The power of capital presents itself in both military and economic terms. Its major specific expressions are: (1) the threat of annihilation, (2) the promise of technological development, (3) the pull of the market, and (4) the diffusion of an atomized culture. The cumulative impact of these resources may well give capitalism the appearance of being invincible. I hope to show that this is not the case, but we must first go a little further in describing the exact nature of what we are up against. The annihilation of humanity through nuclear war is of course only a last resort, doubtless “unintended” by all concerned. But the commitment to maintaining such an option reflects a conscious choice of priorities at the highest level. The nuclear threat is needed, from this point of view, principally because there is no assurance of success for lesser military actions—actions which, if they run their course, will themselves spell disaster for particular revolutions (whether by outright suppression or, as in Vietnam, by “defeat in victory” through devastation of the social fabric). In other words, even if humanity as a whole is spared, the nuclear threat remains as a shield behind which the US government may carry out any localized military intervention with impunity. Technology, in its capitalist guise, strengthens capital in several ways. First, it reduces the strategic importance of certain otherwise critical categories of people, notably, skilled workers in particular locations. Second, and related to this, it makes possible the building of worldwide economic infrastructures that cannot easily be taken over in any single place. Third, more routinely, it can be used to bring about a degree of centralization which, even in the event of a transfer of ownership, would encourage the kind of power-concentration that would make a capitalist comeback more likely. Finally, and most immediately, the real and imagined benefits of technology have from the beginning exerted a powerful attraction on revolutionary leaders, inducing them to modify their priorities not only—as in Lenin’s case—with regard to the structure of industrial enterprises,7 but also more generally, in terms of their willingness to give private foreign capital a major role in their economies. The impacts of the world market and of capitalist culture flow along the same lines as that of technology. All three of these power channels are the continuing expression of the historic advantage enjoyed by the advanced 7  Lenin, in his 1918 article, “On the Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government,” called explicitly for the application of draconian capitalist methods to the management of production enterprises.

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capitalist world over backward and besieged revolutionary Russia. What needs to be stressed here, in terms of explaining why the initial capitalist lead has not been reduced, is that the power resources that work for capital internationally—even in relation to supposedly post-capitalist countries— are the same as those that it uses in maintaining its hegemony in its home base. Throughout, there is a subtle combination of seduction and coercion, with the latter being able to draw even on military means if necessary. As for the seduction, we find a neat complementarity between real material rewards for potential managers and fantasy-wrapped pacification for the masses. Where, in all this, can we find a weak spot? Or, thinking back to our original formulation, how will it be possible, given socialism’s limited foothold in a previously all-capitalist world, to break through the commanding position of private capital in the world economy? And by what process might capital’s overarching military threat be neutralized?

The Part and the Whole It will be helpful to begin our process of “recovery” by extending our parallel between the situation of socialism and that of the working class or the individual worker. In both cases we have to ask the same question: how can an idea—or a class or a person—which is negated or suppressed by the existing system gain the attributes it needs in order to be able, for its own part, to define a new system? In the case of the worker, we were able to note—drawing on Marx— certain specific counterweights to the structures that brought about proletarianization in the first place. Going a little further, we may reflect on a suggestive aspect of working-class history, namely, that despite the implicitly revolutionary character of working-class interests (in the sense of their opposition to the interests of capital), it is nonetheless true that in the actual course of working-class organization, what first comes to the fore is the activity of certain particular sectors around certain particular—and by no means revolutionary—demands. There has been a longstanding debate within Marxist tradition over how these necessary initial stages of working-class organization relate to the process of social transformation. It is now generally recognized that the connection is a complex one: on the one hand, trade union struggles do not directly lead to revolution, but on the other hand, no revolutionary process can begin if the more limited struggles are not first undertaken.

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Whether or not the smaller battles lead into the larger one depends on a host of factors, such as: (1) the size of the organized sectors and their strategic position in the economy, (2) the attitudes and culture of these same sectors, (3) links between unionized workers and the rest of the labor force, (4) the general character of the established regime, and (5) the political insight and effectiveness of the revolutionary party and its leaders. The parallel question that we now need to address is, given an initial socialist economy within an otherwise capitalist world, what determines whether the socialist sector will grow or whether it will shrink? As with the individual worker who may or may not become class conscious, and as with the union organization that may or may not become part of a revolutionary movement, the initial socialist economy—or socialist bloc—may in varying circumstances and to differing degrees either advance or retard, by its own behavior, the process of socialist development in the world as a whole (including within its own borders). The point just stated may seem so obvious as not to be worth making, but the extent to which it is overlooked, even on the left, is quite remarkable. If particular individuals or organizations become less revolutionary, this is seen as something that can be explained by careful analysis of the relevant histories and environments. If whole populations, on the other hand, seem to be drawn to capitalist practices, this is readily taken to signify some kind of vindication of those practices. A number of factors are reflected in this reaction. One is simply the influence of the bourgeois media, with its constant equation of the laws of the market with the will of the people. More important within the left is a disposition to sympathize with any economic demand that seems to attract mass support, particularly when—as in the early stages of Polish Solidarity— this support comes from organized workers who see themselves as reacting against authoritarian structures. Perhaps most important, though, is the presence of a prior illusion according to which the viability of socialism as a political goal entails—at least on the global canvas—a linear advance in its direction. If one takes for granted such a linear progression, then from the moment that it is violated, one is hard put to find any sense at all in moving beyond what is given (except of course in purely patchwork fashion). As the expectation of a quick march to Utopia dissolves, the alternative appears as one of largely arbitrary choices. Here once again, in the stark polarity of ordered advance versus improvised or “pragmatic” retreat, we see the absence of dialectical thinking. With this lapse, the whole s­ tructural

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situation that put socialism on the agenda in the first place is rather easily forgotten. In effect, an all-or-nothing approach has been taken, and the inevitable disappointment has overshadowed any recollection of the contradictions of capitalism. Returning to our initial question about the balance of advances and setbacks between 1917 and 1989, I would like to sketch the outlines of a response based on a dialectical approach to the evolution of socialism out of a capitalist matrix. I will begin by recalling how this question was initially posed and will then, in the next section, try to draw out the insights it offers for the present period. The kind of approach I have in mind has not been the subject of widespread consideration since the very earliest years of Soviet history, when it was called forth by the shock—for the Bolsheviks—of seeing that the rupture of capitalism’s “weakest link” did not bring with it the collapse of the system as a whole. At that time, in the Soviet debate over “socialism in one country,” the incongruity of a socialist regime in a capitalist world was brought clearly to the fore, most notably by Trotsky. But once such a regime was decisively consolidated, under Stalin, analysis was replaced on all sides by varying doses of praise and condemnation. What remained scarce, at least in polemics that reached a large audience, was a willingness to look at the negative aspects of the Soviet regime not just as something to be condemned, but also as a moment in the larger process of transition. With this perspective, one could note what was indeed new and promising about the Soviet effort (as did E.H. Carr in his 1946 lectures)8 while at the same time, even more importantly, seeing the associated disasters as reflecting—at least indirectly—an intensification in the global war waged by capitalism against anyone who would challenge it. Given the utterly uncompromising commitment of the capitalist class to its own survival, as well as the extraordinary level of violence it has shown itself ready to unleash even in its intra-class rivalries (e.g., the two world wars), it is almost impossible to imagine socialism’s initial breakthrough as entailing anything less than a sea of devastation. The massacre that accompanied the suppression of the Paris Commune offered an eloquent warning. There can be no doubt that international capital would readily have inflicted a similar fate on the Bolsheviks. If the world’s first socialist revolution survived at any level, it was because Russia uniquely 8  Delivered at Oxford University and published in Edward Hallett Carr, The Soviet Impact on the Western World (New York: Macmillan, 1947).

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combined an exceptionally vast territory with an exceptionally weak domestic capitalist class. What the Soviet regime had to surmount is insufficiently recognized in most current discussions. I refer not just to the international military assault in the immediate post-revolutionary period (1918–21), but also to the sustained isolation and threat of attack during the next two decades— which supplied the context and the rationale for Stalin’s brutal approach to industrialization—followed finally by the catastrophe of the Nazi invasion: a bloodletting that the capitalist democracies for three years left unrelieved by any attack on Hitler’s Western flank. Such was the setting for the first three decades of socialism on a world scale—with the ensuing period taking off under the shadow of the US nuclear threat. It is not meaningful to speculate on whether there might have been a “better” site for the initial socialist breakthrough or, in a similar vein, whether Russia itself might have had a smoother experience if its capitalism had been more highly developed. Under such conditions—that is, if the Bolsheviks had not “seized the time”—it is equally possible that the breakthrough would not have happened at all. Some might argue that socialism would be better off now if this had indeed been the outcome. Even to think in such terms, however, is to assume that the prospect of an eventual socialist victory is unaffected by what capitalism does in the interim. With or without socialist revolutions, capitalism continues its processes of exploitation, accumulation, and resource depletion in whatever regions it finds available. Where possible, it also atomizes, depoliticizes, and incapacitates the incipient popular base of any radical opposition. To block its operations even partially is to weaken it globally. However negative the first break in its hegemony (referring here to Stalinist rule), the very presence of such a counterweight created the space necessary for healthier revolutionary processes in other parts of the world.

Are We Closer to Socialism or Further Away from It? The dialectics of a divided world—part socialist, part capitalist—are extraordinarily complex, but it is only by viewing each part in its interaction with the other that we can begin to understand what occurs in any particular region. It is important to stress that the division in question

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exists not just between countries but also within countries. And within a given country, the division may arise not just between classes but also within classes. This is true regardless of whether or not the particular country has gone through a formal socialization of property relations. The usefulness of this method of approach can be seen in several ways. Most fundamentally, it corresponds to the real interpenetration of global and internal social processes that has prevailed since capitalism established its dominance worldwide in the period before 1917. Secondly, it allows us to view the phenomenon of capitalist breakdown in a properly nuanced way: not as an either/or question (even within any given country), but rather as a larger process in which prolonged “survival” for capitalism may indeed be possible, though with what we might see as a social “surcharge” in terms of its intensified depredations. Thirdly, it allows us to make sense of cross-system influences in both directions, with due attention to the particular sectors of the populations that are most likely to be responsive. In this context, it can well be asked on what basis we might have any reason to expect that the overall struggle would tilt more in one direction than in the other. The struggle involves a known quantity on the one hand and one that is still not fully defined on the other. What is known is the set of imperatives and enabling mechanisms that characterize the operations of capitalism. These push inexorably—with a shorter ecological time-limit now than in Marx’s day—toward an all-encompassing crisis. What is not known is whether the responses to this process—at every level and throughout the world—will prove adequate to the task of bringing it to a halt. The balance up to this point is by no means conclusive. One might say that each side in the struggle has had certain successes against the other. But if we compare the total situation at present with the total situation in 1917, there are some grounds for hope. What is needed in order to see this, is an awareness of the complex ways in which the socialist response— the “unknown” factor above—can develop. Such awareness depends on seeing the various national or local expressions of this response not only as they are conditioned by capitalism, but also as they affect each other. So much of what is seen as negative in socialist experience is based on what happened in Russia, that we could not avoid discussing all the ex post wishes that there might have been another route. By reminding ourselves, however, of the total framework of what was done, we have seen that the notion of some “ideal” initial breakthrough lacks any basis in the realities of capitalism. What we can now say is that the real breakthrough, with all

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its agonies, has been essentially completed. I stress the limited implications of the term breakthrough; it means no more than a first step. But this does not diminish its momentous character. It shows future revolutionary movements something of the conditions under which victory is possible, while in its failures, it highlights those aspects of human conduct as developed under capitalism—whether in leaders or in ordinary people—that require the most concerted efforts at transformation. The period of the breakthrough—what I earlier suggested calling the first epoch of socialism—is inherently contradictory, and so also is the period in which it is brought to a close. The contradictions of the breakthrough itself include all the legacies and assaults of the capitalist environment as they impinge upon the ostensibly revolutionary societies. In the post-breakthrough period, these contradictions persist while new ones emerge. The essence of this new period lies in the dismantling—in at least a major part of the “socialist world”—of all the political mechanisms specific to the initial siege-period of a revolutionary regime that is surrounded by hostile powers. This is the process known as glasnost. While the glasnost idea itself is ideologically neutral, its implementation is not. The question that arises has to do with the structures within which the new openness will be practiced. Will free debate be injected into institutions of popular power (whether new or old), such as neighborhood committees, workers’ councils, or other grassroots organizations, newly structured to enforce accountability at the national level? Or will it rather be channeled—on the model of bourgeois democracy—into governmental institutions that reduce the role of the masses to one in which they merely express leadership preference through the ballot box? On this point, the balance of the struggle seems to be pointing clearly in a counterrevolutionary direction. In effect, in all the countries in which the siege mechanisms are coming down, it seems that the experience of living under them for so many decades has led to their being identified in people’s minds with the socialist institutions that to varying degrees depended—under the circumstances—upon their powers of enforcement. The demand for an end to repression thus turns, sometimes almost imperceptibly, into the demand for an end to socialism. In the political sphere, there is an uninformed and correspondingly reverential admiration for Western political institutions, based on the assumption that multiple parties (and often also direct presidential elections) provide guarantees of democratic accountability. In the economic sphere, there are the c­ ontinuing

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lures of capitalism that we have already noted, along with well-placed strata ready to turn some of those lures to their personal advantage. As they quickly seize such opportunities, we find the privileges associated with bureaucratic status being reconstituted—partly for the bureaucrats themselves and partly for enterprising former outcasts—as the privileges of wealth. But the story does not end with such setbacks. The big picture as of 1989 shows considerable advances for socialism compared with 1917. What stands out most in this regard is the dramatic improvement in mass living standards brought by revolutionary policies in Third World countries, especially China and Cuba. Also noteworthy, despite the ambivalent social results, has been the ability of revolutionary forces to stand up, on several occasions, to direct military onslaught by the major capitalist powers. Closely connected with this, though not limited to victorious struggles, has come a worldwide culture of resistance and solidarity, on which any future movement for socialism will be able to draw. Less dramatic but still relevant are the social gains brought by expanded public-sector services in advanced capitalist countries. Even though such gains did not eliminate the class power of capital, they are justly credited to the self-­ organization of the working class and they reflect a partial application of socialist principles. Paradoxically, socialism can also claim some advances from the very events in the former Soviet bloc that so many have seen as signaling its undoing. The greatest advances have to do with the impact of these events upon the capitalist world. While it is true that the immediate economic impact of recent events is like a windfall for the interests of capital (the sudden addition of a whole new region for the transnationals), the political impact is by no means so clear. In the short run, it might be seen as reinforcing the capitalist ideology of equating democracy with free markets, but the longer-run political impact includes several other considerations. First, the process by which the Communists have been relinquishing power seriously undermines right-wing stereotypes of a militaristic totalitarianism comparable to that of the Nazis. It thereby reduces the credibility of the fear factor—“better dead than red”—in anticommunist ideology. Why should anyone accept the end of the world in order to block an outcome which, even if undesirable, is still subject to reversal? While this is not itself a positive argument for socialism, it could have considerable impact in reducing public support for repressive forces in capitalist society.

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Secondly, the end of Soviet armed intervention in neighboring countries has deprived capitalist governments of their biggest official enemy. As a result, there should be far more space for progressive forces in capitalist countries—particularly the US—to challenge their governments’ overseas military interventions and big arms budgets and to build support for alternative priorities. Both in educating people on how to bring about such changes and in addressing the economic implications of a conversion process, commonplace assumptions about the beneficence of market forces will have to be called into question. Thirdly, the extraordinary combination of mass activity with rapid regime-changes has a potential energizing effect for any popular movement, even one that might arise in a markedly different social context. Moreover, for those who live in Western democracies as opposed to being enamored of them from a distance, the idea of applying a bit of glasnost at home could have a subversive impact. What might happen to network TV if grassroots organizers were to have access to it? Or, to adapt a Soviet example, what new popular historical awareness might emerge if the schools were suddenly to discard the established textbooks and bring to the elementary level some of the insights that are now reserved for those with advanced education? But what about the prospects for socialism in the Soviet Union and the East European countries themselves? While our argument so far points to a defeat, it also suggests that the earlier “victories” were far from healthy. The superficiality of those earlier successes shows up not only in the persistent appeal of capitalist commercial practices, but also in the remarkable outpouring of chauvinism that has been released by the new freedoms. While socialist institutions had to some degree limited the scope of such impulses, they had fallen far short of enabling people to transcend them. Ironically, the official suppression of chauvinist behavior sometimes left it stronger than in countries in which, despite greater ideological acceptability (e.g., the legal protection enjoyed by the Ku Klux Klan in the United States), it had provoked popular movements for equal rights and dignity. In terms of this kind of consideration, we can well say that socialism stands to benefit in the long run from the complete collapse of its sham versions. Better to start again from scratch than to entrench even further people’s identification of socialism with its siege expression; better to bring pre-socialist prejudices out into the open than to pretend that decrees and territorial arrangements had somehow abolished them.

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Granting all this, however, there now remains a different kind of question, a more hopeful one for socialists. Apart from the complex effects of all the current changes upon the capitalist world, and apart from the purely negative/self-critical function they might have for socialism in their own lands, is there any aspect of what has recently happened that can be seen as directly positive in a socialist sense? The most important ray of hope, along these lines, is in the emergence of political tendencies that are capable of distinguishing between socialism and bureaucracy, and of seeing that democratic accountability requires the restructuring rather than the shrinking of the public sphere. Something of this kind of development occurred during the initial stages of the revolt against the Honecker leadership in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The active dissidence at that point came from within the left. Those who took the greatest risks and who were the first to galvanize mass support were groups like Neues Forum, which, while consistently critical of the old regime, were thoroughly committed to the preservation of a separate East German state whose entire raison d’être was its socialist economy and culture. As things turned out, the viability of an independent East German entity was undercut by the flow to the West of those who could no longer wait for improvements, so that by the time elections were held (March 1990), most GDR voters saw their choice as being made under the shadow of reunification. This brought into play the tendency—familiar in capitalist democracies—to vote for whichever force seems able to deliver the most goods in the short run. But the adverse effects of privatization, such as unemployment, rising prices, and increasing crime rates, may end up confirming the East Germans’ original impulse. A development along these lines is already beginning to take shape in Poland, which was the first country to accept a full-fledged program of capitalist restoration; the anticommunist consensus in Solidarity has broken down into what is essentially a class-based split. Independently of these particulars, however, the spectacle in several countries of hundreds of thousands of people in the streets on a sustained basis, demonstrating not against a particular policy but against a whole regime, and being met—finally—with concessions rather than threats, is quite unprecedented in the capitalist world. The only instance that came close was France in May 1968, but that mobilization stopped when De Gaulle threatened military repression. While it is true that in the present

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cases the substantive policy outcomes have been favorable to capitalism, the level of mass participation may well slow down this reversal once people recognize its consequences. The extent to which such a popular response can express itself will of course depend largely on the institutional structures of the new regimes. The privileged strata—new and old—will try to contain popular participation by channeling it along the reliable paths of Western-style pluralism, and it remains uncertain whether the newly activated masses will be able to keep up their momentum. Still, the very process by which “established socialism” has been called into question has shown socialism’s potential to go beyond capitalism in its adherence to democratic norms. While this is unlikely to enhance the short-run acceptance of socialism in the directly affected countries, it has created new opportunities for socialist dialogue in the capitalist world. What remains in question is the capacity of socialists to initiate such dialogue without seeing their own understanding distorted by categories reflective of the surrounding culture.

The Continuing Relevance of Marxism Dialectics readily evokes irony. Capitalism spawns socialism but at the same time tries to destroy it. Socialism survives enough traumas to reach finally the point at which its negative stereotype can be breached, but not without having first convinced millions of its constituents that democracy signifies capitalism. Capitalism thinks it has found a new lease on life at the very moment at which continued application of its assumptions has come to signify ecological disaster. Finally—and this is what I would like now to consider—precisely when this accumulation of developments creates the greatest need for a mode of comprehending them in their interaction, the one sustained body of thought that has placed such comprehension at the center of its agenda, namely Marxism, is said—even by many socialists—to have outlived its usefulness. This charge against Marxism takes a number of forms, but the arguments generally seem to converge on two main themes. One is the association of Marxism with the Bolshevik leaders and the contention that what went wrong with their revolution is to be blamed on their own self-­interest as a surrogate bourgeoisie using communist visions to deceive the masses. The other, closely related theme is the view of Marxism as being narrowly

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determinist—or “reductionist” or “essentialist”—in focusing on class relations as the primary moving force in history.9 I do not expect to be able to dispose of these views here, but I do feel that our discussion has suggested some pertinent comments. On the first theme, the main point to reiterate is that the validity of Marxism as a method of understanding and changing reality cannot be made to depend on the success of its application in any single country, by any single movement or individual, or at any single historical juncture. The various practitioners of Marxism are each conditioned and limited by the circumstances in which they work, whereas Marxism itself embodies the accretion of all the analyses and lessons arrived at in the course of its development as a living body of theory and experience. In the specific case of the Bolshevik leaders, what we may see as positive in their contribution includes such elements as their understanding of the global predicament of capitalism and its particular vulnerability in Russia, together with their ability to forge a breakthrough of world-historical impact. On the negative side, we may point at such factors as their readiness to accept authoritarian forms in both political and industrial organization, along with numerous other limitations that in varying degrees were imposed on them (not always against their own inclinations) by the backwardness of Russian society—not to mention the international assaults discussed above. The larger point about the first argument is that it sets as its criterion of success a revolution that could never come about because it would first have to satisfy all possible beneficiaries as to its ultimate perfection. Dialectics, while acknowledging the importance of concerns that might not yet be voiced at a given historical moment, also recognizes that the real unfolding of political struggles often makes neat or perfect approaches self-defeating. As for the insight that what the Bolsheviks carried out was what had elsewhere been carried out by capitalists, it is only part of the story, though indeed a part that was vividly prefigured in a Marxist classic (Engels’ remark about Thomas Müntzer in The Peasant War).10 The rest of the story includes all the paradoxes we discussed earlier. 9  These views are exemplified in Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, Marxism and Socialist Theory (Boston: South End Press, 1981), and are criticized in Milton Fisk, “Why the AntiMarxists Are Wrong,” Monthly Review, 38:10 (March 1987); see also the reply and rejoinder in MR 39:7 (December 1987). 10  Engels’ words are as follows (his emphasis throughout): “The worst thing that can befall the leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and

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Regarding the second theme, that of Marxist “reductionism,” the initial point to make is one of method. The assumption appears to be that it is not possible to integrate a multiplicity of explanatory factors unless one systematically disallows priority to any one of them. The methodological point is that dialectics makes it possible for us to reject this either/or attitude. It encourages us, on the contrary, to recognize the richness and variety of human experience while at the same time looking for its not-­ always-­obvious underlying structure. Correspondingly—and here we see the link between method and substance—it promotes a political approach which, instead of simply aggregating a range of concerns, incorporates an analysis of the historical moment and, with it, a strategy for tying together short-run and long-run goals. This is not a process of applying formulas; in fact, it does the opposite, for it calls upon us to see each particular demand both in its own right and in its relations to all other demands.11 With this understanding of dialectics, it is possible to see how class can be a category that shapes the impact of other differentiating criteria (gender, race, nationality, religion, educational philosophy, etc.) without in any way detracting from their independent significance. Class distinguishes for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication…. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him, or upon the degree of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to his doctrines and the demands hitherto propounded…. Thus he necessarily finds himself in a dilemma. What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost.” The Peasant War in Germany (1850), ch. VI, par. 2 (quoted from Engels, The German Revolutions, ed. Leonard Krieger [University of Chicago Press, 1967], 103f). 11  This implied long-run reconcilability of “each particular demand” with “all other demands” is of course limited to demands—often termed “rights”—of the kind that can be satisfied simultaneously for an entire population (e.g., demands for dignity as opposed to demands for unlimited private accumulation). The possibility of such universal satisfaction does not mean that the process of reconciling the individual with the multiple demands is without complications; it means only that reconciliation is possible in principle because of the multi-faceted character of each human being and our capacity to recognize a connection between our own wellbeing and that of others. The boundaries within which such reciprocity can exist are what immediately concern us here.

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itself from such other factors not as some arbitrarily chosen “entry point,”12 but as the criterion which—so long as it exists—shapes the exercise of power over the society as a whole. Indeed, it is the only one of the differentiating criteria whose very existence entails a relationship of domination. Biological and cultural differences between people are, if one can say so, not only inevitable but desirable; by themselves, they in no sense imply inequality. A class structure, on the other hand, is by definition a structure of inequality. Without inequality between them, classes would disappear; they would dissolve into occupational and idiosyncratic differences of an entirely optional character and therefore of no political importance. The capitalist class, however, in order to maintain its position, defends itself above all against class-based challenges. Regarding oppression based on other criteria, this may come and go—so far as the capitalist class as a whole is concerned—as long as its presence or absence does not bear on the stability of class relations. Conversely, popular demands to abolish non-class forms of discrimination can be accepted up to a point, so long as they do not stimulate or reinforce demands that threaten the class structure. Naturally, the assessment of whether or not they have such an effect is discretionary, but the principle of not infringing on class power applies without question. Thus (in the US) despite certain concessions to sexual equality, the demands for comparable worth and for paid parental leave remain officially out of bounds, and despite certain advances toward racial equality, whole districts of minority residents—along with other districts— remain sunk in poverty. The point is not merely that class analysis is required in order to understand these issues; it is—more importantly—that unless a class-based popular movement is formed, the demands can never be met. Since the issues involve class power, a change in the way they are handled can come only with a change in the balance of class forces. To the extent that it has become harder for people to see this, the need for Marxist analysis is even greater than it was in an earlier period. That one can say this at a time when Marxism as a state ideology is under such heavy fire is only one more of the many ironies that mark the present moment. I have already suggested that the circumstances under which socialism is being attacked in much of Eastern Europe may actually increase 12  The reference here is to the discussion in Stephen A.  Resnick and Richard D.  Wolff, Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

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the openings available to socialism in the West. One can perhaps go further and argue that a flourishing Marxism here will have a great deal to say about capitalism that may interest those for whom the encounter with capitalism’s real face is a new experience. We may also hope that these same people’s recent identification with dissident positions will give them some empathy for dissidence elsewhere.

Toward a Global Transition When Marx and Engels first evoked the prospect of world revolution, in the closing lines of the Communist Manifesto, it might well have appeared as an abstraction. The immediately ensuing efforts to organize toward this goal were confined to the representatives of workers in advanced capitalist countries. By the time the project spread to the world’s colonized regions, it was in the distorted form of a tightly structured political movement directed from a single center—the international extension of “socialism in one country.” Later, independent revolutionary initiatives would arise within particular countries in the colonized world (now known as the Third World), and they would look for support to established regimes that still had a revolutionary ideology. But by this time, most workers in the advanced capitalist countries were no longer part of the same movement. Only slowly would they begin to develop any organized response to the increasingly transnational interests of their respective ruling classes. Nonetheless, other circumstances helped revive popular interest in the notion of a common struggle that could cut across national boundaries. First came the development of nuclear weaponry and the recognition that we could all be consumed in a single clash. This prospect has receded only to be replaced by another scenario of comparable proportions: the “spontaneous” destruction or depletion of the earth’s most fundamental life-­ sustaining resources. This more current nightmare, unlike the nuclear one, has not been reduced by the transformation and dissolution of the Soviet bloc. If anything, the latter process might be seen as aggravating the ecological danger, for it involves dismantling a system that was grounded at least in principle (and in law) on the priority of social needs as the basis for economic decisions, and is replacing it with the familiar notion of profit-­ maximization through the market, with its corollary of a permanent commitment to growth.

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It needs to be stressed that the growth orientation that has pervaded actual socialist practice is in no sense inherent to socialism, but is a strict reflection of the contextual factors that have occupied us throughout this discussion. Under perestroika, which is increasingly shedding even the rhetoric of socialism, growth will not just be a strategy or a priority or a policy; it will be the driving force of the economy. Moreover, with specific reference to environmental policy, we cannot assume that the ecologically based restrictions enforced in advanced capitalist countries would necessarily be extended to the newly reintegrated former socialist countries. On the contrary, the transnational interests may be counted on to treat these new spheres of operation in the same way that they now treat any Third World host country, namely, as a loophole to escape the regulations they have to put up with at home. Increasingly, it seems that socialism, having come out of capitalism, is returning to capitalism. But to leave it at that is to disregard the global dimensions of the transition process. Socialism as an idea, as a movement, and as an alternative practical arrangement, has never belonged to a single country or bloc of countries. The 1917 revolution in Russia was initiated in full awareness of the global context which made it possible. The subsequent—and unanticipated—geographical delimitation of socialism was not willed by socialism’s proponents, but rather was imposed by its enemies. The outcome benefited capitalism in a double sense. On the one hand, within the “socialist world,” life became more difficult while Russia’s initial disadvantages were compounded in ways we have already noted. On the other hand, within the still trend-setting capitalist world, socialism was for large numbers of people tagged, pigeonholed, and marginalized. At the same time, however, the capitalist world itself evolved in ways which—predictably—showed the ever increasing relevance of socialist responses to otherwise unsolvable problems, be they those of poverty in the Third World, illness or lack of dignity even in the industrialized countries, or the general difficulty of setting limits to resource depletion in a competitive environment. Now that the socialist “world” (i.e., actual territory under socialist rule) has been reduced to just a few small enclaves, the pre-1917 notion of socialism as a vision for the future can be revived in full force. As I have already suggested, this is not an entirely negative development from a socialist standpoint. On the one hand, it relieves socialism to an important degree from what is widely seen as embarrassing baggage; on the other hand, a great many lessons have been learned.

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The baggage—most notably, Stalinism—becomes easier to discard because it is more clearly recognized as being part of a trajectory that has a capitalist outcome. Along with Stalinism goes its most important contextual feature: the perception of socialism “in practice” as growing not out of capitalism as such, but rather—supposedly refuting Marx—out of the condition of economic backwardness. What can at last be generally recognized, after all the triumphs of bourgeois Marxology, is that a revolution made in a backward region of world capitalism could not and cannot escape the larger impact of capitalism upon its unfolding. It might proclaim itself socialist and even impose a socialist infrastructure; but this could not suffice to make a new kind of society. Russia, in seeming to flout the requirement that revolution encompass the advanced countries, only ended up confirming it. The Soviet contribution to the larger transition process was made at the expense of a failed domestic revolution. The lessons of the Soviet experience are essentially two: (1) in order for socialism to succeed, the impulses and behavior of most human beings have to change in important ways; (2) this cannot be done under orders, nor—not much differently—can it be done in the face of external threats, be they economic, psychological, or military. The latter point—the one pertaining to context—should be discussed first. What it now translates into is the statement that the next phase of socialist revolution hinges critically on what happens in the advanced capitalist countries. The reason for this is quite straightforward. Only if the advanced countries are themselves transformed will they stop destroying revolutions elsewhere. Russia’s revolutionary leaders understood this intuitively before they took power; they simply assumed that the transformation in question would occur in the near future. While they were wrong in this assumption, they were right in their underlying awareness of the conditions for success. But the role of the advanced countries is not limited to refraining from counterrevolutionary intervention. Now, as earlier, they have a potential positive role as well. What is new at present is that this positive role refers not just to economic and technical assistance, but also to revolutionary political experience. It touches on two areas pertinent to the other above-­ mentioned “lesson” (regarding human nature), namely, the environmental crisis and problems of sexism and racism. The people of the advanced capitalist countries have a particular role in relation to the environmental crisis, for it is from within their borders that

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the process was set in motion, and it is they who were drawn—through the market—into the consumption style that seemed to justify it. At the same time, on the other hand, they are the people who can be most convincing in their rejection of the whole arrangement, partly because they are the ones who have experienced it most fully, partly because they have the technological and organizational resources needed to experiment with alternatives, and partly because it is they whose way of life is most widely seen as an example to be emulated. The search for an alternative way of life takes us back to questions raised from the earliest days of the struggle for socialism. A longstanding objection to socialism refers to such allegedly chronic human traits as laziness and aggressiveness. It entails asking, rather skeptically, whether human society can possibly be organized on the basis of cooperation rather than competition. Within the last generation, especially in the advanced capitalist countries, the women’s liberation movement has focused attention on the male supremacist aspects of the cult of competition, while the Green movements have highlighted a vision of cooperation as the basis for a restored harmony with the natural environment. In addition, as colonized peoples have risen in revolt against oppression (in industrialized as well as Third World countries), they have exposed and given the lie to stereotypes that assigned innate characteristics to particular racial and ethnic groups. Where all these transformative developments have been most lacking, however, has been precisely in the regimes of the Soviet bloc, and it is this shortcoming that has emerged with the most poignant clarity from the current upheavals. Ethnic rivalries have been ignited side by side with aspirations to personal enrichment; Communism has been characterized, Hitler-style, as a Jewish imposition; and beauty contests have become accepted public events. All these practices reflect less on the regime-­ changes than they do on the social undercurrents of the previous period: one in which a socialist juridical framework and Marxist ideology coexisted with widespread anti-egalitarian behavior. It is clear enough that certain steps toward the creation of a culture of equality have been carried further in the West than in many of the countries that have been formally subjected to socialism. On the other hand, the progressive movements in the West—particularly in the United States—have been increasingly limited in their impact because of their fragmentary character. One outcome of the past year’s changes is already clear: the opposed “camps” in the world are no longer identified with sets of countries. The

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most promising additional outcome would be the decisive liberation of Marxism from its association with the regimes that have discredited it. Then it would be more readily available as an instrument of unity in preparing for a more inclusive experience of socialism. To whatever degree Marxism develops in this way, it will have drawn from movements at different levels of development in all parts of the world. The interdependence will need to become increasingly conscious. But the danger of drifting toward environmental catastrophe will provide a binding agent more compelling than any that existed in Marx’s day.

CHAPTER 4

Marxism and the Struggle for Social Justice

The 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union prompted a wave of triumphalism on the part of capitalist politicians and media. Some of this bourgeois euphoria rubbed off on certain sectors of the US Left, where it took the form of denunciations of Marxism. The first section of the present chapter, originally written at that time, offers a general response to this trend, which would become widely known as “identity politics.” I argue that the alleged clash between identity concerns and class-based strategy reflects, in the most immediate sense, a failure to reason dialectically. In the second section, I expand upon this point with reference to the debate on intersectionality that emerged in the last few years.1

Marxism and the US Left The “death of Marxism,” widely celebrated in the capitalist press, could end up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why is this the case, why does it matter, and what can be done about it?

1  My own contribution to this debate, “Intersectionality’s Binding Agent: The Political Primacy of Class,” appeared in a 2015 New Political Science special issue (37:4) on intersectionality; an adapted version is ch. 8 of my book, Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism (Toronto: Political Animal Press, 2018). See also the symposium on intersectionality in Science & Society, 82:2 (2018).

© The Author(s) 2020 V. Wallis, Socialist Practice, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35066-6_4

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Reports of Death Are Exaggerated For Marxism to be justifiably buried, capitalism would have to have found the secret of eternal life. Since capitalism is a system of social relations, such immortality would have to rest on something more than the capacity to overwhelm all challengers; it would require that capitalism be able to solve the problems that keep bringing those challengers into being. None of the world’s recent changes have signified any progress in this direction. On the contrary, the gap between rich and poor is growing wider than ever, not only on a world scale, but even within many of the industrialized countries. Where this has not happened, it is only because of movements and measures embodying working-class or socialist influence. Capitalist principles are moreover inherently ill-suited to confronting the environmental crisis; ecological rationality is simply incompatible with a commitment to growth, under whatever sponsorship. Capitalism’s only hope for long-term survival seems to lie in its ever-­ resourceful pioneering in the means of destruction. This is not limited to the military suppression of socialist or nationalist challengers; it also includes the neutralization of autonomous community life through the anaesthetizing/atomizing effects of television, the drug trade, and gang warfare. The United States, bastion of global capitalism, generates enough surplus to be able to hold the entire world at gunpoint, while at the same time—domestically—topping all other countries in its per capita prison population. In short, capitalism is as damaging as ever, and the longer it hangs on, the more dangerous it gets. The objective basis for Marxism—the systematic search for an alternative to capitalism—has therefore never been stronger. Still, All Is Not Well But even as the need for a Marxist response grows, its political viability is increasingly being called into question. These two developments, although contradictory at one level, are by no means unrelated. The most recent blow to Marxism’s political viability has of course been the disintegration, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, of the regimes claiming explicit adherence to its principles. Within the directly affected countries, the popular image of Marxism is understandably negative. What is more remarkable, however, and what I want to consider here, is how the

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notion of Marxism’s bankruptcy has gained credence within progressive movements in the West, and most especially in the United States. The reason this requires explanation is that the overwhelming majority of left activists in these countries have for a long time understood the Soviet regime and its offshoots to embody a clear departure from the democratic vision of working-class rule that Marx expressed, for example, in his essay on the Paris Commune. Such a departure, however it might be accounted for, was never a sufficient reason for them to abandon the socialist project from which the Russian Revolution had sprung. Why should the final unraveling of a “false start” prove more debilitating than its earlier institutionalization in a repressive bureaucratic regime? The answer to this question must begin with the present-day political environment in the United States, and in particular with the would-be self-fulfilling prophecy that I mentioned at the outset. The “death of Marxism” campaign entails a replication in the ideological sphere of what capitalism has been steadily accomplishing in the material sphere, namely, the destruction of any potential alternative system. The ideological counterpart to capitalism’s military-economic arsenal is its control over the mass media: a control which largely delimits the vocabulary of the left’s political outreach. Phrases like “the collapse of Communism,” “the death of Marxism,” and “the failure of socialism,” taken as being interchangeable, are repeated so often and so automatically that they attain the status of axioms. Any suggestion that their message might be misleading requires the kind of lengthy explanation that threatens to turn people off. The cycle is then complete: capital proclaims Marxism’s death; ordinary people take it for granted; left activists are loath to challenge them; Marxism atrophies even among the activists; and finally, Marxism is indeed dead. Where the Treatment Needs to Begin If this cycle is to be broken, it must be among those organizers and activists whose first question is likely to be, “Why should it matter? We’re against domination, oppression, and injustice. Why should we care about Marxism?” The answer has both theoretical and historical dimensions. The theoretical part can be put quite simply, although it may offend the pragmatic sensibility that much of the US Left inherits from its surroundings.

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Marxism is important because instead of just dealing with oppression on a case-by-case basis, or even with all the forms of oppression at once, it deals with the totality of oppression in all of its interrelationships. Organizers might be tempted to respond scornfully to such quasi-­ religious terminology, but it is not without a rather compelling practical justification of its own. While totality might seem like a foreign concept to the various oppressed groups in capitalist society, organized as they are in distinct unions, rights groups, and community organizations, it is in no sense foreign to the structure against which these groups are trying to press their demands. The demands may be formulated separately, but if they reach high enough, they all confront the same antagonist at the top. This antagonist may not use the language of totality, but there is no sector of society and no major social issue on which it does not try to impose its priorities. The antagonist in question is the capitalist class, or what Marx often referred to simply as capital. The totality in question is the entire complex of economic, military, and cultural instruments over which this class presides. The interactions among these instruments—or between any one of them and its popular challengers—are fluid but by no means random. We are dealing with a system that can distinguish among the various demands made upon it: accepting more readily—and coopting or reversing more easily—those that do not impinge upon class power. This brings us back to Marxism’s historical dimension. Individual or universalistic denunciations of injustice go back to ancient times; each form of human oppression can trace a long lineage. But neither the wisdom nor mercy of powerful individuals (or deities) nor the supposed common reasonableness of humankind as a whole has ever made a dent in any overall pattern of oppression. What has made a difference has been the self-organization of the oppressed, and the most enduring forms of such self-organization—from which the others have largely derived—have been along class lines. The impetus to such long-term self-organization was first provided by capitalism, which, in turn, was directly threatened by it. Consequently, the self-organization of the oppressed—beginning with the industrial working class—could not occur without eliciting an alternative vision for society as a whole. The formulation of this vision, however, emerged directly from a structural analysis of the oppressive system in its entirety. As the system evolved—intensifying, mitigating, or highlighting the various particular forms of oppression—the analysis and the vision could evolve accordingly.

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What would remain would be the links between system on the one hand and analysis and vision on the other. This is the discovery that has come to be permanently connected with Marx’s name. To reject it is to settle for a merely spasmodic response mechanism to the framework imposed by capital. Class and Other Oppressions One of the most common arguments put forward by non- or anti-Marxist advocates of social justice is that Marxism wrongly elevates class oppression above oppression grounded in other traits—most notably, race and gender. I would like to think that we can change the terms of the argument from one of comparing oppressions to one of considering how all of them can be overcome. The basic point that we come back to is that the various forms of oppression are interrelated and mutually reinforcing within a common system of power, itself based on class. But there are a number of facets to this argument that need to be spelled out. First, there is a sense in which Marxism, as it has come down to us, is bigger than either Marx himself or any of his followers. This refers to its irreducible and epoch-making core mentioned above, that is, its emphasis on the analysis and transformation of capitalism. All those who accept this emphasis are operating, whether they like it or not, within the framework of Marxism. This is a matter of intellectual history, independent of anyone’s predilection for labels. What Marxism does not imply is any necessary agreement with Marx or certain Marxists on such particular issues as gender and race. We need to be able to relate all such issues to our more general framework of analysis without being hobbled by the outdated or otherwise faulty attitudes of our predecessors. This is regarded as a perfectly routine expectation within mainstream scientific and political discourse, hardly even worthy of mention. But just as mainstream commentators often view Marxists as uniquely “biased,” so they tend to view them as uniquely tarnished by any flaws in their intellectual heritage. “Left” critics of Marxism sometimes apply similar guilt-by-association assumptions. Second, those who accuse Marxism of slighting non-class forms of oppression often convey an unduly narrow view of class. Countless coalitions address themselves to such listings as “workers, women, people of

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color.” But how many stop to consider that the women and the people of color they are addressing are themselves at the same time working people? This is not to say that the race and gender traits should not be mentioned; it is to say that the class designation is broader and more inclusive. If groups oppressed by gender and race are listed parallel to workers, one can too easily get the impression that being “working class” entails being white and male. By the same token, the working class is often taken to be much smaller than it really is. If we look at the actual working class—as distinct from a mere shopping-list entry in some catalog of oppressed groups—gender and racial differences come to the forefront as a matter of course, but in a way that also points to a common interest in resolving them. This does not pre-empt the need for mutual support organizations of those oppressed along non-class lines; it merely stresses the conditions under which such distinct organizations will be able to pool their strength to bring the larger changes that their members need. Third, class differences have a peculiar trait compared to all other social cleavages. Classes are by definition unequal. One can talk about equality between women and men, and one can talk about equality between different ethnic groups, but one cannot talk about equality between the capitalist class and the working class. The capitalist class would not exist if it did not dominate the working class. The only way to bring about equality among the members of different classes is to abolish class as a social category. This is both the simplest and the most difficult barrier to overcome. It is simple in the sense that classes are deliberate human constructs; the class can disappear while the individual members remain. But the barrier is difficult because of all the historical/institutional reinforcements erected by the ruling class. The very concentration of this class—its small size, its homogeneity, its organizational advantage—makes it uniquely resistant to any collective internal transformation. At the same time, its social power has a scope and a degree of coherence—not to mention enforcement mechanisms—that go beyond anything attributable to any non-class entity (e.g., all whites or all men). Fourth, granting the decisive power exercised by capital, one still has to ask to what extent all those who are outside the capitalist class belong to the category of the most oppressed in class terms, that is, the working class. The question needs to be raised here because it is often argued or suggested that the existence of an intermediate class between capitalists and workers proves the importance of having a non-class-based approach to issues of race and gender. I cannot presume to settle here the

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l­ong-­running debate over whether or not professionals, intellectuals, and artists constitute a separate class in capitalist society. But in relation to our present concerns, there are a few points to be made: (l) especially with regard to race, it is true that significant advances toward equality can be made outside a framework of class struggle; however, the same individuals who may have gained full acceptance within a circumscribed context remain at the mercy of traditional behavior-patterns when they go outside that context; (2) a large majority of women and an overwhelming majority of people of color neither belong to the capitalist class nor enjoy professional status; (3) the policy changes that would help end oppression based on race or sex—both directly for the majority of its victims and indirectly for those who occupy the intermediate class positions—are consistently opposed by the capitalist class (e.g., full employment, comparable worth, subsidized childcare, paid parental leave). The upshot of all these considerations is that even if one’s primary commitment is to respond to a non-class form of oppression, one will not be able to take more than the most preliminary steps toward liberation without engaging in class-oriented politics. The exact constitution of any class-­ based popular alliance is a complex matter, but the decisive role of capital in shaping existing society cannot be seriously doubted. Marxism’s contribution lies in its sustained record of analyzing that role and of trying to build an alternative that will reflect the needs of the majority. The political practice of Marxists deserves criticism to the degree that they have failed to respond to any of the manifestations of oppression. Marxist theory, moreover, needs to be continuously updated through assimilation of the new insights arising from such criticism. But those who attack Marxism as such are not helping this process. They are attacking the one body of thought and experience that has focused upon the core of system-wide oppression. Their impact will tend to perpetuate the fragmentation of the left and thereby to weaken any popular response. The Search for a Cure Much of the inclination to reject Marxism is associated with a wish for “new thinking.” There is a curious irony in this. What could be newer than a society at peace with others, with itself, and with nature? More immediately, what could be newer than a progressive movement, which, instead of just reacting to each separate problem or crisis, could itself

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become a coherent social force capable of growth? And what could be more worn out than capitalism’s perpetual striving for novelty? The real issue, of course, is not whether one’s thoughts are new. Changes of surroundings and of audiences will assure them some degree of novelty in any case. The proper question to ask is, what will be one’s frame of reference. More specifically for us: Do we or do we not take the critique of capitalism as our point of departure? And if not, then what do we take? I noted earlier the common tendency to regard Marxists as uniquely subject to bias or uniquely tainted by the prejudices of their forebears. A similar dynamic comes into play in discussions of the movement’s future. Somehow, it seems that if we retain a Marxian framework, we are the victims of hidebound tradition, whereas if we reject it, a world of unlimited possibilities opens up to us. This is nonsense. In the matters that concern us, the number of options is limited, and each has its own tradition. Moreover, the track record of those who reject the past indiscriminately is by no means encouraging. For the US Left, one of the best-known recent examples of such a tabula rasa illusion was in the student movement of the 1960s. The students tried to avoid an authoritarian trap by rejecting structural guidelines almost completely. Far from guaranteeing accountability, this approach left their organization defenseless against manipulation. The current equivalent approach is that of fleeing class-based analysis in favor of an endless cycle of anti-oppression struggles, in which the power behind the oppression is left unrecognized and unscathed. Both in the present case and in that of the 1960s, there is an element of justification in the way that people are trying to renovate the movement. The demands of the ’60s for internal democracy and the subsequent calls for struggle against non-class forms of oppression are uniformly vital to healthy left politics. But just as the anti-structural bias backfired in the ’60s, so the fear of a class-based analysis and movement is backfiring now. The movement will remain divided and marginalized until this fear can be overcome. As a partial antidote to the fear of class-thinking on the left, I would suggest a series of practical considerations: (a) The legislative victories of single-issue organizations are relatively easily reversed.

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(b) People struggling on any particular issue need the support of those whose primary personal concern may be with another issue. (c) The key to defending gains and blocking reversals is to gain at least a share of power over the society as a whole. (d) Understanding the connections between issues—which is what class analysis is all about—plays an important role in sustaining individual commitment over the long term. (e) The shared understanding of such connections provides the basis for expanding the struggle, partly by inspiring new people and partly by keeping alive the cumulative experience of their predecessors.

The Dialectic of Identity Politics and Class Struggle A particular challenge for dialectical thinking is the task of forging a unified popular movement out of the disparate agglomeration of progressive constituencies that has dotted the US political scene since the 1960s. The various “new social movements” which formed at that time did so with the feeling that an older class-oriented Left politics had failed to do justice to their demands. Instead of now fighting for their demands within the framework of the class struggle, however, key protagonists of these movements assumed that the only way they could advance would be by, in effect, downgrading the importance of class to the level of one particular “interest,” no more central than any other. And yet, as each “identity” pursues its perceived interests in isolation from the others, the result is that the dominant agenda of capital—which sets the parameters in every sphere of society—proceeds unscathed along its path of destruction. This was the scenario that marked the age of neoliberalism (roughly, the quarter-century beginning in the early 1980s), in which period the potentially oppositional sectors in US society were confirmed in their separateness from one another by the eclectic posture—the suspicion of so-called “grand narratives”—that pervades postmodernist theorizing.2 A dialectical understanding allows us to resist the consequent fragmentation of the movement. Using a dialectical approach, we can understand 2  See Ellen Meiksins Wood and John Bellamy Foster, eds., In Defense of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997), esp. Wood’s Introduction.

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how it is possible at once to recognize the centrality of class struggle and yet at the same time to combat the spurious affirmations of supremacy grounded in “race,” sex, or sexual orientation. Each of these “identity” struggles faces the same ultimate enemy as does the class struggle. What distinguishes class struggle from the identity struggles is that the antagonistic poles of class are inherently defined by a relationship of domination. Class-difference, unlike the other differences, exists only within a hierarchical structure, within which the ruling class consciously organizes its framework of control over every other sector of society. The working class, for its part, differs in practical terms from any merely demographic collectivity, in that it has the potential to constitute itself as a cohesive political force—embracing all the distinct identity-groupings—in opposition to the structure that has been holding it down. Dialectical reasoning makes it possible to integrate each and all of the particular identity struggles with class struggle, without diminishing any of them.3 With a dialectical approach, one is encouraged to criticize at once (a) any failure of class-based politics to do justice to the various “identity” demands and (b), from the opposite direction, any reluctance on the part of identitarian advocates to acknowledge the importance— both to their own constituencies and to humanity as a whole—of overcoming a narrow, interest-based approach to politics. A dialectical approach, unlike the interest-based approach, can see the totality (the entire power structure) within each of its particular manifestations. Seeing the totality implies adopting an approach to organizing in which no single issue is seen as standing by itself. Instead, activism around each and every particular issue leads its protagonists back to the common struggle. The common struggle, in turn, unites the pursuit of immediate improvements with the striving for a definitive social transformation—the effort to create a new and liberated social order.4 Historical evolution of the human species in relation to the natural world has brought us to the point where such a revolution appears not just as the dream of hitherto oppressed populations but also as a necessary condition for the survival of us all.

3  For fuller discussion, see Wallis, Red-Green Revolution, ch. 8. For analysis of how postmodernist approaches depoliticize ecological discourse, see Paul Burkett and John Bellamy Foster, Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 4  On linking immediate to systemic demands, see Wallis, Red-Green Revolution, ch. 7.

CHAPTER 5

The Dialectic of Humanity and Nature

Species Questions and Class Questions1 In what turned out to be the waning years of the Soviet Union, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev put forward, as part of his agenda of global reconciliation, the idea that in view of the extraordinary challenge posed by the environmental crisis, the common interest of humanity should be seen as superseding the traditional Marxist prioritization of the working class. In other words, species questions should take precedence over class questions. But is it possible to set policy for the human species as a whole without first addressing the obstacles arising from capitalist domination? The relationship of species questions to class questions lies at the core of the Marxian project. It was Marx who, in his 1844 Manuscripts, articulated for the first time a link between capitalist subjection of the worker and denial of the worker’s basic humanity. The nexus between humanity and nature which Marx defined at that time was to remain a central, albeit often unacknowledged, theme of his subsequent work. It figures importantly in the underlying framework of Capital, namely, in the relationship of use-value to exchange-value. A proper appreciation of Marx’s arguments on these matters undercuts later reductionist/productivist caricatures of his thought. At the same time, it provides the basis for a clear response to the environmental contradictions posed by late twentieth-­ century capitalist development. 1

 Citations from Collected Works [CW] of Marx and Engels will be given in the text.

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In his 1844 Manuscripts, Marx defines man,2 in contradistinction to other animals, as a species-being [Gattungswesen], that is, as a being who “has conscious life-activity” (CW 3: 276), or, more precisely, whose life-­ activity entails a conscious interplay between his own choices and the structures (cumulated choices) established by other members of his species. Capitalist relations result in estrangement [Entfremdung], which entails the denial of the worker’s species-being, as a consequence of which the worker “only feels himself freely active in his animal functions … and in his human functions [i.e., work] no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal” (CW 3: 274f). This politically central argument emerges from a more general approach which sees the human species [Gattung] as both part of and separate from the rest of the natural world. Significantly, Marx’s initial description of the impact of capital is tied to his formulation of a view of human/natural relations which transcends any particular historical epoch. However much Marx would later focus on historically specific, class-related questions, he never forgets that these represent just one dimension of a larger reality.3 The reality that exists outside of class relations constitutes the framework within which the impact of those relations can be understood—and in which the need for ending them can be acted upon. It is in this sense that the domain of class struggle is situated, in the words of the Communist Manifesto, not in human society as such, but in “hitherto existing” society (CW 6: 482). For humanity to progress from the condition of class struggle to one in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (CW 6: 506), certain changes will therefore have to take place not only within the human species, but also in its relations to the rest of nature. The period since Marx’s first formulation of these questions has witnessed a dramatic expansion in the sphere of their practical applications. The overall trajectory of species-questions may thus be observed through the following stages: (1) Marx’s original discussion of the basis on which human estrangement would be overcome; (2) Marx’s later treatment of 2  Except where otherwise noted, I use the term man in the sense of the gender-neutral German word Mensch (the term used by Marx in the passages cited). Regrettably, the English language does not have an equivalent term of equal simplicity. In the context of the present discussion, in which the words species, human, and humanity are already used a good deal, any attempt to replace man completely with other constructions would tend to garble the exposition. 3  Bertell Ollman, Dialectical Investigations (New York: Routledge, 1993), 55ff.

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capital in its dual exploitative relationship to (a) the worker and (b) nature; (3) the eventual unfolding of an ecological crisis which would be interpreted by bourgeois ideology as the reflection of an inherent conflict between humanity and rest of the natural world; and finally (4) the effort of capital to simultaneously extend its hegemony and escape its contradictions by manipulating and appropriating life-forms at the microbiological level.

1. Overcoming Estrangement Marx’s basic response to estrangement—whether between man and man or between man and nature—is implicit in his account of its origin. What was imposed by capital will have to be removed by liberation from capital. As retreat to earlier forms of social relations is impossible, advance to a higher form becomes necessary. It is thus in the context of his discussion of man’s species-being [Gattungswesen] that Marx engages in his earliest reflections on communism, the need for which he sees as flowing directly from a fundamental striving of human nature. Given the dual aspect of humanity’s link to the rest of nature (as being part of it while yet acting upon it), it is significant that Marx identifies the nodal issue—the point of convergence between human-to-human and human-to-nature ties—with the question of the relationship of man to woman [Mann/Weib]. In this tie [Gattungsverhältnis], as he puts it, “man’s relation to nature is immediately his relation to man” [Mensch/ Mensch] (CW 3: 295).4 By taking any given historical expression of this tie as the measure of “man’s whole level of development” (CW 3: 296), Marx is again stressing an aspect of human life that on the one hand is prior to class, but that on the other hand is inescapably bound up with every form that class relations—or their transcendence—might take. A similar observation applies to Marx’s later discussions of value in relation to nature. The dual character of value rests on the distinction (in Capital I, CW 35: ch. 1) between a form that is inherently independent of social organization (namely, use-value) and one that is specifically tied to capitalist relations (i.e., exchange-value). Most of Marx’s analysis focused on the latter form, which he consequently referred to simply as “value.” This usage, however, has never ceased to be taken as a pretext for misinterpretation, most commonly in the form of assertions that Marx, in f­ ailing 4

 German text, MEGA (Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe [Complete Works]) I.2: 388.

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to attribute “value” to the natural world, showed himself to be unconcerned with its degradation. In his own time, the seemingly free availability of natural goods led to overblown statements, for example in the Socialdemocratic Party’s Gotha program (1875), as to the wealth-­ generating capacity of labor—a notion that Marx swiftly undercut, in the opening sentences of his Critique of that program, by affirming that “Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values … as is labor” (CW 24: 81; emphasis in the original). The discussion in Capital extends Marx’s earlier treatment of the labor process as the defining activity of the human species. Thus: “Labor is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man … confronts the materials of nature as [himself] a force of nature.” As the worker “acts upon external nature and changes it,” he “simultaneously changes his own nature” (CW 35: 187). The labor process, as here described, is quite independent of any relation to capital. Its defining trait, in this capital-free framework, is precisely the distinctively human capacity to prefigure conceptually that which will then be realized [verwirklicht] physically (CW 35: 188). As capital subsequently strips the worker of this capacity—and hence of his or her species-­ being—so also does it sweep away, by the same token, all restraints to its own plundering of the natural world. Hence Marx’s characterization of capitalist agriculture as robbing not only the worker but also the soil (CW 35: 507). The fundamental threat to the natural world thus emanates not from the human species as such but rather from the drive to accumulate, which makes man and nature its twin victims.

2. Exploitation of Man and of Nature Although the natural world affects the existence of humanity as a whole, the converse statement would be misleading, inasmuch as humanity in its entirety does not affect the natural world in a uniform manner. At any given moment, the world’s differing levels of energy-consumption reflect the respective histories of each region up to that point. The distinctive historical stages likewise have their counterparts in the distinctive incursions made, at each stage, upon the natural world. Capitalism, by breaking up a mode of existence that rested largely on the production of use-values, introduced an economic calculus which fosters, among other things, limitless waste. Marx reflects upon this, for example, when he discusses the utilization of “excretions of production” of capitalist industry. After giving

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a number of examples of practices which today would be called “recycling,” he contrasts this approach unfavorably with one which would, from the outset, reduce the excretions to a minimum (CW 37: 104). Bourgeois environmentalism has made a continuous practice of evading this option. To do so, it has shifted the responsibility for environmental degradation away from capital and onto the shoulders of humanity as a whole. The whole human species thus emerges, in this perspective, not just as a victim of the ecological crisis but also as its author. The primary agents of this supposed species-behavior are isolated individuals and families, acting as consumers or as procreators. As consumers (suitably programmed), they “demand” ever-higher levels of goods and services; as procreators, their intentionality and objectives may vary, but their practice, except in those rare cases where strict official guidelines have been imposed, is shaped overwhelmingly by purely private criteria, whose effects have pointed mostly toward expansion. From such expansion—of both wants and numbers—has arisen an acute crisis in the earth’s “carrying capacity.” The response of bourgeois environmentalism oscillates between, on the one hand, Malthusian warnings about overpopulation and, on the other, a search for technological solutions to scarcity (e.g., industrial recycling; devices to raise agricultural productivity). The latter, in turn, rely heavily on market-incentives.5 Marxist and progressive environmentalism, in response, tries continually to highlight the structural/institutional basis for wasteful production and consumption. Barry Commoner, for example, has criticized the tendency to blame “consumer choice” for such ecologically adverse measures as the conversions from re-usable to disposable containers, from natural to synthetic fabrics, and from conventional to nuclear power-generation.6 Even recognizing that such changeovers may be stimulated (if not initiated) by consumer-price differentials, their longer-range costs and injuries to humans vitiate any contention that their promotion reflected some drive inherent to the human species. More immediately, the enormous regional variations in per-capita levels of resource-utilization (even between zones with similar indices of well-being) confirm the potential of human society to reduce its toll upon the natural world.

5  Victor Wallis, “Lester Brown, the Worldwatch Institute, and the Dilemmas of Technocratic Revolution,” Organization & Environment 10:2 (1997), 113ff. 6  Barry Commoner, Making Peace with the Planet (New York: Pantheon, 1990).

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Such a reduction, however, would presuppose a sharp separation of species-interest from capitalist/productivist imperatives. Up to now, this distinction has failed to gain wide currency. On the contrary, bourgeois ideology, in the form of the commercial mass media, has been largely successful in conflating consumer-desires with basic human need. To challenge this conflation is to call into question every dimension of socially organized production.7 It thus raises the most fundamental questions of what defines human society and therefore of what constitutes human species-identity. In Marx’s understanding, man’s species-interest would come to prevail conjointly with the culmination of working-class struggle, that is, through the creation of a classless society. The notion of species-questions as being opposed to class questions—rather than as constituting the grounding for (or the culmination of) such questions—could only emerge on the basis of a crude flattening of Marx’s approach. Such reductionism has been a routine aspect of bourgeois thought, as the bourgeoisie has always tried to present its own interests as being those of the entire society. The Soviet regime was unable to transcend this perspective. It began by one-sidedly rejecting the bourgeois approach and affirming the primacy of class interests. Although the precise Soviet interpretation of “class interest” would evolve, what was decisive for its unidimensionality was the regime’s initial suppression of workers’ self-management.8 When at length, under Gorbachev, certain forms of democratic participation were revived, the pursuit of a universal interest naturally seemed to require the abandonment of any kind of class outlook. For the preservation of the human species, it would now be “more correct,” on this view, simply “to step over the things that divide us.”9 The self-defeating implications of such an approach would soon become evident, however, as capital’s global expansion continued unimpeded. What had begun, therefore, as a plea for species-­wide unity ended up as capitulation to the most favored class.

7  Victor Wallis, “Ecological Socialism and Human Needs,” Capitalism Nature Socialism 8:4 (1997), 47–56. 8  See Victor Wallis, “Electrification,” Historical Materialism, 19:1 (2011), 335–339. 9  Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 125.

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3. Domination, Commodification, and Ecological Breakdown Even as the overexploitation of nature begins to show the gravest consequences, in the form of increasingly severe climate-related disasters,10 the tendency of capital is to extend ever further its agenda of appropriating natural processes. The illusory character of such appropriation was already sharply expressed by Engels when he pointed out that each supposed conquest of nature “takes its revenge on us” (Dialectics of Nature, CW 25: 460f); for as control is gained within a limited sphere, the broader conditions for predictability—for example, in agriculture—are undermined. Thus, irrigation-systems hasten desertification; forest-removal ultimately reduces cropland by causing flooding; and climate-controlled environments add to global warming. Much as the capitalist cycle repeats itself, however, so does each stage in the illusory appropriation of nature. The more man “tames” natural processes, the more they spin out of control, provoking new and more aggressive “taming” measures with increasingly disastrous outcomes. Thus, diverse ecosystems are indiscriminately broken up; species-equilibria are disrupted; “pest”-species multiply; synthetic poisons are applied; new strains of the pests evolve, requiring stronger poisons with increasingly severe side-effects; and so on. The outcome threatens the well-being of many species, including notably that of humanity itself. At an advanced stage of this “taming” cycle appears the practice of crossing species-boundaries, that is, using genetic manipulation to alter the traits of a given species in such a way as to make it resistant to the effects of the cycle’s earlier stages. Thus, one of the most common applications of biotechnology is the creation of plant-species with particular immunities. The alleged purpose is, typically, to counteract the effect of a given herbicide. The immediate result is an economic one: to create a captive market for the herbicide (i.e., farmers compelled to grow a plant-­ strain on which no other herbicide can be used). The uncalculated side-effects, however, include the propagation of the particular immunity (via natural processes) to other plant-species, thereby generating new varieties of “super-weeds” with enhanced immunities.11  Mike Davis, “El Niño and Year One,” Capitalism Nature Socialism 9:3 (1998), 63ff.  Miguel A. Altieri, “Ecological Impacts of Industrial Agriculture,” Monthly Review 50:3 (1998), 67. 10 11

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Man’s appropriation of nature and nature’s defiance of such appropriation thus appear to advance simultaneously. On the one hand, the farmer, even if still a landowner, is increasingly drawn into a vertical integration of the agricultural sector, in which the inputs to every stage of the growing process—whether of crops or of livestock—must be obtained from the same monopolistic firm.12 On the other hand, this extreme level of control unleashes its side-effects chaotically in every direction. The physical effects include soil-depletion, water pollution, and an array of degenerative processes affecting wildlife as well as livestock; consumers as well as farmworkers.13 The social effects are all those implied by the imposition of a modern form of debt-peonage, notably, decaying rural communities incapable of supplying their own needs, and with populations prone to various forms of anomic behavior (typically fascist and/or religious-fundamentalist). The dynamic in question operates on a global scale, as transnational food, chemical, and pharmaceutical corporations attempt to take legal possession of any naturally occurring substance—or communally evolved adaptation thereof—whose controlled distribution might be lucrative. They do this by subjecting the desired substance to genetic manipulation, on the basis of which they claim—and obtain patents to establish—an “intellectual property right” to the substance (or the process). They then invoke the authority of international law as grounds to prosecute any indigenous community that might attempt to use the patented item (e.g., a seed or a plant) in traditional ways.14 The patenting process has in some instances been extended to cover particular cells of the human body, which means that any medical use of such cells (regardless of whose body supplied them) has been made conditional upon the payment of a fee to the patent-holder.15 Moreover, patents of this sort no longer even presuppose any genetic alteration of the cells in question; merely to have isolated the cells is sufficient. Advocates of this practice defend it in terms of medical advances but fail to consider 12  William D.  Heffernan, “Agriculture and Monopoly Capital,” Monthly Review 50:3 (1998), 53ff. 13  Altieri, “Ecological Impacts,” 65; Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Mad Cow U.S.A.: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1997). 14  Vandana Shiva, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (Boston: South End Press, 1997). 15  Jeremy Rifkin, The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World (New York: Putnam, 1998), 61f; Seth Shulman, Owning the Future: Staking Claims on the Knowledge Frontier (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 33ff.

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the implications of the power which it confers upon the patent-holding entities. At issue is the privatization of generic human body-parts, as a result of which control over a given type of cell, tissue, or organ can become subject to market transactions. The particular persons whose bodies are made available for such procedures are to that extent absorbed into a matrix comparable to the slave market, the sex market, or the childlabor market. The victims are in all cases drawn from among those who have fallen below the essential conditions of a minimally human species-existence. Although the commodification of labor-power, the estrangement of labor, and the assault on man’s species-being pertain to the entire working class, Marx was well aware of the differentiation of conditions within the working class. He could thus call attention to those women in nineteenth-­ century England who were “still occasionally used instead of horses for hauling canal boats, because the labour required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity, while that required to maintain the women of the surplus-population is below all calculation” (CW 35: 397). Capital thus found use, in the most primitive of ways, for those very sectors of the population that had been rendered “superfluous” by the most advanced machinery. In a similar way, the biotechnology of the late twentieth century threatens to transmute hierarchies of class and empire into biologically distinct communities, in which those with the necessary resources will attain formidable physical resistance and longevity, while the excluded sectors, increasingly deprived of all bases of sustenance, will sink to previously unimagined depths of misery, from which they will again become available for uses incompatible with their humanity.

4. The Existential Dimension of Capitalist Crisis Marx was the first to see the rule of capital as a threat to human species-­ existence. Beyond his philosophical discussion of Entfremdung (alienation), he later documented the extreme physical degeneration of workers drawn into the factory system (CW 35: 253, 275). The many improvements that were subsequently gained through workers’ struggles have not altered the underlying dynamic. In part, the centers of misery have shifted away from the industrial core; in part, the health-destroying impact has spread from the immediate environment of the factory to the larger environment of the earth’s ecosystem; and in part, with the aid of new technologies (informational as well as genetic), the difference in levels of

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power-resources available to ruling and subject classes has been carried to unprecedented heights.16 The dynamic affecting the natural as well as the social world is thus one in which, as anticipated in the Communist Manifesto, the response of the bourgeoisie to each emerging crisis only paves the way for “more extensive and more destructive crises” (CW 6: 490). Marx’s approach to the humanity/nature relation, by establishing the context for his treatment of the social relations of production, equips us to understand the global crisis as it appears in the twenty-first century. The newly felt dangers seen to be presented by the natural world represent the accumulated costs of the devastation imposed upon it by capital. Any large-scale alleviation of these dangers will require a correspondingly vast shift in the system of social relations. The core species-question, namely the question of human survival, will thus remain inextricably linked to the resolution of the class question.

16  On the extreme “advances” made possible by genetic manipulation, see Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? (New York: Henry Holt, 2019).

CHAPTER 6

On “Market Socialism” and the Soviet Experience

The Market Socialism Debate Capitalism is a system whose defenders have always tried to cloak it in euphemisms. This very fact should remind us that popular predispositions are less hostile toward socialism—in substance if not in word—than is often assumed. After all, why would most people see any virtue in an arrangement whereby control over their lives is explicitly vested in the owners of big capital? The succession of terms used to veil so blunt a description has ranged widely, encompassing among others liberty, democracy, free society, free enterprise, and open society. The post-1989 expressions of choice, however, have been market society and market democracy. The emphasis on markets makes the designation somewhat more candid than before, but still has the virtue, for capitalist ideologues, of obscuring questions of class and power. There are, after all, many kinds of market, of which the oldest, most universal, and most familiar can be easily perceived as mundane, benign, and even indispensable. From the socialist direction, there has long been an influential tendency—especially among activists in the metropoles of imperialism— which has sought to downplay phenomena of antagonism and disruption, whether in depicting the existing order or in projecting how it would be transcended. Marx already put forward a scathing analysis of this approach in his Critique of the Gotha Program (1875). Since 1989, however, the

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same dream of reaching a society-wide “progressive” consensus has been sharply reasserting itself, this time invoking the fate of the Soviet experiment to assert that any future socialist project should be grounded in market principles. Hence the renewed attention to “market socialism,” whose minimum defining trait is the idea that the bulk of a society’s goods and services should continue to be produced, under socialism as under capitalism, by enterprises competing against one another in the marketplace. The market socialist idea gained strength, after the Soviet collapse, from the contention that central planning—and by extension all publicly grounded planning—has been shown, once and for all, to be unworkable. This assumption, combined with the aggressive spread of privatizing and globalizing forces (embodied in everything from charter schools to international Free Trade agreements), has put longstanding socialist ideas on the defensive. To suggest on top of all this that market principles might even be constitutive of socialism seems, from a traditional socialist perspective, almost unreal. This perhaps accounts for the reluctance of many socialists to take the “market socialist” position seriously enough to confront it head-on. Don’t market assumptions signify, after all, a rather fundamental surrender to capital? And as for the eventual possibility of imposing a more circumscribed role for markets, isn’t this a question that should cede priority to more immediate political tasks? Unfortunately, political understanding does not necessarily progress in neat stages, even at an individual level, let alone at the level of an entire movement. Ideas of market socialism may well not “belong” on the Left’s current agenda (in the sense that the Left, at least in the “advanced” countries, is nowhere near being in a position to implement socialism of any kind); but this does not mean that such ideas will not be placed there, in part even by people who very much share the common (non- or even anti-­ market-­based) goals of the Left, to the extent that there is a general climate of pessimism regarding socialist prospects. A systematic response to this tendency was offered by David McNally in his fine but insufficiently discussed work Against the Market. Bertell Ollman extended the debate with his edited collection, Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists, in which partisans and critics of market socialism confront each other, as it were, face-to-face.1 The exchanges in the latter book prompt a number of reflections. 1  David McNally, Against the Market: Political Economy, Market Socialism and the Marxist Critique (London and New York: Verso, 1993); Bertell Ollman, ed. Market Socialism: The

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The collection presents us with two one-on-one debates, one between Ollman and James Lawler, and the other between Hillel Ticktin and David Schweickart. Lawler and Schweickart are advocates of market socialism, while Ollman and Ticktin oppose it. Both debates are structured in the form of exposition/critique/rejoinder, with each party in a given pair-off having, by turn, a shot at the exposition/rejoinder role. The big job of synthesis is left up to the reader, but the book provides a wealth of challenging arguments on issues that are fundamental to the Left’s self-definition. The underlying question, of course, is the nature of the market. Can its age-old and relatively innocuous role as a site for (minimally mediated) exchanges of necessities be separated from the invasive and coercive dimensions it has taken on under the regime of capital? Ollman’s essay on “Market Mystification” explores in depth the psychological effects of market relations under capitalism, stressing their role in drawing popular attention away from the structures that uphold class rule. His account underlines how market-based reflexes discourage needs-based thinking about economic policy and thereby get in the way of any project for popular control. A mere shift in ownership-structures would hardly affect such deeply ingrained habits. Competition among worker-owned enterprises, in particular, would only reinforce the perpetuation of capitalist norms. Ollman’s conclusion is unambiguous: “People’s turn to socialism will only emerge out of the rejection of all market relationships” (112). As is suggested by much of the rest of the book, however, this affirmation—expressed also in Ticktin’s oxymoronic metaphor of market socialism as “fried ice”—raises at least as many questions as it answers. Assuming a socialist vantage-point, that is, accepting Ollman’s critique of capitalist market relations, there are nonetheless two possible angles from which his conclusion might require qualification. The first would be to argue that while what he says about the capitalist market is true, it does not rule out a scenario in which, if power were taken away from the capitalist class, the revolutionary regime could confine market relations to a much more limited sphere—such as they occupied in precapitalist times—from which they would no longer have the kind of hegemonic impact that capital has given them. The second angle would not question the desirability of fully superseding all market relations but would focus on how, in practical Debate Among Socialists (New York and London: Routledge, 1998). Page-numbers in parentheses refer to Ollman’s edited collection.

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terms, it is possible to do so. In the present debates, the first line of criticism is represented primarily by Schweickart and the second by Lawler. Schweickart’s basic view is that the market as such “has both virtues and vices,” and that the virtues will prevail if only it can be “embedded in networks of property relationships different from capitalist relationships” (11). His criticisms of the Soviet planning model are familiar and are no longer controversial among socialists. More surprising, in view of his support for workers’ self-management, is his relatively positive take on the Chinese model; in fact, however, this flows quite naturally from his skepticism as to the possibilities for democratic control of the economy at the macro level. As he puts it, “We do not need an economy that will allow us to storm the heavens…. We need an economy that will allow us to get on with our lives without having to worry so much about economic matters” (19). Ticktin, in his critique of Schweickart, fails to pick up on the point that this attitude might be all well and good once a satisfactory basic framework had been established, but that in the meantime something not far short of “storming the heavens” will be needed in order to eliminate poverty and reverse capital’s deadly assault upon the natural environment. The missing dimensions of acute misery and environmental depletion hang silently over much of this debate. They call into question the seriousness of the claim, made especially by the market socialists, to be attentive to practical exigencies. What can markets possibly do toward ending poverty and restoring biodiversity? Ironically, however, such questions are most blatantly side-stepped in Ticktin’s critique of market socialism, despite the fact that they are the very problems that are the most intractable to any market-based approach. Ticktin’s discussion is effective so long as he is reminding us to view the market as “not a technicality or a mechanism but a specific social relation of labor and capital” (63), with the implication that the historical extension of its hegemony may not be so easy to shed (a point developed more thoroughly by McNally). But the casual assumptions about abundance on which he hinges his entire argument (“[O]nce abundance is accepted, everything else I have maintained about socialism follows.” [162]) turn out to be based on a seemingly unreflective assimilation of capitalist-style high-tech thinking, which has never been fazed by natural limits. Thus, “Raw materials can be replaced by artificial materials or by greatly enhanced genetically modified forms” (131). The Ticktin-Schweickart debate, then, is one that I find problematic on both sides. Ticktin, although a long-time critic of Soviet practice, ­replicates

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the approach of the most grandiose social-engineering dreams of the early Soviet period—dreams which appear if anything even more dangerous today, given the tarnished and reduced condition of the natural infrastructure. Schweickart, for his part, although stronger in his socialist convictions than many other market socialists, seems to underplay the magnitude of the political upheaval that would be required in order to implement even the deliberately limited structural changes that he advocates. As for the actual content of Schweickart’s “mix,” it falls well short of shrinking the market to its precapitalist scope. What it does involve is abolishing the market in both capital and labor, leaving Schweickart then with the difficulty of explaining how market-signals could still function as indicators of relative costs. Ticktin emerges with the advantage of a more consistent position but is vulnerable to a different kind of charge, namely, that however necessary his more sweeping approach might be, it is simply impossible to abolish the market in one stroke. The question of process brings us back to the Ollman-Lawler exchange. Lawler does not challenge Ollman’s powerful critique of market hegemony but instead focuses almost entirely on the process of transition. He suggests that the disappearance of the market corresponds to the historical stage of full communism, and argues that even Marx himself did not expect the market to be superseded under socialism. He refers to Marx’s role in the working-class struggles of his time (e.g., for the ten-hour day) as reflecting a strategy of making gradual inroads on the scope of market-­ dictated conditions (140); as for the eventual revolutionary breakthrough, he stresses Marx’s recognition that the new society will still be “stamped with the birth-marks of the old” (42). Ollman does not dispute the contention that post-revolutionary society will contain de facto market elements; his chief “political” complaint against market socialism is that “it takes workers as they now are—and leaves them that way” (181). On the issue of transition, Ollman and Lawler seem to be largely speaking past each other, focusing respectively on two quite different aspects of the process. Lawler keeps asking what measures can be taken, while Ollman, with equal persistence, focuses on what is happening in people’s consciousness. But despite their failure to achieve a higher synthesis, or even to agree on whether to apply the label “socialism” to the immediate aftermath of an anti-capitalist revolution, their combined arguments embody a significant area of unspoken consensus. They agree on the one hand that market hegemony needs to be eventually overcome and, on the other, that this cannot be done from one moment to the next. This implies

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in turn that in the event of any socialist accession to power, there will be a period of heightened conflict between longstanding antagonistic sets of pressures. Even Schweickart, for all his interest in establishing a modus vivendi between the two pressures, does not deny that they are antagonistic. This then calls into question the utility of the phrase “market socialism” as an expression of a political goal. To recognize that the real debate is over different ways of approaching and navigating a universally recognized conflict represents a real advance over the contention—implied by those who embrace the hybrid expression—that the principles of “market” and “socialism” do not clash. In fact, among those who have identified themselves as market socialists, the ones (notably in Eastern Europe) who have most insistently stressed the “market” pole have sooner or later found themselves constrained to abandon the “socialist” one. On the other hand, all the popular struggles for a better life, including even such modest demands as family leave, minimum wage, consumer protection, and occupational safety, imply inroads on market prerogatives. What sense, then, does it make to tell those who support such demands that the market can be their ally?

The Soviet Experience The issue of “Real Socialism” has plagued the global Left since 1917. Michael Lebowitz’s 2012 book, The Contradictions of Real Socialism,2 makes it possible for us to examine that experience through a lens informed not only by a thorough reading of Marx, but also by many years of activism, leavened by extensive contacts with Cuban and Venezuelan protagonists during years of residence in their respective countries. Lebowitz’s discussion of the Soviet experience focuses mostly on its last three decades (the 1950s to the 1980s), by which time the regime’s structures and institutions were firmly in place. While the general stance of recognizing the contradictions of this period has a long lineage, Lebowitz’s particular approach to defining them is new and fruitful. The book’s point of departure consists of two common-sense but easily overlooked insights: first, that one cannot have an effective popular

2  Michael Lebowitz, The Contradictions of Real Socialism: The Conductor and the Conducted (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012). Citations to this book are here given in parentheses.

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­ ovement without a long-term vision; second, that even if a project fails m in its first attempt, it can still succeed in the long run. Lebowitz’s larger philosophical premise is that the goal of socialism/communism is “the free development of all”—implying the full flowering of everyone’s individual capacities. This might be considered equally uncontestable, but its centrality to Marx’s approach has often been ignored, at great cost. A running theme of the present book is that Marx’s concern for human development permeates not only his early writings, but also every phase of his mature work. The political expression of this concern is the idea of the “society of associated producers,” which Marx evokes in Capital vol. 3 as the ultimate negation of capitalist production relations. The defining aspect of capitalism to which this responds is the fact that capital not only exploits workers, but also deforms and degrades them. Individual workers, as Lebowitz repeatedly emphasizes with citations from Marx, are robbed not only of the surplus value that they create, but also of their full humanity. In order for them to recover their wholeness as human beings, the division in the capitalist work-process between conception and execution—eloquently described in Harry Braverman’s classic, Labor and Monopoly Capital (1976)—has to be overcome. The goal of reuniting conception and execution (thinking and doing; design and implementation) is encapsulated by Lebowitz in what he calls “the moral economy of the working class”—a wide-ranging concept that also encompasses egalitarian convictions and, in the immediate context of wage-work, the sense of having a right to one’s job. This moral economy is discussed by Lebowitz as one of three interrelated and contending “logics” operating under Real Socialism. This is indeed the point at which Lebowitz popularizes a fresh approach to his subject. Earlier analyses tended to posit a bipolar scenario. Under capitalism, workers had to confront the logic of capital; under the Soviet regime, the role of capital was taken over by the state bureaucracy, which however, in relation to the working class, pursued a command-logic essentially similar to that of capital. Lebowitz, for his part, distinguishes sharply between the “logic of capital” and (pervading the bureaucracy) the “logic of the vanguard.” Although both are ultimately antagonistic to workers (and while there is some degree of overlap between them), their defining principles—and hence many of their practices—differ sharply. By invoking this three-sided dynamic (between workers, vanguard, and capital), Lebowitz is able to portray the Soviet political economy in a way

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that makes sense of all its long-noted irrationalities while at the same time coolly and without the slightest hint of glorification accounting for the very real benefits—notably, job-security and cultural opportunities—that the regime conferred on its workers, even as it reserved production-­ decisions to the interplay between enterprise-managers and central planners. In terms of providing a context for present-day political discussions about socialism, it is fitting that Lebowitz’s narrative begins with the most notorious negative trait of Real Socialism, namely, “The Shortage Economy” (the title of his first chapter). Drawing extensively on the work of Hungarian economist Janos Kornai, Lebowitz spells out the pattern of mistrust and second-guessing that marked the way planning guidelines were arrived at and implemented. He stresses, however, that such approaches are not inherent in planning as such, but were rather the outcome of a “particular combination of instructions and incentives” (46). Underlying this nexus was the tension between planners and enterprise-­ managers. Planners would tend to set ambitious targets, but their information depended on the managers, whose projections they regarded as suspect because of the managers’ fear of accepting targets that they might not be able to meet. With the complex web of supply-dependences, shortfalls were inevitable. The dynamic was then further complicated by the mixed motivations present in the workforce, which exercised a distinctive blend of power and powerlessness. For, while the workers had no say in setting targets or in organizing production, they enjoyed—as their side of what Lebowitz calls (in the title of his second chapter) a “social contract” with the Vanguard—a remarkable level of security and consequent power to resist managerial exhortations. The vanguard, then, is the agent that accounts for the special traits of Real Socialism. It is noteworthy that Lebowitz refers to vanguard where past treatments more commonly referred to bureaucracy (the term bureaucracy appears hardly at all in this book). The vanguard is a curious amalgam of what we might term revolutionary and counterrevolutionary traits. While committed to socialism, it is at the same time wedded to the idea of its own indispensability, viewing socialism as “a gift to those below by the only ones above who know how to create [it]” (70). And yet, despite this obvious hierarchical aspect, “the working class yields control over its labor power in return for a package that is far better than that [which] it could expect to receive within capitalism” (75).

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In Lebowitz’s tripartite power-configuration, the logic of the vanguard is thus in part that of an intermediary between the logics of capital and of labor. The vanguard protects certain immediate interests of the working class, but yet depends on enterprise managers for the implementation of its macro-economic goals. The managers, however, respond primarily to the logic of the market—and hence ultimately of capital—in their constant striving to surmount the demands and/or the restraints placed on them by planners, suppliers, and purchasers. While planning-guidelines are set on the basis of vanguard-logic (i.e., a politically determined agenda), enterprise managers “act in their own individual interests” (95). Lebowitz sees in the interaction between these two principles the core of “the dysfunction and deformation identified with Real Socialism” (92). The polarity eventually took the form of a consciously fought struggle between plan and market, in which increasing pressures developed, by the 1980s, to revoke the social contract which up to then had protected workers against speedup, wage-cuts, and layoffs (127). What had upheld that “contractual” obligation to the workers had been the ideological commitment of the vanguard, embodied in the Communist Party. Once that commitment wilted in the face of the free-­ market onslaught, the workers, lacking “space for autonomous organization or, indeed, effective communication among themselves,… were disarmed in the ideological struggle” (131). The only force that could have moved Real Socialism in a direction consistent with its stated goals, argues Lebowitz, would have been the independent organization of the working class, via the formation of workers’ councils (169). But the regime foreclosed this option by molding a working class that suited its “vanguard” ideology. And the logic of the vanguard became increasingly “subordinated by the logic of capital” (154). Lebowitz insists throughout his exposition that people’s individual capacities, as shaped by the social relations of production, are decisive in defining the structures in which they live. The logic of the vanguard fails to repair the deformation produced in people by capitalism. Such repair can be achieved only through workers’ self-organization. In failing to allow this, the Soviet leadership laid the groundwork for its own eventual dissolution. Lebowitz’s account makes sense of the Soviet trajectory, and his call for a bottom-up protagonism linked to full human development is persuasive. One might question, however, the sharp edge that he places on his concept of the vanguard. In Lebowitz’s treatment, the vanguard does not

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earn its role but simply assumes it. Its modus operandi is simply that of giving commands. But there is no reason that it has to be this way. A vanguard can earn and maintain its authority through give-and-take with its constituency. Even if the Soviet leadership sank into a “command” mode, there is no reason to view this as the only possible way for a vanguard to act.3 Vanguards could conceivably follow a different logic: one of accountability and mutual respect. The potential usefulness of such an approach can be understood in Lebowitz’s own terms if we consider the dual aspect of his moral economy of the working class. This consists in part of a protective, “resisting” side, concerned to defend workers’ interests against threats from a superior power (much as it does under capitalism). But the other part, the part insisting on social equality, demands more than merely holding onto certain minimal gains; it demands collective power. Lebowitz wishes that Soviet workers could have advanced from the former to the latter self-conception. But how could they have done so without following some kind of learning curve? And, in such a process, why shouldn’t those with broader horizons and greater accumulated wisdom inspire and help activate those with less? But is this not also a vanguard role? Lebowitz seems to rule out such a possibility. Ironically, the rigidity of his conception of “vanguard logic” becomes clear in the very argument signaled by the subtitle of his book, “The Conductor and the Conducted.” To illustrate Marx’s vision of the society of associated producers, Lebowitz has chosen the image of a “Society of Associated Conductors” (another chapter-title). But if he wanted to demonstrate the superfluity of traditional leadership-structures, this orchestral analogy is problematic. The obstacles to collective direction here are more severe than they are in a production enterprise, because deliberation cannot be carried on during the performance itself.4 For this very reason, though—as well as the 3  The notion of a variety of possible vanguard practices can be derived even from Lenin. While some of Lenin’s actions fit Lebowitz’s “vanguard logic,” others, especially prior to 1917, belie the stereotype of an unvarying commandist approach. For a useful overview, see Paul Le Blanc, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1990). 4  Coordination during the performance is not a problem for small ensembles; the difficulty increases, however, with the size of the group. A pioneering effort to surmount this obstacle is the 48-year-old, 31-member Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which performs without a conductor. A more recent example is Spira Mirabilis, an international ensemble of young musicians based in northern Italy, which sometimes enlists even larger numbers for its conductor-less performances (see online Guardian article, October 28, 2010). It is a true expression of labor as “life’s prime want,” and a model for the “society of associated produc-

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s­ensibilities of the musicians—the “vanguard” role of the conductor, as exercised in rehearsals, has a pedagogical and interactive dimension, which is absent in the hierarchical production enterprise. Lebowitz however— perhaps envisioning only the concert-performance and not the whole process leading up to it—oversimplifies the power dimension of artistic leadership, positing an omnipotent and omniscient conductor set over against musicians functioning as mere automatons “performing their assigned tasks with the regularity of a machine” (24). In his closing remarks (186), Lebowitz insists that he does not deny the importance of leadership; his purpose was to explain a particular historical phenomenon. He has provided a valuable framework for doing so. But he also encourages us to draw the lessons from it. What he has demonstrated has been the dynamic of a particular vanguard. This is the agent to which he attributed an intermediary role between what had hitherto been mostly seen as just two primary protagonists. By analyzing the vanguard’s declining trajectory, Lebowitz has provided an object lesson in revolutionary pitfalls. But in ascribing a “logic” to this vanguard—a logic as inherent to it as the logics of capital and labor are to them—he has given an impression of inevitability to its conduct. Perhaps a differently conceived and more permeable vanguard—one attuned to the Marx/Lebowitz vision of a society of associated producers—could act differently.

ers.” On the one hand, it defies usual expectations as to the range of styles it can master and as to the number of works it will perform on a given occasion; on the other, its members depend on other orchestras for their incomes.

PART II

Social Movements and Political Leadership

CHAPTER 7

Workers’ Control and Revolution: History and Theory

In the perpetual striving of the left to integrate long-range vision and immediate practice, the idea of workers’ control1 occupies a special place. On the one hand, its generalized application would satisfy one of the main requirements for a stateless society; on the other, the basic units and the specific measures which it involves are such that it can sometimes be put into practice within particular enterprises in an otherwise capitalist framework. In the first of these perspectives, workers’ control has always been one of the most radical possible demands, indistinguishable in effect from the communist ideal, while from the second vantage-point it has appeared to be limited, innocuous, and easily co-optable. How can a single demand appear at the same time so easy and so difficult, so harmless and so explosive? The contradiction lies of course in the system which has given rise to the demand. Prior to the capitalist epoch, the idea of “workers’ control of the production process” could not have been a demand; it was a simple fact of life (within the limits allowed by nature). Hence the apparent accessibility of workers’ control, which at bottom reflects no more than the capacity of all humans to think as well as to act. In these terms, it should not be surprising that workers occasionally take over and run productive enterprises without necessarily having an explicit socialist consciousness or political strategy. The faculties they draw 1  Unless otherwise specified, the term “workers’ control” will be taken as synonymous with “self-management.” Each term may be applied, depending on context, either to particular workplaces or to an entire society.

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upon for such initiatives are not so much new as they are long suppressed— for the majority of the population. It is the overcoming of this suppression, as old as capitalism, which constitutes the explosive side of workers’ control. What workers’ control points to is more than just a new way of organizing production; it is also the release of human creative energy on a vast scale. As such, it is inherently revolutionary. But at the same time, because of the very weight of what it must overcome, it appears correspondingly remote from day-to-­ day struggles. As a political rallying point, it has two specific drawbacks. First, its urgency in many situations is not likely to be as great as that of survival-demands; and second, its full application will remain limited as long as there are economic forces beyond the reach of the workers— whether within a given country or outside it.2 Concern with these dimensions is often seen as precluding an emphasis on workers’ control, and as a result, the self-management impulse, despite its original naturalness, is consigned to utopia. Such a dismissal is altogether unjustified. The growing interest in workers’ control since the late 1960s cannot be explained merely by its timeless qualities. Like Marx’s critique of capitalism, it reflects a definite historical juncture. The countries with extreme physical privation are no longer the only ones in which the system’s breakdown is manifest. The advanced capitalist regimes are likewise in question, even if not for the first time. A new feature of the post-1960s crisis is precisely a redefinition of the concept of basic needs. The “environment,” after all, exists inside as well as outside the workplace, and the old distinction between survival needs (identified with wages) and other demands (self-determination, participation, and control) is increasingly losing its meaning. Linked to this is the fact that the fragmentation of the capitalist work process has reached a limit in the leading industrial sectors and is fast approaching it in clerical and sales operations.3 As the reaction to this de-skilling process develops, there is no reason why it should stop half way. Finally, with the rightward evolution of the Chinese leadership (the major international model in the third quarter of the twentieth century),4 there has opened an increasing 2  Jean-Luc Dallemagne, Autogestion ou dictature du prolétariat (Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1976), 114. 3  Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976). 4  See Timothy Kerswell and Jake Lin, “Capitalism Denied with Chinese Characteristics,” Socialism and Democracy, 31:2 (2017).

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space on the left to reexamine long-held assumptions about socialist organization5—assumptions which in any case reflected particular historical settings from which it is difficult to generalize. But despite all such arguments for placing workers’ control on the agenda, one may well remain skeptical as to the real possibilities it encompasses. We might initially consider the potential significance of isolated self-managed or cooperative enterprises. Their usefulness as models is limited, however, in several ways. They are generally small, and if they grow, they tend to take on traditional capitalistic incentives and administrative practices.6 They are unlikely to emerge in core industries simply because the terms of a negotiated property-transfer would be beyond the financial reach of the workers. A second possibility to consider would be some of the West European reform models. These seem to have stopped short of all but the most token worker input except in the Swedish case. In Sweden, the results are more impressive, extending to major changes in the work process, flexibility in scheduling (by workers), and even the beginnings of a collective input into production decisions.7 However, this is still not control. The changes in Sweden are important for showing the workers’ capabilities and also for developing them further, but they do not amount to a decisive shift of power. Thus they still leave unanswered the question of what the actual autonomy of the workers would mean. As a third alternative, we might consider the practice of some of the post-capitalist societies which instituted one form or another of elective principle at the factory level. As of the late 1970s, the two main countries where such measures had been directly introduced by the political leadership were Yugoslavia and China. But in both cases the measures were subject to important checks all along,8 and were subsequently offset by decisive reversions to earlier market-oriented and more authoritarian 5  See Immanuel Ness and Dario Azzellini, eds., Ours to Master and to Own: Workers’ Control from the Commune to the Present (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011); also Dario Azzellini, ed., An Alternative Labour History: Worker Control and Workplace Democracy (London: Zed Books, 2015). 6  The evolution of the Mondragón cooperatives is instructive in this respect. For a nuanced account, see Tim Huet, “Can Coops Go Global? Mondragón Is Trying,” Dollars and Sense, Nov./Dec., 1997. 7  See Martin Peterson, ed., Special issue of Scandinavian Review (1977), on “Industrial Democracy.” 8  See Barry M.  Richman, Industrial Society in Communist China (New York: Random House, 1969), ch. IX; the key body ranking above the director is the party committee, and “a majority of the enterprises did not have any workers on their party committees” (762). On

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­ractices. More generally, however, the regimes and leaderships of p twentieth-­century socialism tended to view their own political rule as obviating the need for democratic restructuring of the workplace. Cuba, in more recent years, would become the first country with a broad socialist agenda to gradually implement worker-control measures following an initial transfer of class-power at the level of the state. The Cuban Revolution constitutes a kind of historical bridge between, on the one hand, the revolutions and regimes that were precipitated by imperialist invasions (1914–45) and led by vanguard parties, and, on the other, the post-1989 wave of grassroots movements—most evident in Latin America—which from the outset accorded new emphasis to mechanisms of popular participation.9 This latter development heralds a fresh chapter in the global history of workers’ control, and we shall examine it in the latter part of this chapter. Up until this most recent period, however, it could justifiably be said that workers’ participation in management normally fell very far short of control except in the most isolated cases— even where considerable social upheaval had intervened. While workers’ control thus did not appear impossible, it at least seemed to require almost laboratory-controlled surroundings for its success.10 There is one type of experience, however, which explodes such a view completely, and that is the experience of the revolutionary periods themselves. On the one hand, workers’ control has gone further and deeper in such periods than at any other times, whether pre- or post-revolutionary. And on the other hand, far from being peculiar to this or that crisis, workers’ control initiatives have been a typical accompaniment of such crises,

Yugoslavia, see Darko Suvin, Splendour, Misery, and Possibilities: An X-ray of Socialist Yugoslavia (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 9  On Cuba’s place in this epochal sequence, see D.L.  Raby, Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today (London: Pluto Press, 2006), 111–131. The historical basis for Cuba’s eventual institutionalization of worker-control structures is discussed in Victor Wallis, “Workers’ Control: Cases from Latin America and the Caribbean” in Jack W. Hopkins, ed., Latin America and Caribbean Contemporary Record, Vol. 3 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), 254–257. On subsequent advances in Cuba, see Camila Piñeiro Harnecker, ed., Cooperatives and Socialism: A View from Cuba (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 10  It was along these lines that Jean-François Revel (in La tentation totalitaire. Paris: Laffont, 1976, 167–174) tried to dismiss self-management as a non-existent alternative to social democracy and Stalinism. It should be noted that his remarks on the dynamics of selfmanagement (169) tacitly assume a capitalist environment.

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arising in a wide range cases encompassing industrialized as well as only partly industrialized countries. Clearly, we are dealing with a phenomenon of universal force and appeal. And yet, without more than this initial recognition of it, we are tempted to ask whether the crises themselves do not constitute an environment just as artificial as the isolated small enterprise or the self-­sufficient local community. Such a view is contradicted, however, by two immediate considerations. First is simply the range of different countries and circumstances in which the initiatives arose. Without setting any across-the-board criteria as to the depth or thrust of the crises, a listing would have to include: Russia 1917–18, Germany 1918–19, Hungary 1919, Italy 1920, Spain 1936–39, Czechoslovakia 1945–47, Hungary and Poland 1956, Algeria 1962–65, China 1966–69, France and Czechoslovakia 1968, Chile 1970–73, and Portugal 1974–75.11 Second and more decisive is the fact that in no case did the radical initiative die a natural death. Although there may have been natural disadvantages (inexperience, excesses, or abuses), what killed the initiative in every case was not any loss of enthusiasm, but rather the government’s threat or use of armed force. It is true that in many of the cases there were also divisions among the workers, but it was the military factor which invariably sealed the argument. If we grant, then, that workers’ control has shown itself to have a core of viability, it remains for us to ask what can be learned from all these experiences which might point toward its implementation under stable conditions. Focusing first on the Russian case and then on three cases (Italy, Spain, and Chile) more directly pertinent to advanced capitalist democracies, we shall have to look for both positive and negative lessons in such matters as the capacities of the workers, the ripeness of the surrounding conditions, and the role of political leadership. We shall then consider possible new configurations suggested by later developments in Cuba and Venezuela.

11  For a more comprehensive listing and discussion, not limited to revolutionary moments, see Assef Bayat, Work, Politics and Power: An International Perspective on Workers’ Control and Self-Management (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991). A cogent general exposition of the place of workers’ councils in socialist revolution is Ernest Mandel’s Introduction to his collection, Contrôle ouvrier, conseils ouvriers, autogestion, 3 vols. (Paris: François Maspéro. 1973), I: 5–54.

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Proletariat and Dictatorship in Revolutionary Russia The history of revolutionary workers’ movements presents an inspiring but at the same time a sobering succession of rises and falls. Tremendous but short-lived outpourings of human potential are followed by longer periods of often bitter repression. Indeed, the rule has long seemed to be (at least up to the end of the twentieth century): the higher the hopes, the bloodier the repression. The Russian case inescapably sets the terms for any comparative discussion. In its combination of hopes and disappointments, it was certainly a prototype, although it differs from its successors on our list in being the only case of a movement initiated under capitalism in which the capitalist state was decisively overthrown. In that sense, it represents the closest approach of any of them to a clear-cut workers’ victory. Related to this point is the uniqueness of the Russian Revolution in being, despite the immensity of the country’s peasant population, the only revolution yet to have triumphed on the basis of an industrial working class.12 This fact, combined with the forcefulness of Lenin’s writings, has given the Bolshevik approach a historic influence on discussions of workers’ control which is out of all proportion to the revolution’s long-run attainments in that area. In point of fact, the Bolshevik leadership, from the moment that it took power in October 1917, entered upon an irrevocable collision course with workers’ self-management initiatives. For Lenin himself, there may have been some misgivings; at least there is no question about his enthusiasm for workers’ initiatives during the whole pre-October period.13 But his position after October is unambiguous: “large-scale machine industry— which is precisely the material source, the productive source, the foundation of socialism—calls for absolute and strict unity of will…. But how can strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the will of one.”14 12  On the key role of workers in the October Revolution, see, for example, David Mandel, The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power (London: Macmillan Press, 1984), esp. 260–263. 13  See, for example, his expression of support for the factory committees, quoted in Tony Cliff, Lenin, vol. 2. (London: Pluto Press, 1976), 244. For background on this issue, see E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923, vol. 2 (London: Penguin, 1952), 62–79. 14  V.I.  Lenin, “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government” (April 1918), Selected Works. 1-vol. ed. (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 424 (Lenin’s emphasis).

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Despite the unprecedented surge of factory takeovers which occurred throughout 1917, the Bolshevik leadership looked upon such actions as at most an expression of revolt against the bourgeoisie. It did not treat them as being something which they could directly build upon in the course of a transition to socialism. Instead, going along with the emphasis on obedience, Lenin repeatedly urged a prominent managerial role for former capitalists. When the Bolsheviks adopted the slogan of workers’ control, therefore, they made clear that they understood “control” in the limited European sense of “checking.”15 While the performance of the ex-­ capitalists was thus indeed to be “controlled,” Lenin never spelled out what aspects of the production process the workers would be empowered to judge. What this meant in practice, however, is clearly suggested in his remarks about Taylorism (“scientific management”), namely, that if a given method can quadruple productivity for the benefit of the capitalists, it can just as well do so for the benefit of the working class.16 In line with this approach, the Soviet government reacted with consistent disfavor to workers’ managerial initiatives, even where the alternative was a factory-shutdown.17 Lenin defended this overall position by referring to the urgency of the country’s economic tasks and to the inexperience of the workers.18 He did not consider the possibility of using the old managers just as consultants, but instead accepted the idea that they should retain prime authority. In defense of this stance, one can point out that many workers escaping the old discipline used their freedom of action for purely private or sectoral advantages;19 however, the widespread heroism displayed by workers in the civil war suggests that if given a meaningful opportunity, they might well have acted differently. While critics of 15  Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control: The State and Counterrevolution (London: Solidarity, 1970), 12. 16  V.I. Lenin, “The Taylor System – Man’s Enslavement by the Machine” (1914), in Lenin, On Workers’ Control and the Nationalization of Industry (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970), 17. Lenin’s critique of Taylorism refers to the allocation of labor and of the product rather than to the way the work is carried out. For a fuller discussion of alternative approaches, see Carmen Sirianni, Workers Control and Socialist Democracy: The Soviet Experience (London: Verso, 1982), 256–260. 17  Voline (V.M.  Eichenbaum), The Unknown Revolution, 1917–1921. Trans. Holley Cantine. (New York: Free Life Editions, 1974), 289ff. 18  Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality” (1918), Selected Works, 451. 19  Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), 162f.

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self-management are right in stressing the need for coordination, there is no reason for them to assume—particularly in periods of revolutionary mobilization—that it is incompatible with increased reliance on rank-and-­ file initiative. In any case, what was perhaps even more significant than the government’s position was the peremptory manner in which the leadership imposed it, not through discussion with the workers but rather by means of threats.20 What was at issue, in effect, was an entire approach to the transitional process. The acceptance of Taylorist methods was just one component— albeit a central one—of Lenin’s larger view of the Russian economy as still requiring full development of the capitalist production process even if under (presumed) working-class leadership. Lenin referred to this contradictory stage as “state capitalism,” which he saw as a necessary prerequisite to socialism.21 Its essence was a continuous increase of economic concentration. As such, its opponents could easily be classified as petty bourgeois, even though in fact the rationalization of industry that accompanied the heightened power-concentration might just as well be resisted by workers. In any case, it was in the context of his state-capitalism argument that Lenin presented his most general response to the self-management-­ oriented critics of his policy. The essay in question, “‘Left-Wing’ Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality” (May 1918), makes important reading in relation to present-day discussion of workers’ control and socialism. Lenin treats workers’ self-management as being not only premature but even counterproductive to his overall strategy for reaching socialism by way of state capitalism. The either/or nature of his position is made explicit in the following exhortation: “our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not to shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it.”22 There can be little question as to which class would be on the receiving end of such dictatorship at the factory level. If the workers, however, are so ill-equipped for self-management, how can their party be justified in taking state power? Lenin takes up this question of prematurity in general terms in the same essay, arguing convincingly against the kind of purism (“man in a muffler”) which requires a perfect evenness in the development of all forces before any step forward  Voline, The Unknown Revolution, 294.  Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Childishness,” 440. 22  Ibid., 444 (Lenin’s emphasis). 20 21

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can be taken.23 It is strange that this properly dialectical response should accompany Lenin’s emphatically undialectical exaltation of the priority of state capitalism. For while the latter approach could and did kill workers’ self-management initiatives, the dialectical approach, with its recognition that people’s faculties develop in conjunction with their responsibilities, prompts precisely the opposite suggestion: namely, if it was not too soon for the workers (through their parties) to seize state power, why was it too soon for them to start using it to transform production relations? Or, in other words, if Soviet industrialization was to differ from that of capitalist countries by being completed under a workers’ government, why could it not also differ in the manner in which it was administered at the unit-level, that is, within the factory?24 What is at issue here is not in the nature of an “error” on Lenin’s part. In terms of the immediate priority of defeating the counterrevolution, he was undeniably successful, although whether his approach was the only one possible is something that we may never know. Two things are certain, however. One is that the supposedly temporary restraints upon workers’ initiatives were never removed;25 the other is that the economic assumptions which seemed to justify them were not peculiar to Lenin but were widely shared in his time, even among Marxists. Briefly put, the assumptions are (1) that growth is good, (2) that results are more important than processes, and (3) that capitalists get results.26 Linked to them in Lenin’s thinking was the more specific belief in the relative neutrality of capitalist management techniques (Taylorism) and, with it, the implicit conclusion that communists can play the capitalist game without getting drawn into it. The irony of all this is that while Lenin’s approach may have been necessary to prevent the immediate counterrevolution, it undoubtedly worked  Ibid., 448.  Documentation of the workers’ autonomous organization and participation at the factory level became newly available with the post-1991 opening of the Soviet archives. For first-hand testimony on the workers’ commitment, see Kevin Murphy, Revolution and Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory. Chicago: Haymarket, 2005), esp. 63–74. 25  M. Holubenko, “The Soviet Working Class: Discontent and Opposition,” Critique, No. 4 (1975), 23. 26  Dallemagne, arguing along Leninist lines, defends such assumptions on the ground that capitalist production relations had not yet reached a level at which they could be superseded (Autogestion ou dictature du prolétariat, 122); however, when he comes to the question of how the resulting hierarchical relations might later be overcome (248f), he offers only abstract imperatives. 23 24

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to facilitate the more long-term restoration of traditional hierarchical management practices. The negative lesson of the Soviet experience is therefore clear: socialist revolution will not lead directly to the establishment of workers’ control unless the appropriate measures are incorporated into the process through all its stages. What the Russian workers accomplished in 1917 was of unparalleled importance in raising this possibility. If their efforts failed, it was not because of any inherent flaw in what they were striving for, but rather because of historical circumstances specific to the Russian case. The circumstances in question all relate to Russia’s position as being the first society to break through the global stranglehold of capital. First, as already suggested, the period itself was one in which the impressiveness of capitalism’s productive attainments was still largely unquestioned. Second, the very economic backwardness which made Russian society so explosive also required that any revolutionary government place a premium upon growth. Third, the workers themselves operated under a series of specific disadvantages, the most decisive of which was the lack of sufficient tradition and organization to enable them to coordinate their self-­ management initiatives. And finally, in response to the Civil War (an externally supported counterrevolution), huge numbers of the most dedicated workers—200,000 from Moscow alone by April 1918–departed for the front.27 For any who might have been able to return, the moment of their potential collective strength was lost.

The Politics of Revolutionary Workers’ Control: Three Cases The Russian experience, while only the first of its kind, was also the one in which the anti-capitalist struggle came closest to success. We have already seen, though, how distant it still was from a genuine victory. The capitalists were politically and militarily defeated, but their conception of the workplace hierarchy survived—with decisive consequences for the overall development of Soviet society. Looking at the subsequent experiences of Italy, Spain, and Chile, we can make almost exactly the opposite comment. The capitalist class in all three cases recovered its position in the most thoroughgoing and brutal form possible, via fascism. But the workers in each case made u ­ nprecedented  Murphy, Revolution and Counterrevolution, 65f.

27

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advances which, taken together, go far toward mapping the place of workers’ control in current and future revolutions. Italy, 1920 The Italian factory occupations of September 1920 were in some ways more limited than their crisis-counterparts elsewhere. They lasted less than a month, during which time a liberal bourgeois government remained in place; and the immediate withdrawal of the workers was based on a compromise. There was no doubt on either side, however, that class and state power were at issue throughout.28 This was the first instance of factory-­ seizures in a capitalist democracy, and it also gave rise for the first time to the idea that the workers could make the revolution not by bringing production to a halt (the general strike) but rather by taking charge of it themselves. If the short-run scope of the episode remained limited, it was partly because the workers lacked a strategy for going beyond the factory-­seizures and partly because of the reluctant patience of the capitalist class in waiting them out. The seizures themselves reflected an ad hoc decision. Although they climaxed more than a year of dramatic advances by the workers— including a national election in which the Socialists emerged as the top vote-getting party—the immediate occasion for them was a lockout.29 The unity of the workers’ direct response was not matched by any thoroughness or consensus in their prior planning. As for the capitalists, their patience at that moment was prompted not only by their unwillingness to destroy the factories but also by two contingent factors: on the one hand, a cyclical downturn in the demand for their products,30 and on the other, in the person of Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti, a shrewd political leadership at the national level. These factors, however, served only to delay the more fundamental capitalist response. The full reaction began with the fascist takeover of 1922. The connection between Italy’s “first” in the sphere of fascism and its “first” in the sphere of factory-seizures is by no means accidental. The actual experience of the factory-seizures constituted a trauma for the 28  Paolo Spriano, The Occupation of the Factories: Italy 1920. Trans. Gwyn A.  Williams (London: Pluto Press, 1975), 105, 131. 29  Ibid., 57. 30  Ibid., 44.

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bourgeoisie.31 Giolitti’s temporizing strategy had proved to be a sufficient palliative in only one sense: it gave short-run results simply because the workers had no way of extending their leverage beyond the factories themselves. But Giolitti had had higher hopes than just winning the immediate battle; as he admitted in his memoirs, he had assumed—in a manner doubtless common to the class he represented—that if he simply let the occupation run its course, the workers would soon realize that they were incapable of managing production.32 This comfortable assumption was shattered once and for all. The working-class threat was clearly more profound than Giolitti had thought, and for the bourgeoisie this justified new methods of repression.33 Despite their brevity, the Italian factory occupations signaled a major step forward for the workers compared to the Russian experience. In Russia, for reasons already noted, the workers had displayed considerable disorganization and indiscipline, sometimes degenerating into outright corruption, all of which had provided the element of justification for Lenin’s repressive approach. In the Italian factories, by contrast, “absenteeism among workers was negligible, discipline effective, combativity widely diffused.”34 Moreover, unlike the Russian situation, where worker-­ run factories had related to the market on a one-by-one basis, in Italy the workers set in motion the rudiments of a coordinated sales policy.35 In general, then, the Italian workers gave important practical evidence to show that one-man rule in the factory is not necessarily the only alternative to chaos. It may seem paradoxical that the workers’ revolutionary self-discipline should have advanced more in a situation where they were remote from power than in one where they could think of themselves as a ruling class. Even at an immediate level, however, this is not necessarily implausible, for the Italian workers were encouraged in their self-discipline by two practical requirements: on the one hand, that of guarding against provocation in a setting where the factories were surrounded by hostile armed forces, 31  Gaetano Salvemini, The Origins of Fascism in Italy (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 278. 32  John M. Cammett, Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967), 117. 33  Ibid., 121. 34  Spriano, The Occupation of the Factories, 84. 35  Gwyn A.  Williams, Proletarian Order: Antonio Gramsci, Factory Councils, and the Origins of Italian Communism, 1911–1921 (London: Pluto Press, 1975), 246f.

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and on the other, that of building up support in new sectors of the population. But one must still look deeper in order to see what enabled the Italian workers to respond to these requirements in the appropriate way. Italy’s political development is characterized by a unique combination of features not found together elsewhere. At the broadest level, it combines the late-­ industrialization traits of Germany and Russia with some of the constitutionalist traits of Northern and Western Europe. While late industrialization gave a revolutionary thrust to the working class, the possibility of incorporating democratic demands into labor struggles made the unions less “economistic” than they were—for varying reasons—in the other industrializing countries.36 As a result, there was less of a basis in Italy than elsewhere for the radical dichotomy between trade-union consciousness and class consciousness which at certain points shaped Lenin’s thinking. As a more direct expression of Italy’s uniqueness in these respects, one can note a tradition dating back to the 1860s, which linked socialism very closely with anarchism.37 Less than a year before the factory occupations, Antonio Gramsci gave a clear example of such a link when he wrote: “The proletarian dictatorship can only be embodied in a type of organization that is specific to the activity of producers, not wage-earners, the slaves of capital. The factory council is the nucleus of this organization…. The factory council is the model of the proletarian State.”38 Spain, 1936–39 The Spanish Civil War provided the occasion, in certain regions of the country, for the closest approach yet made to a society fully based on workers’ control. Largely hidden from world opinion at the time, the innovations in question have nonetheless been well recorded, often by eye-witnesses, and they constitute a vital reference-point for any revolutionary strategy which looks beyond the mere seizure of state power. The most notable aspects of the Spanish experience may be summarized as follows.39 First, workers’ control was practiced in every sector of  Cammett, Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism, 22.  Giuliano Procacci, Storia degli italiani (Bari: Laterza, 1971), 395. 38  Antonio. Gramsci, “Unions and Councils” (1919), in Selections from Political Writings (1910–1920), ed. Quintin Hoare (New York: International Publishers, 1977), 100. 39  Based on Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution. Trans. Vernon Richards (London: Freedom Press, 1975), and on Sam Dolgoff, ed., The Anarchist Collectives: 36 37

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the economy. While it went furthest in agriculture, in at least one city (Barcelona) it was also introduced in all industries and services. Second, the structural changes were very radical, often entailing the elimination of certain managerial positions, the equalization of wages, and, in some peasant collectives, the abolition of money. Particularly impressive is the fact that, where land-expropriations took place, the peasants almost invariably preferred communal ownership to parcelization. Third, even the most radical of the changes were introduced directly and immediately, placing maximum reliance on the participation of the masses to the highest level of their abilities. Fourth, contrary to many stereotypes, the changes in question were not necessarily made at the expense of efficiency, but instead often involved advances in technology or coordination, as in the consolidation of the Barcelona bakeries and the vertical integration of the Catalan lumber industry. And finally, it was in some places close to three years before the self-managed operations were suppressed by force of arms. There was thus ample time for them to prove themselves as practical arrangements. The full scope of the mass initiative in Spain was so great that one hesitates to offer any schematic explanation, but we may at least sketch in some of the contours.40 In Spain as in Italy, we find an anarchist component to working-class culture, and we also find a constitutional political framework. But Spain was economically more backward; its constitution was newer and its anarchism stronger. Anarchist and socialist movements had already developed two rival union-federations by the time the Republic was established (1931). In the sphere of government, the anarchists were naturally unrepresented, but the left parties doubtless benefited from their votes. By the time of the February 1936 elections, the general polarization of Spanish society exceeded that of postwar Italy, and the Popular Front coalition won a majority in parliament. The workers and peasants could thus make their first moves under a government which, though not revolutionary, they had at least some reason to consider their own. Workers’ Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939 (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1974), esp. chs. 6 and 7. 40  Based on Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 1950), Pt. II; Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931–1939 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), ch. 1; and Stanley Payne, The Spanish Revolution (New York: Norton, 1970), ch. 2.

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The real catalyst, however, was provided by the reactionary forces. This reflected another unique aspect of the Spanish case. In Italy, as also in Germany, fascism had intervened only after the high tide of the workers’ movement had already passed—outlasted in the former case by a relatively unified bourgeoisie; crushed in the latter by an unholy alliance of social-­ democrats and generals. In Spain of the 1930s, the bourgeoisie was still something of a rising class. An important sector of it was represented in the leadership of the Popular Front: again an unusual circumstance, in that all previous late-developing bourgeoisies had carefully avoided any political alliance with the working class. But the liberalism of the Republican bourgeoisie could not be viewed even as a temporary expedient by the rest of the Spanish ruling class. Hence the rapidly improvised military response of Franco in July 1936—the least prepared of all fascist risings in terms of any prior pacification of the masses. The counterattack from below was instantaneous, massive, and revolutionary. The popular resistance far outstripped anything that could have been organized by the bourgeois Republic; but by the same token it involved the immediate implementation of measures which even the most progressive of the governing parties could envisage only for a distant future. The military insurgency had hobbled the Republican power structure, and in so doing had confronted workers and peasants not only with a mortal threat, but also with an undreamed-of opportunity. They rushed to fill the vacuum. In a two-week period, they collectivized industries, services, and farm villages throughout the eastern (Republican controlled) half of Spain.41 With communities now authentically their own to defend, they gave themselves in full force to the military struggle against fascism. The Republican government was in a contradictory position. On the one hand, it would have fallen instantly without the popular counterattack, but on the other, it could in no way identify with the social revolution which this involved. So, while it gathered some of its forces to resist Franco’s Nationalist army, it mobilized others to suppress the very movement which had made that resistance possible. It was to gain a decisive counterrevolutionary success in the Barcelona May Days of 1937.42 The response from the side of the workers and peasants was ambiguous. Their dilemma was essentially the obverse of that of the government. 41  Pierre Broué and Emile Témime, The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain. Trans. Tony White (London: Faber & Faber, 1972), ch. 5. 42  Ibid., 288.

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While they were tenacious about preserving their social gains, they were reluctant to bring about any further deterioration in the unity of the anti-­ fascist forces. At any level above that of their immediate communities, they tended to accept defeat, although this often meant that they were disarmed for the common military effort. To some extent, however, this element of resignation had shown itself even while the revolution was still at the crest of its initial upsurge. A key moment had occurred in Barcelona on July 21, 1936. The armed workers, having routed the bourgeoisie, were offered power by the Catalan president. They declined. As explained by one of their anarchist leaders: “We could have remained alone, imposed our absolute will, declared the Generalidad [Catalan state] null and void, and imposed the true power of the people in its place, but we did not believe in dictatorship when it was being exercised against us, and we did not want it when we could exercise it ourselves only at the expense of others.”43 When one takes into account the final outcome of the conflict, it is hard not to consider such a statement either tragic or absurd. But the tragedy/ absurdity is compounded by the position of those who did think in terms of state power. For while the anarchists backed the workers but refused to accept their mandate, the Communists welcomed a role in the government but used it—with even greater insistence than their bourgeois partners—to undo the revolutionary gains of the workers.44 Santiago Carrillo’s later “Eurocommunist” position had roots at the beginning of his career; already in January 1937 he was saying, as Secretary General of the Socialist-­ Communist Youth, “We are not Marxist youth. We fight for a democratic, parliamentary republic.”45 The practical meaning of such statements was shown after May 1937, when the Republican government (with Communist participation) began the systematic restoration of private ownership in agriculture and industry.46 This was almost two years before the final victory of fascism. The Spanish workers and peasants thus experienced, within the lifetime of the Republic, a compressed and intensified version of what the Russian workers went through after 1917. The rationales, however, were different.  Ibid., 131.  Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1961), 436. 45  Ibid., 366. 46  As The Economist wrote in February 1938, “Intervention by the state in industry, as opposed to collectivization and workers’ control, is reestablishing the principle of private property.” Quoted in Broué and Témime, The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain, 313. 43 44

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Lenin’s reservations about self-management had rested above all on the question of expertise. In Spain, on the other hand, even for work requiring highly specialized skills, it was possible to find individuals who accepted the aims and ideals of the masses of workers, and did not demand special privileges. This is indeed a tribute to the cultural impact of Spanish anarchism, and it was an important factor in the improvement of public services under workers’ control. The argument for suppressing workers’ control was found not in any failures of the workers themselves but rather in the international situation: an issue that became particularly important with the intervention of Nazi and Italian Fascist forces on Franco’s side. The Soviet Union was the only outside power willing to aid the Republic, but Stalin did not wish to jeopardize his defensive alliance with the French government by supporting revolution in Spain. More generally, the Communist parties argued that the only hope of additional support against Franco would come from portraying the battle strictly as one of “democracy vs. fascism.” For our present purposes, it is enough to make three points about this argument. First, its assumption that bourgeois governments might be swayed by such an ideological appeal proved to be totally unfounded. Second, it imposed a major limitation on the nature of foreign working-class support, for while thousands of highly politicized workers came to Spain as volunteers, the millions who stayed at home had no reason to see the issue as one of class interest and as a result had no significant impact on the struggle. Finally, within Spain, the consequences for the workers’ and peasants’ fighting ability were—as we have seen—disastrous. Chile, 1970–73 Allende’s Chile was a direct successor to revolutionary Spain in more ways than one: electoral stimulus, workers’ initiatives, conflicts within the left, decisive foreign support to the right, and crushing defeat. In some ways, of course, Chile never reached the levels attained in Spain. Thus, the Chilean workers and peasants remained for the most part unarmed, and there were no whole regions of the country that they controlled. Nevertheless, there is one important sense in which the Chilean case carries the accumulated experience of workers’ control another step forward: namely, that the interaction between class-conscious workers and the elected government was a great deal more fluid.

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The government of Salvador Allende, unlike the Popular Front government in Spain, was made up overwhelmingly of working-class parties and was at least programmatically committed to workers’ control. The Chilean workers, for their part, had much less of a tradition of anarchism, and in fact were most often identified—if only through their unions—with the very parties that made up the government. Only among the peasants had any direct takeovers been carried out prior to 1970. In effect, the autonomous workers’ initiatives were, to a greater extent than in either Italy or Spain, an offshoot of the struggle that was being conducted at state level. While the Chilean workers never came as close to power as did their Spanish predecessors (especially in Catalonia), they certainly would not have declined the authority if it had been thrust upon them. Their problem was thus the opposite of the one facing the Spanish workers: after a whole generation of functioning under a stable constitutional regime, and after 18 years of steady electoral growth for the left, the Chilean workers had become used to relying upon an eventual electoral success for the satisfaction of their demands.47 It was only after Allende’s narrow electoral victory in 1970 that they began to see the full extent of their own responsibility in the process. The direct role of the workers was initially a defensive one. The first factories to be taken over were those whose owners had unilaterally cut back production.48 The workers did not necessarily expect to run such factories on their own; their more likely priority, at this stage, was to protect a government with which they identified. At first, it was only in the countryside (especially in the Mapuche Indian zone) that expropriations from below were undertaken on a systematic basis. But even in these cases, there was a sense of acting within legal terms consistent with those accepted by Allende, for already on the books was an agrarian reform passed in 1967 which had set an 80-hectare ceiling on individual holdings but which the previous administration had not seriously implemented. In short, both workers and peasants acted in the expectation of official support for their steps. 47  For fuller discussion of the bases of this development, see Maurice Zeitlin, “The Social Determinants of Political Democracy in Chile,” in James Petras and Maurice Zeitlin, eds., Latin America: Reform or Revolution? (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications), and Victor Wallis, “Imperialism and the ‘Via Chilena’,” Latin American Perspectives, No. 2 (1974). 48  See classification of nationalizations in NACLA, New Chile (New York: North American Congress on Latin America, 1973).

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To a greater extent than in any previous case, such support did materialize. This was not because the government’s security from the right was any stronger, for in this respect, unlike the situation in Republican Spain, the military still constituted a threat from within. Rather, it was because the government’s dependence on the left was greater, both in terms of its original access to office and in terms of its need to confront unanimous bourgeois obstruction of economic activity. In any case, legal norms were established through the Ministry of Labor for regulating factory organization in the “social area” (nationalized sector) of the economy, and these provided for a majority of worker-elected representatives on the Administrative Council of each enterprise. Within this framework, the workers again showed that their economic performance increased with the level of their participation, while the latter in turn, far from reflecting narrow sectoral interests or competitive attitudes, was related to their identification with the total process of change.49 But the Allende government was never able to free itself of its institutional moorings. The bourgeoisie, by its very obstructionism, was forcing a speed-up of the transformation, but only the grassroots workers could mount an appropriate response. With the October 1972 paro patronal (shutdown of key industries by their owners), “business as usual” disappeared completely, and expropriation became necessary not just as a revolutionary goal but simply for the maintenance of essential services. At this point the contradiction between legally installed government and class-­ conscious workers became decisive. The workers overcame the stoppage and saved the government, but the government bargained away their victory by agreeing to return seized factories in exchange for military guarantees to protect the March 1973 congressional elections.50 The available alternatives will never be fully known. Significantly, however, even a strong defender of Allende’s concessions admits that the 49  Andrew Zimbalist and James Petras, “Workers’ Control in Chile during Allende’s Presidency,” Comparative Urban Research, III:3 (1975–76), 25, 27. For a comprehensive treatment of the Chilean case, see Juan Espinosa and Andrew Zimbalist, Economic Democracy: Workers’ Participation in Chilean Industry, 1970–1973 (New York: Academic Press.1978), and, on the relevance of that study to our present concerns, Victor Wallis, “Workers’ Control in Latin America.” Latin American Research Review, XVII:2 (1983). 50   For a narrative overview, see Gabriel Smirnow, The Revolution Disarmed: Chile, 1970–1973 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979); for direct portrayal of worker control, see Patricio Guzmán, The Battle of Chile (documentary film), Part III (1979) (discussed below, Chap. 11).

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­ ilitary was not yet prepared, in late 1972, to launch a successful coup.51 m From the workers’ standpoint, therefore, the setback was unmitigated. It signaled the end of any official encouragement to workers’ control, except in improvised response to the coup-attempt of June 1973, when once again many plants were seized. By that time, however, the military already had the initiative, and from then on until the final coup in September, workers in self-managed factories were subjected to systematic shakedowns and intimidation by the armed forces. The legal pretext for such shakedowns was never applied against rightists, even though it was they who had actually been committing acts of violence. The government said nothing, but it was powerless in any case. It had made its choice earlier. As in Spain, the workers’ initiatives had been blocked “from their own side”— less wholeheartedly, but no less surely. Still, Chile had shown that government support for workers’ control was at least a possibility. Some sectors of the governing coalition (especially the left wing of the Socialist party) favored just such a strategy, though not to the exclusion of a coordinated approach to transition. Within the self-managed factories, the workers with the highest level of participation had no illusions about the sufficiency of their own sphere of activity; rather, they identified precisely with these political sectors52 and thus with an approach which—even if belatedly—had come to see the workplace struggle and the state-level struggle as going hand in hand.

Lessons of Pre-1989 Experience It should hardly be necessary to say that the struggles for workers’ control and for socialism are inseparable. And yet the problem that has arisen again and again in practice is that they have found themselves organizationally in conflict. “Socialism” has been the formal monopoly of a political party (or parties), while self-management has been the direct expression of the workers and peasants themselves. Whichever one has prevailed over the other, the result has been a setback in the movement toward a classless society. “Socialism” without self-management has revived or perpetuated rigid social strata, while self-management without a strong political dimension has simply been suppressed. 51  Edward Boorstein, Allende’s Chile: An Inside View (New York: International Publishers, 1977), 212. 52  Zimbalist and Petras, “Workers’ Control in Chile,” 25.

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One can go even further and can say that the two sets of failures have reinforced each other. Thus, for every defeated uprising of workers, there are the party officials who will gain credibility by denouncing its spontaneous and undisciplined character. But at the same time, for every disappointment occasioned by a purportedly revolutionary government, there are the radical libertarians who will add a further blast to their condemnation of any strategy that does not emanate directly and immediately from the base. Vanguard and mass, party and class: instead of moving closer together, they move further apart. On what basis might this separation be overcome? Among the experiences considered here, the closest approach to a synthesis was reached in Italy. But in that case, the revolutionary party was in its earliest formative period and was quite remote from power. In Chile, there was an improvised synthesis, but it came only after the working-class parties had already taken on governmental responsibility under highly restrictive conditions. The result was that as the workers’ initiatives broadened, the parties’ support for them became more and more limited. What remained of such support in Allende’s third year came increasingly from outside the government. In any case, it was too little and too late. Russia and Spain, for all their differences, seem in the end to manifest a pattern of polarization which was the trend everywhere. An effective synthesis between the self-management impulse and a political strategy has yet to be worked out. If and when it comes, it will be recognizable only in the form of a sustained practical success. No theoretical formulation can constitute an answer in itself. Nonetheless, whatever practical success is attained will have some theoretical anticipation, and it is in this sense that our four cases, despite their relative failures, have something to tell us. One of the biggest problems is that of technical expertise and coordination. We cannot say that the workers’ ability to solve it has been demonstrated for any and every situation, but we can say the following. First, a genuine movement toward self-management, far from stressing a “my firm first” attitude, leads naturally—and as a practical matter—toward efforts at mutually beneficial planning between economic units. While these efforts may initially derive only from immediately obvious requirements, the practice they entail will create a natural receptivity to the case for more long-range or “macro” calculations. Second, workers are both able and willing to learn about technical matters. Third, where the urgency of expertise exceeds the time available to diffuse it, it is increasingly

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­ ossible to find previously trained professionals (abroad if necessary) who p will accept, perhaps even enthusiastically, new terms for their services.53 Finally, looking ahead, we should recognize that technology itself is not entirely an independent factor. On the contrary, for environmental as well as political reasons, it may have to undergo a considerable number of demystifying, simplifying, and decentralizing changes, thereby undercutting pretexts for hierarchy.54 A second major problem-area has to do with the conditions under which revolutionary workers’ control can succeed. We have already noted the immediate political condition, namely, that the factory-level and state-­ level processes come to fruition simultaneously. This is partly a matter of conscious decisions (about which more will be said in a moment), but it is also a matter of the economic and cultural characteristics of the society in question. Regarding this background dimension, our survey has suggested that there are many possible situations—some of them even mutually exclusive—which may prove favorable to workers’ control. While the self-­ management impulse has always been a component of urban revolutionary movements, it has sometimes—as in Spain—appeared in even stronger form in rural settings. Within the industrial sector, it has sometimes been associated with heavy industry (Italy) and sometimes with light (Spain). Although usually associated with non-dependent economies, workers’ control has also become an issue in Third World countries (Chile, Algeria, Iran). Within Europe, although the most radical thrusts have occurred in the relatively less prosperous countries (Spain, Portugal), the potential for workers’ control continues to grow even in the foremost welfare state (Sweden). Related to this, if we consider the major political frameworks of military dictatorship, constitutional democracy, and People’s Democracy, we find self-management initiatives arising in all three (1918 Germany, 1972 Chile, 1968 Czechoslovakia). Finally, there may be considerable 53  This is a phenomenon that I witnessed directly in Nicaragua in 1984. The involvement of professionals as well as workers in autogestion was illustrated in France in 1968. See chapter “The Liberal Professions” in Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville, Red Flag/Black Flag: French Revolution 1968 (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968). In some instances, managerial personnel also lent support to worker initiatives (George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 [Boston: South End Press, 1987], 106). 54  This was a persistent theme in Barry Commoner’s brief for solar technology, in The Poverty of Power (New York: Knopf, 1976). The idea is further developed in Victor Wallis, Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism (Toronto: Political Animal Press, 2018), ch. 3.

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variation in terms of such immediate circumstances as war and peace, economic crisis, and fascist threats. All this does not add up to any theory as to where workers’ control is most likely, but it does tell us that there is no single factor which automatically excludes it. The role of conscious choice must therefore be a large one. Among the objective factors, the only one that clearly facilitates such a choice is the existence of an established cooperative tradition. This was something real in many of Spain’s rural areas, and the urban workers were not yet remote from it. The challenge elsewhere, then, is to develop some equivalent to such a culture while still relating to immediate political options. The question of leadership which this raises is the final major problem-­ area that we must consider. What seems to be needed, in effect, is a revolutionary party which would give priority to workers’ control at every stage of its development. The difficulty of such a project is already clear. Being serious about workers’ control means foregoing a certain type of discipline, while being seriously revolutionary means taking steps that are not limited by workplace perceptions. The possibility of meeting both these requirements is suggested by some of the experiences we have looked at, but a firm synthesis must be more systematic. It must recall Marx’s emphasis on the work process, his interest in cooperative forms, and his distrust of “leaders.”55 Recognizing these facets as having been overlooked in the Leninist tradition, the new synthesis must accept the importance of what Gaston Leval calls, concluding his book on Spain, “the capacity to organize the new society quickly.”56 The latter process is one which depends not only on thorough preparation but also on broad human involvement. If a party is needed, it is more for the movement’s self-­ protection than for any other purpose. The movement’s goals will make it sensitive to the perils of discipline, but its history will warn it of the risks of spontaneity. 55  On the importance Marx attached to the work process, see Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, 3–24; on Marx’s interest in cooperatives, Yvon Bourdet, “Karl Marx et l’autogestion,” Autogestion, No. 15 (1971), 102, and Michael Joseph Roberto, “Capitalist Crisis, Cooperative Labor, and the Conquest of Political Power: Marx’s ‘Inaugural Address’ (1864) and Its Relevance in the Current Moment,” Socialism and Democracy, 28:2 (2014); on his view of “leaders,” Karl Marx letter to Kugelmann of April 17, 1871, in Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, 1846–1895. Trans. Dona Torr (New York: International Publishers, 1942), 311. 56  Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, 354.

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Toward a New Synthesis If 1989 marks an endpoint, it also signals a new beginning. November of that year witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and, with it, the effective collapse of twentieth-century socialism. But less than nine months earlier had come the sudden groundswell in Venezuela which constituted the opening salvo of that country’s Bolivarian Revolution. The Caracazo, as it was called, was a spontaneous uprising by Caracas slum dwellers—triggered by neoliberal economic policies—out of which emerged the transformative current that would eventually shape itself into a political force under the leadership of Hugo Chávez.57 Chávez’s election to the presidency in 1998 and his subsequent initiatives—both substantive and structural—created the setting within which worker control would become a defining factor in the larger revolutionary process. It is most important to view this development in its full international setting. Initially, this points our attention toward Cuba, both in terms of that country’s own institutional development and in terms of its support to the Venezuelan struggle. The present analysis, in its original 1978 version, did not include Cuba. The focus was on cases of worker control that emerged in direct conjunction with climactic revolutionary moments. This reflected an observed pattern in which most such moments included worker-control initiatives. Cuba, however, did not appear to fit this pattern. Although wage-workers, especially in big foreign-owned enterprises, were among the Revolution’s strongest supporters,58 the direct takeover of production processes was not what defined their activism during the two-year guerrilla struggle leading up to the 1959 victory. Workplace changes following the triumph were incremental. Formal authority remained in the hands of an appointed management, although particular managers could now be rejected by the workers,59 who continued to be represented via existing union structures. This was part of a more general evolution, beginning in the late 1960s, toward an institutionalized practice of workplace consultation.60 As a culture of equality supplanted hierarchical authority, it became clear that a  See Richard Gott, Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution (London: Verso, 2005).  Maurice Zeitlin, Revolutionary Politics and the Cuban Working Class (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 277. 59  Marta Harnecker, Cuba: Dictatorship or Democracy? Trans. Patrick Granville (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1980), 26. 60  Zeitlin, Revolutionary Politics and the Cuban Working Class, xxxvii–xl. 57 58

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new model of the link between state-level and factory-level transformations was emerging. The Cuban case showed, in effect, “that workers’ control as a general practice does not have to be just the sudden fruit of revolutionary crisis; it is something that can be deliberately nurtured.”61 It was equally clear, though, that revolution was integral to this process; what varied between the different national cases was only the sequence or timing of the changes implemented at distinct levels of revolutionary activity. The development of worker-control institutions in Cuba has been continuous. Its underpinnings can be seen in the mass-participation practices—militias, voluntary labor, and the literacy campaign—that marked the early years of the Revolution.62 By the mid-1980s, “base-level input into planning” was routine among production workers.63 And in the wider institutional debate that has been taking place since 2002, the goal of deepened participation in every sphere of public life has taken center stage.64 In the process, there is a continuous push toward decentralization of power and, at the theoretical level, a sense that the relationship of reform to revolution is, over the long term, not one of antagonism, but rather one of mutual reinforcement.65 Confidence that reform will not undermine revolution reflects the social consciousness developed over five decades and most distinctively expressed in Cuba’s large-scale programs of international solidarity—ranging from anti-apartheid military combat to disaster-relief, and including also long-term educational and medical assistance.66 It is hard to conceive the launch of Venezuela’s “twenty-first-century socialism” in the absence of Cuban solidarity. The massive presence in Venezuela of Cuban healthcare workers and teachers was a core component of the gains that could be credited to the Chávez government in its early years. This aid was unique in its form, in that it did not come from  Wallis, “Workers’ Control: Cases from Latin America and the Caribbean” (n. 9), 261.  Linda Fuller, Work and Democracy in Socialist Cuba (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 187–191. 63  Ibid., 116. 64  Emilio Duharte Díaz, “Updating the Cuban Political Model: For a Systemic and Democratic-Participatory Transformation” Socialism and Democracy, 30:1 (2016). 65  Rafael Hernández, “Revolution/Reform and Other Cuban Dilemmas.” Socialism and Democracy, 24:1 (2010). 66  See Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, “Cuban Doctors in Pakistan: Why Cuba Still Inspires,” Monthly Review, 58:6 (Nov. 2006). 61 62

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an economically or militarily powerful country. Cubans in Venezuela— unlike Soviets in Cuba in the 1960s and ’70s—were not trying to shape their host-country’s development strategy. They were not guides but participants. Not only did they come by the thousands; they also worked directly in the popular neighborhoods (rather than as technical advisers). Their presence in the country reflected a relationship of equals, embodied in the deep mutual esteem of the two countries’ revolutionary leaders, each of whom—exceptionally for national political figures—engaged routinely in face-to-face conversations with ordinary citizens. Although the power-transfer phases of the two revolutions had little in common, in both cases, the popular protagonists became imbued with a culture of commitment and, hence, of participation. In terms of workers’ control and revolution, the Venezuelan case returns us to the earlier model of contemporaneity (between factory-level and state-level struggles), with the difference that for the first time we now find a political leadership that not only provides an umbrella for worker protagonism (a key Bolivarian concept), but actively encourages it, promotes a constitutional framework for legitimating it, and ratifies plant-­ takeovers initiated by the workers themselves.67 The vigilance of Venezuelan workers provided a lifeline to the Chávez government in response to the attempted economic coup (via nationwide lockout) of late 2002. That disruption gave a broad stimulus to factory occupations,68 pitting the expertise of the workers—especially in the oil industry—against sabotage carried out by anti-chavista engineers.69 There is thus a clear sense in which a radical power-shift at the workplace was dictated as a matter of economic survival, even before Chávez called the Bolivarian revolution socialist. Once the socialist agenda was explicitly articulated (in 2006), it was a logical step to carry transformative measures even further, as in the case of the valve factory Inveval, whose employees took up Chávez’s 2007 call for the formation of workers’ councils, establishing a fully worker-controlled

67  See Hermann Albrecht, “Venezuela: Five iron and steel plants and the Carabobo Ceramics nationalised” (May 28, 2009), http://www.marxist.com/steel-plants-caraboboceramics-nationalised.htm. 68  Iain Bruce, The Real Venezuela: Making Socialism in the 21st Century (London: Pluto Press, 2008), 98ff. 69  GWS (Global Women’s Strike), The Bolivarian Revolution: Enter the Oil Workers (documentary film, 2004).

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enterprise, complete with measures to overcome the social division of labor.70 Although the Venezuelan Revolution, like its much longer-running Cuban counterpart, is far from complete (and, as of 2019, faces even more extreme obstacles), its trajectory epitomizes a new global stage of socialist awareness. Chávez’s acknowledged theoretical mentor was István Mészáros, whose central critique of twentieth-century socialism is that it failed to establish “the socialist mode of control, through the self-­ management of the associated producers.”71 This concern meshes fully with that of the grassroots movements which have spread throughout Latin America in recent years. Although there is a strong anti-statist thrust to many of these movements,72 the Venezuelan process embodies at least a partial convergence between state and non-state protagonists pursuing a common goal. It is all the more significant that the Venezuelan government advanced further than did that of Cuba in establishing an international network—encompassing banking and media as well as material aid—to support similar initiatives in other Latin American countries. In terms of worldwide prospects for a new socialist epoch, it may be of suggestive interest to note that, faced with severe job-loss in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, the United Steelworkers of America, which is the largest US industrial union, signed a long-term cooperation agreement with the Spanish Mondragón cooperative.73 It is of course unwise to entertain illusions about the ease of progressive change within the world’s most unrestrainedly capitalist social order. Nonetheless, so sharp a recognition of the need for an alternative locus of economic power cannot fail to reflect a degree of fragility in that order’s popular acceptance. Globally, contradictory trends are evident—all within the context of a deepening environmental crisis brought on by capital’s addiction to perpetual growth. On the one hand, capital becomes increasingly concentrated while at the same time the sites of industrial labor are increasingly dispersed, as capital continues its longstanding pursuit of key 70  Dario Azzellini, “Venezuela’s Solidarity Economy: Collective Ownership, Expropriation, and Workers’ Self-Management,” Working USA, 12:2 (2009), 184f. 71  István Mészáros, Beyond Capital: Towards a Theory of Transition (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1995), xvii. 72   See Gustavo Esteva, “Another Perspective, Another Democracy.” Socialism and Democracy, 23:3 (2009). 73  See Carl Davidson, “Steelworkers Plan Job Creation via Worker Coops” (November 5, 2009), http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23059.

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e­ nergy-­resources, low wage-levels, and lax regulations. On the other hand, the palpable consequences of this whole dynamic—from wars to factoryfires to droughts and floods—generate misery on a heightened scale, creating the conditions for a rise in class consciousness. The new awareness is being manifested in a variety of ways around the world. In the United States, the concept of cooperative forms of workorganization has already entered the rhetoric of electoral campaigns, as a basis for assuring stable employment in “green jobs.”74 In China, increased worker-­participation emerged as a form of resistance to the privatization of state-owned enterprises.75 While the outcome of these developments remains in question, what we can say with assurance is that the urgently needed ecological conversion of production and consumption will require universal participation in every sphere of social activity. The collective capacity of workers to respond to moments of crisis and opportunity— shown in all the cases we have examined—provides grounds for hope that this can be achieved.

74  For background, see Richard D.  Wolff, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (Chicago: Haymarket: 2012). 75  Stephen E. Philion, Workers’ Democracy in China’s Transition from State Socialism (New York: Routledge, 2009).

CHAPTER 8

The Politics of “Lesser Evil”: Historical Reflections

The concept of “lesser evil” is applicable, in principle, to any choice between alternatives, whether made by individuals or by organizations. It may refer to specific actions or to overall systems, and it has been invoked from every political direction. Within Marxist tradition, the concept has most commonly referred to decisions on whether to give momentary tactical support to one or another bourgeois political formation. But the essential argument for a “lesser evil” approach—with or without mention of those exact words—may emerge at widely varying levels of generality. It may be used with reference to basic institutional frameworks, pitting the democratic republic against some form of authoritarian rule. It may be used to argue for strategic retreat or compromise in the face of threats to a movement’s (or a regime’s) survival. Within a democratic republic, it may be used in advocating provisional support for particular bourgeois parties against repression or in favor of progressive social policies. Or, in the specific context of electoral campaigns, it may be used to characterize the tactic of supporting one non-working-class candidate or party over another—a tactic which may or may not involve arguing that the favored candidate is to some degree “less bad.” Common to all these choices is the underlying commitment to strive for the presumed “good,” which in the long run is the society of “associated producers”1 and in the short run is the growth of an independent working-class movement or the consolidation of a revolutionary regime. 1

 Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3, ch. 48, sec. 3.

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Responses in every instance range from a maximalist position, which holds that the positive task of advancing the revolution eclipses in importance any possible concern with whether one expression of bourgeois power may be worse than another, to a minimalist one, which becomes so absorbed with responding to immediate threats that it loses sight of the movement’s original goal. Maximalists sometimes use the derogatory expression “lesser evilism” in an attempt to discredit the idea of giving even limited and transitory support to any bourgeois formation. In fact, however, determinations of lesser evil (or least damage) are inherent in any decision requiring defensive calculations, as opposed to the unobstructed pursuit of one’s positive goal. To avoid such calculations is impossible; the challenge, for a revolutionary party, is to keep them within appropriate bounds. Outside of Marxist tradition and beyond the level of purely pragmatic calculations, however, the concept of lesser evil has taken on, especially since September 11, 2001, a rather novel role as a purported ethical justification for capitalism in an epoch of intensified crisis—ecological as well as economic—and of untrammeled US global military intervention.

The Electoral Strategies of Marx and Engels The political debate over the lesser evil is as old as working-class politics. It originated with the project of constituting the working class as an independent political force. Marx and Engels were engaged in this project from its beginnings. From at least as early as 1847, much of their writing was directly linked to their organizational efforts at launching a communist movement against the backdrop of the Prussian monarchy.2 The narrow range of electoral options quickly confronted them with a “lesser evil” scenario. Already in June 1848, the big bourgeoisie’s alliance with feudal Reaction was clear to Marx and Engels.3 Discussing the January 1849 elections to the Prussian Constituent Assembly, however, Marx distinguished between the movement’s electoral tactics and its longer-range organizing: “Where it is a struggle against the existing government, we ally ourselves even with our enemies…. Now, after the election, we again affirm our old relentless standpoint not only against the government but 2  August H. Nimtz, Jr., Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000), 67ff, 93ff. 3  Neue Rheinische Zeitung (NRhZ), 14 June 1848 (Marx-Engels Werke [MEW] 5: 65).

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also against the official opposition.”4 Underlying this approach was Marx’s conviction that a democratic state, compared to any absolutist regime, had the advantage for the proletariat of not artificially blurring social antagonisms and, hence, of providing the setting “in which they come to a free fight and thereby to a solution.”5 In this sense, the democratic state, about whose social grounding and ultimate allegiance Marx had no illusions, was indeed for him a “lesser evil.” From the moment that the institutional framework was no longer in question, however, Marx’s emphasis would shift dramatically. Speaking in March 1850 on behalf of the Central Authority of the Communist League, Marx and Engels insisted “that everywhere workers’ candidates are put up alongside the bourgeois-democratic candidates,” and that the workers “must not allow themselves to be bribed by such arguments of the democrats as, for example, that by so doing they are splitting the democratic party and giving the reactionaries the possibility of victory.”6 It should be noted, however, that in the setting to which they referred, the only danger they anticipated was “the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body.”7 Within this framework of bourgeois parliamentarism but yet fully conscious of its conditional character, they would continue to stress the centrality of independent working-class organization.8 As for any eventuality in which the state might set limits to working-class advances, they would have no hesitation in strategizing—and acting—outside the parliamentary framework. Following the May 1849 shutdown of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Engels “went to fight with the insurrectionary forces”;9 in 1895, contemplating the real possibility of the working class attaining power through the institutions of the democratic republic, Engels nonetheless sought to remind his readers, despite censorship by the editors of Die Neue Zeit, that the decisive struggles might still require armed confrontations.10 In this sense, although parliamentarism had initially emerged in Germany as a lesser evil compared to absolutism, street-­ fighting now came to be seen as a lesser evil—or at least, under certain  NRhZ, 18 Feb. 1849 (MEW 6: 298) (Marx’s emphasis).  NRhZ, 29 June 1848 (MEW 5: 136). 6  MEW 7: 251. 7  Ibid. 8  See Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, vol. II: The Politics of Social Classes (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978); Nimtz, Marx and Engels. 9  Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, vol. II, 240. 10  Preface to Marx’s Class Struggles in France, MEW 22: 522. 4 5

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conditions, as a practical necessity—in order to avoid the greater danger of parliamentary co-optation.

Lenin on Participation in Bourgeois Politics Within the pre-revolutionary Russian setting, Lenin viewed bourgeois constitutionalism not as a viable option (let alone as a potentially preferable regime) but rather simply as a contrasting framework, whose implications for working-class organizing were vastly different from those of his own political surroundings. In What Is to Be Done? (1902), much of his discussion of organizational imperatives thus takes the form of drawing conclusions dictated by Russia’s remoteness from that framework, that is, by Russia’s lack of “political liberty.” The degree of tsarist repression was subject to change, however, dependent on the balance of class forces. When opportunities for legal agitation multiplied in 1907, Lenin insisted that the party should make use of them, so as not to become detached from its working-class base. In voting at that time for participation in the Duma (the weak parliamentary body allowed by the czar after 1905), Lenin aroused criticism from party comrades who saw this as an act of betrayal.11 Such criticism, of course, reflected a failure to distinguish between tactical or conjunctural decisions and long-term goal. Tactical decisions routinely involve compromise. To the extent that a succession of such decisions may alter the long-term outcome, the problem may be less one of betrayal than one of insufficiently acknowledging other forces that are at work. The assessment of those other forces must therefore be a key factor in judging the appropriateness of any tactical—or “lesser evil”—decision. A number of Lenin’s decisions merit consideration with this in mind. Lenin’s essay “On Compromises,” written less than eight weeks before the October 1917 Revolution, was prompted by a juncture similar to that of 1907. The advantage he sought was freedom of action for the Bolsheviks; the concession he proposed on September 9 was that the Bolsheviks would support the continuation in power of a Menshevik/SR coalition.12 This 11  Paul Le Blanc, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993), 150. 12  V.I. Lenin, Collected Works (CW) 25: 307. For background on the various parties, see, e.g., Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917  in Petrograd (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2004).

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concession was, under the circumstances, a “lesser evil” compared to the risk of having the Bolsheviks’ agitation suppressed before they had built up sufficient support to be able to take power. Once in a position of state power, the Bolsheviks faced a new set of threats, suggesting the need for compromises of various kinds. Lenin’s proposal to sign an unfavorable peace agreement with Germany (the Brest-Litovsk treaty) risked a split in the Bolshevik party, but in his deliberation with Trotsky on this decision, he asserted, in effect, “better a split in the party than the danger of a military defeat of the revolution.”13 On the production front, Lenin clearly presented his calls for “iron discipline” and for reliance on bourgeois experts as being “a compromise” and “a step backward,”14 but considered this approach less risky than the alternative, which he saw as dominated by “the element of petty bourgeois anarchy” and leading to “indiscipline, laxity and chaos.”15 He applied similar reasoning in formulating the New Economic Policy (NEP), which he put forward as a necessary measure to avoid the buildup of opposition in a country where the proletariat was vastly outnumbered by “the predominating peasantry.”16 In all these cases, the choice made was, in immediate terms, a success, in the sense that the Bolsheviks’ power-position was preserved. Such compromises may also have secondary effects, however, which become apparent over a longer period. These need to be kept in mind even if no definitive conclusion can be drawn as to the outcome of an alternative course of action. Such possible secondary effects highlight the importance of the particular conjuncture at which the original decision was taken. Among the specific decisions here mentioned, the military capitulation appears in retrospect as the least controversial, given the overwhelming popular opposition in Russia to continuation of the war. The other two decisions, even if driven by compelling considerations, may have had more complex ramifications. The NEP may have strengthened and emboldened sectors hostile to socialization and may have helped legitimize the eventual emergence of a privileged stratum. The imposition of harsh factory-discipline certainly had the effect of blocking any possible evolution of incipient 13  Leon Trotsky, Lenin: Notes for a Biographer, trans. Tamara Deutscher (New York: Capricorn Books, 1971), 103. Cf. Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, CW 31: 36. 14  “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government” (April 1918), CW 27: 248f. 15  “Immediate Tasks,” CW 27: 265. 16  Lenin, Report to 10th Congress of the CPSU, 16 March 1921, CW 32: 265.

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movements toward worker control, which, had they had an opportunity to flourish, might have counteracted the development of bureaucratic rigidities in the planning process. “Lesser evil” choices may thus have costs that cannot initially be foreseen. A proper assessment of these costs, on the other hand, must take into account not only the directly affected society but also the impact of that society’s presence on the world scene. In the Soviet case, the taking on of state power under less-than-optimal conditions surely helps explain— in combination with hostile foreign intervention—the emergence of a regime which would cast socialism in a negative light; but at the same time, the mere existence of this regime, whatever its flaws, may have facilitated revolutionary advances elsewhere.17

Promise and Pitfalls of Compromise Lenin’s fullest discussion of compromise is in “Left-Wing” Communism… (1920), where he draws examples both from the Bolshevik experience and from the politics of parliamentary regimes. In distinguishing acceptable from unacceptable forms of compromise, he explicitly uses the notion of “lesser evil” to describe the former: “One must distinguish between a man who has given up his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to lessen the evil they can do … and a man who gives his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to share in the loot.”18 His example here for the “lesser evil” compromise is the Brest-Litovsk treaty; his counter-example of “treachery” is the 1914–20 role of parties of the Second International, in the support they gave to their governments’ war policies, as “accomplices in banditry.”19 Parliamentary struggles during the ensuing decades offered many instances in which the lesser-evil option would be debated, but usually without any prospect for the Left parties of coming to power. The most acute case of this type was the one posed by the rise of Nazism. Without going into detail about the intense debates that this elicited, we may note here that apart from the Communist (KPD) maximalist stance of belittling the fascist threat (e.g., Ernst Thälmann’s plenary speech of February

 See above, Chap. 3.  Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism, CW 31: 38. 19  Ibid., 37 (Lenin’s emphasis). 17 18

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1932)20 and the Social Democrats’ (SPD) minimalist position of, in Rudolf Hilferding’s words, “an absolute interest in the preservation of democracy” (speech to SPD conference of 1927),21 there was the view that the Left parties, without in any way minimizing their critique of the bourgeois state, should at least join forces to confront the Nazis. As Trotsky described the choice between alternative bourgeois political forces (1931): “There are seven notes in the musical scale. The question as to which of these notes is ‘better’ … is a nonsensical question. But the musician must know when to strike and what notes to strike.”22 The KPD/SPD split remained unresolved, however, and in the 1932 presidential election the only “electable” alternative to Hitler was Field Marshal von Hindenburg. This represented an extreme narrowing of the options, to the extent that the victorious “lesser evil” (Hindenburg) simply cleared the path for his adversary by then appointing him as Chancellor, thereby confirming the view that the choice, as offered, was no choice at all.

Systemic Lesser-Evilism Considering electoral frameworks generally, the “lesser evil” logic is endemic to systems that lack proportional representation. It is only partly attenuated by runoff elections. It appears in undiluted form in situations of party “duopoly” with just a single round of voting. In the US case, it permeates all electoral calculations, including the nominating process, where, however, it also serves to transmit the power of the big-money contributors, who (with rare and purely individual exceptions) refuse to support progressive candidates but use the argument of “electability” to rationalize their choices. The “electability” argument is integral to lesser-evilism. It is used exclusively against the Left. It presupposes the normality of an economically conservative platform and asserts that the best chance of defeating its Republican or right-wing version is not by offering a candidacy that would reject the conservative position but rather by offering one that shares, with only minor reservations, its central tenets. The assumption is that those 20  David Beetham, Marxists in the Face of Fascism (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1983), 162. 21  Ibid., 253. 22  Leon Trotsky, “For a Workers’ United Front Against Fascism” (8 Dec. 1931), in Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971), 136.

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tenets are what define the “mainstream” of the electorate (the electorate itself being relatively more prosperous than the approximately 50 percent of the adult population that does not vote), and that only by appealing to this mainstream is it possible to win. This line of thinking—entailing a pattern of self-fulfilling prophecy—consistently ignores the more progressive policy-stances advocated by the Democrats’ most dependable “base” supporters, who in their majority are people of color. Within the US context, it is thus clear that the logic of lesser-evilism pulls the mainstream consensus steadily to the right. Consequently, the more extreme the positions taken by Republican candidates and right-wing media personalities, the more the Democratic leadership will play to the voters’ fears rather than mobilizing them for positive alternative programs. A similar dynamic is repeated in the legislative process, as shown in the debate over healthcare that took place during the first year of the Obama presidency (2009–10). The Democratic leadership persistently silenced the advocates of an authentically universal healthcare system, thereby permitting a steady weakening of the reform bill, allegedly in the hope of attracting Republican support, which they did not need (in view of the Democrats’ substantial majorities in both chambers of Congress) and which they could on no account expect to obtain. Gradually, over the course of more than a year of narrowly circumscribed debate, those Democrats who initially insisted on at least a limited “public option” (a fully public system of health insurance having been taken “off the table” by Obama) were pressured and worn down to the point where they abandoned that demand and accepted a measure that, while adding a layer of subsidies and regulations, reaffirmed an augmented regime of private health insurance as a “lesser evil” (with the number of totally uninsured being reduced from 44 million to 27 million, plus many more saddled with heavy “deductibles” and “co-payments”; and with the insurance and drug companies still able to raise prices at will). It is important, by way of qualification, to note that the “lesser evil” approach is not always without political justification. As the long history of revolutionary organizing suggests, a timely retreat is preferable to an assured rout. In the US partisan framework, however, lesser-evilism reflects a virtual complicity between the two parties involved, comparable to the “good cop/bad cop” approach to interrogations. Thus, the electoral dynamic unfolds in a setting in which basic ideological assumptions are shared by the two parties and in which, despite any differences between their respective rhetorical stances (and their corresponding popular

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c­ onstituencies), major financial backers often contribute not just to one of those parties but to both of them.23 The resulting symbiosis has created a situation in which the Democrats as a party not only fail to challenge the Republicans ideologically, but also fail to assert their procedural rights in the face of corruption of the electoral process.24 They thereby diminish even further the potential impact of any support they might attract. The end-result is that a vote for the “lesser evil” serves primarily as a legitimating mechanism, with little effect on policy. The social sectors that are thereby confirmed in power then become increasingly immune to any legal restraints, inasmuch as the instruments for holding them accountable have become inoperative. Examples of lesser-evilism are by no means confined to the United States, even if that is where its effect in weakening the Left is most apparent. Another notable instance was the 2017 presidential election in France, when the right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen placed second among four leading candidates in the first round of voting. In the runoff contest between Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, most of the Left supported Macron, despite the latter’s clearly conservative policy-positions. The opposite outcome at the runoff stage—reflecting the inherently limited appeal of the mainly negative approach implied by “lesser evil”—had been seen in the 2005 election in Iran, where the more progressive (less theocratic) candidate Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was defeated by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Thus, whether the “lesser evil” candidate wins or loses, the forces of the Left remain marginalized. A final example of this effect is the chronic situation in the US colonial territory of Puerto Rico, whose existing status, with its partial cultural autonomy, appears to most local citizens—including the many who resonate with calls for independence—as a lesser evil compared with complete absorption into the United States.

Lesser Evil or Greater Good? From the time of the Bolshevik Revolution until the collapse of the Soviet bloc, there were grounds for arguing that the socialist orbit was expanding. Its negative traits could be rationalized as transitional phenomena 23  Michael Parenti, Democracy for the Few, 9th ed. (Boston: Thomson-Wadsworth, 2011), ch. 14. 24  Mark Crispin Miller, Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform (New York: Basic Books, 2007), xii.

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whose severity could be expected to diminish over time, and a socialist presence in the international arena could be seen as a bulwark against the most adverse manifestations of capitalism. It was in this spirit that Lukács could say, in 1968, “I have always thought that the worst form of socialism was better to live in than the best form of capitalism.”25 With the post-1989 “New World Order,” however, lesser-evil discourse took on a new dimension. In the interests of capital, the dismantling of “existing socialism” had to be rendered permanent. As the polarizing tendencies of capitalism showed no signs of abating, its defenders shifted from extolling the system’s virtues to proclaiming simply that, whatever might be capitalism’s virtues or defects, “there is no alternative” (TINA). More precisely, no disclosure about capitalism could possibly match, from this vantage-point, the unmitigated evil of “Communism.” The widely diffused Livre noir du Communisme (1997) sought above all to put Communism on the same moral level as Nazism, while at the same time insinuating, by its tendentious reckoning of casualties,26 that Communism was even worse. The Livre noir [black book] in turn prompted a series of international conferences in 2000–01 culminating in an anthology entitled The Lesser Evil: Moral Approaches to Genocide Practices.27 The discussions here are more careful to acknowledge the complexities of comparing Nazism with Communism, and they do not presume to judge either one as “worse” or “less bad” than the other. However, by reviving the unifying concept of totalitarianism, by implicitly linking “Communism” with socialism while divorcing Nazism from capitalism, and by disregarding the historical and continuing record of mass atrocities and military interventions fueled by capitalism,28 the collection as a whole points to no other “lesser evil” than the institutions of liberal (bourgeois) democracy.

 Georg Lukács, Interview, New Left Review, 1st series, no. 68 (July/August 1971).  Gilles Perrault, “Communisme, les falsifications d’un ‘livre noir’,” Le Monde diplomatique (December 1997), 22f. 27  Helmut Dubiel and Gabriel Motzkin, eds., The Lesser Evil: Moral Approaches to Genocide Practices (London: Routledge, 2004), 2. 28  Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (Boston: South End Press, 1979); David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: Columbus, Christianity, and the Conquest of the Americas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2003). 25 26

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The justification of capitalism based on calling liberal democracy “the lesser evil” is raised to the level of doctrine by Michael Ignatieff.29 The “greater evil” now becomes terrorism rather than totalitarianism, but the argument is the same. If then a liberal democracy, defining its agenda as counter-terrorist, engages in practices of torture, these are by definition for Ignatieff (provided that certain procedural requirements have been observed) “lesser evils.”30 Now, as before, the capitalist character of liberal-­ capitalist governments—and, hence, of their global priorities—goes simply unmentioned. “Terrorism” is so labeled only when directed against these governments (or their allies), never when carried out on their behalf.31 The political rationalizations of liberal-capitalist governments are accepted at face value, and the possibility—dramatized in the post-1998 Venezuelan challenge to US hegemony—that what these governments might most fear is not the suppression of democracy but rather its more thoroughgoing implementation32 is not even considered. Ironically, the current ideological flaunting of the “lesser evil” argument serves the interests of a political force (the US ruling class) which, in terms of its power, its sweep, its economic agenda, and its weapons of enforcement, can more plausibly be thought of as the world’s greater evil—understanding the latter not in any cosmic or theological sense but strictly in terms of: (1) numbers of people harmed on a global scale, by economic as well as military means; (2) incidence of direct imposition via military occupation; (3) extreme character of the control techniques that are applied (e.g., the torture of prisoners held in Guantánamo); and (4) systemic and non-negotiable character of the underlying priorities, namely those of capital. Thus, the United States is the country in which the power of capital is least restrained and in which, consequently, there is the highest level of obstruction to policies reflecting environmental and social-service or working-class priorities. Not coincidentally, it is also, as we have seen (among constitutional regimes), the country in which the “lesser evil” calculus most fully defines the limits of policy debates, and in which, as a 29  Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004). 30  Howard Friel and Richard Falk, The Record of the Paper: How the New  York Times Misreports US Foreign Policy (London: Verso, 2004), 151ff. 31  See Ellen Ray and William H.  Schaap, eds., Covert Action: The Roots of Terrorism (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2003). 32  Victor Wallis, “Socialism and Democracy during the First 20 Years of Socialism and Democracy,” Socialism and Democracy, 20:1 (2006), 18.

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result, the opportunities for positive electoral alternatives are most fully closed off. Marx and Engels noted early in their trajectory that the ruling ideas of a society are the ideas of its ruling class. What this most recent twist of the lesser-evil argument reflects is the fact that a long-enshrined core “ruling idea” of capital—the conflation of capitalism with democracy—has lost all credibility. In other words, as “normal” capitalist politics increasingly jettisons its democratic trappings,33 it can devise no other legitimizing rationale than the claim to be “less bad” than an alternative that it defines as one inherently committed to the imposition of terror. The ideological hegemony of capital has thus suffered a decisive blow, and its defenders have had to make a leap of intellectual desperation in order to argue that the system they uphold stands for any interests other than those of its owners.

The Current Moment The claim that liberal democracy embodies a lesser evil compared to “terrorism” underpins most US foreign-policy pronouncements. And yet it ignores the acts of terror for which the purported liberal democracy is itself responsible. On the one hand, the US government, loudly touting its democratic values, is engaged in a de facto “war without end,” inflicting massive civilian casualties in several countries;34 on the other, attacks in 2015 by Islamic State (ISIS) operatives on European “soft” targets strengthened the hand of those politicians—in both the US and Europe— who call for a redoubling of “security” measures of all kinds, from racial/ ethnic/religious profiling and militarization of police forces to draconian anti-immigrant measures—all of which make the “lesser evil” assertion appear increasingly hollow. As the US and other governments wage “war on terror” in the name of liberal democracy, they are not only hurting people in the Islamic world and other targeted countries; they are also subjecting majorities of their own citizenry to unpopular agendas of economic austerity. In the US case, the democratic paradigm has been further 33  See Victor Wallis, Democracy Denied: Five Lectures on U.S. Politics (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2019). 34  John Pilger, “A World War has Begun: Break the Silence,” Counterpunch, 23 March 2016, http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/23/a-world-war-has-begun-breakthe-silence/.

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compromised by (1) legislation and prosecutions that conflate dissent with terrorism, (2) free rein to corporate money in electoral campaigns, (3) new laws in various states tightening restrictions on the right to vote, and (4) laws punishing citizens specifically for advocating boycotts that target the Israeli state. In relation to US elections, as the shrillness of right-wing campaign rhetoric reaches unprecedented levels, top Democrats in effect welcome such demagogy insofar as it provides an ever more reprehensible target for them to attack,35 thereby reinforcing the traditional image of their politicians as constituting (for working-class and progressive voters) the lesser evil. The dynamic here is one of fear, which constitutes the logical basis for lesser-evil voting.36 But this dynamic is not written in stone. As the impact of the virtual Republican/Democrat partnership becomes increasingly evident—in the form of continuities in foreign and financial policies, and with Congress obstructing progressive social measures—popular acquiescence reaches a limit, at which point the usual criteria for “electability” may suddenly cease to apply. Such a dynamic began to appear in the wide support generated among Democrats and independent voters in 2016 by the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders. Although Sanders conducted this campaign as a Democrat (with, therefore, a lesser-evil dimension to his overall program), his anti-oligarchic message was nonetheless one that challenged both of the dominant parties, and which therefore can only succeed in the context of what he calls a “political revolution.” In such a context, the need for lesser-evil calculations would not disappear, but their hitherto invariable rightward-leaning logic could be overridden.

35  It was under this assumption that Democrat strategists unwisely rejoiced in having Donald Trump as their target in the 2016 election. See my column, “The Trump Phenomenon” (25 Nov. 2015), http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/wallis251115. html. 36  It should be added that the supposed lesser evil is not always “lesser.” The parties in question may pursue identical policies, but a Democrat president, being perceived as the lesser evil, will elicit less protest than would a Republican president for doing exactly the same thing. Examples are given in Glen Ford, “Why Barack Obama is the More Effective Evil” (21 March 2012), http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-barack-obamamore-effective-evil. For historical background on the Democrat party, see Leni Brenner, The Lesser Evil (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1988).

CHAPTER 9

The US Left of the 1960s and Its Legacy

The future of the Left, in the US as elsewhere, is bound up with a larger question: what will it take to bring socialism back onto the popular agenda? In the eyes of many, the defeats of the 1980s and ’90s were so crushing as to make this question seem no longer worth asking. Capitalism then came to enjoy a level of exclusive hegemony unknown since before 1917. Although challenges to capitalism would subsequently reappear, the capitalist system nonetheless had recovered the full geographical scope of its pre-Soviet dominance, and was sinking more people into misery, at a more rapid rate, than at perhaps any time since the beginnings of colonial conquest. The old First World (the “advanced” capitalist countries), awash in neoliberal policies, suffered aggravated social polarization, amplified by public-service cutbacks; what used to be the Second World—the formerly socialist bloc—showed similar trends, typically in more extreme form (in the Russian case, acute scarcity, a savage level of social breakdown, and a marked decline in life-expectancy);1 and the long-misnamed Third World, more recently labeled the Global South—the direct playground of imperialism—remained in the throes of chronic over-exploitation. While all this might seem at first only to reinforce the sting of defeat, it also sharpens the case for a revolutionary alternative. But how does socialism now stand as a political force? The collapse of purported socialist regimes served to reinforce an already notable worldwide decline in the 1  Hans Aage, “The Triumph of Capitalism in Russia and Eastern Europe and Its Western Apologetics,” Socialism and Democracy, 19:2 (July 2005), 38.

© The Author(s) 2020 V. Wallis, Socialist Practice, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35066-6_9

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following of Left parties. Among advanced capitalist societies, 1968 ushered in a brief period which constituted a high-water mark for the Left.2 Certainly, in terms of explicit manifestations of radical sentiment, those times would not begin to be matched in the US until the fleeting surges of the 1999–2000 anti-globalization movement and the 2011 Occupy movement and, subsequently, the revival of mass support for social democracy in the Sanders presidential campaign of 2016. But the interim periods of quiescence, combined with the regressiveness of the neoliberal policies that have been pursued without letup since the early 1980s, led some observers to theorize that the radicalism of the 1960s had an impact which on balance constituted a setback for the Left.3 Those who argue along these lines generally call attention to the more spontaneous, chaotic, and self-indulgent manifestations of ’60s radicalism, and suggest that such behavior made it possible for conservative ideologues, particularly in the US, to build up a pivotal constituency for repressive policies. There can be no doubt that this is a part of what happened. Nonetheless, to fixate on it as the major legacy of the ’60s is to lift the whole conflict out of its historical setting, thereby obscuring both how the US Left of the ’60s came to acquire its particular traits and also how its various offshoots found the resources to withstand—and eventually to counter—the ensuing reactionary policies.

Historical Grounding of the ’60s Left The negative/stereotypical view of the ’60s Left tends to downplay a number of important considerations. First, it tends to either underestimate or misrepresent the global context within which the US New Left arose. Second, it leaves out of account the role of the post-1945 US Red Scare in setting the parameters for subsequent Left activity. Third, it largely excludes from its conception of the Left all but the relatively privileged, predominantly white, university-based sectors. Finally, by focusing on the Right’s campaign rhetoric (which took aim at the movement’s more 2  See George Katsiaficas, The Global Imagination of 1968: Revolution and Counterrevolution (Oakland, CA: PM Presss, 2018). 3  John McDermott, “On the Origins of the Present World in the Defeat of ‘the 60s,’” Socialism and Democracy, 11:2 (Fall 1997). See also Barbara Epstein, “The Marginality of the American Left: The Legacy of the 1960s,” in Leo Panitch, ed., Ruthless Criticism of All That Exists: Socialist Register 1997 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997).

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­ outrageous” expressions), it obscures the strategic and long-term dimen“ sion of the ruling class’s turn away from New Deal liberalism. 1. Global Setting The worldwide scope of the 1968 upheavals is acknowledged on all sides. What is missing, however, from the Left’s more pessimistic assessments of that juncture, is a recognition of how its different components fit together. The stereotypical view of the ’60s Left focuses on student radicalism, with its characteristic volatility and impatience. The more longstanding liberation struggles of the time might be noted (from this angle), but not with any suggestion that their character ought to feed into our composite portrait of the Left. Without this latter inclusion, however, the variously constituted revolutionary movements (e.g., Vietnam, southern Africa, Latin America) are reduced to the rank of mere “causes seeking support,” defined by the way core-country radicals looked at them, rather than being seen as autonomous players with their own distinctive trajectories. If we now refocus our attention on these movements, we can observe a number of things about them that should sharpen our understanding of the bigger picture. First, they represented far more people—both in absolute terms and relative to their own national populations—than did their university-based allies in the advanced countries. Second, their demands, in comparison to those of these same allies, had a stronger material dimension; in particular, they spoke directly to the needs of the poorest people. Third, these popular and essentially anti-imperialist movements, far from being sudden eruptions, emerged on the strength of longstanding organizational buildups, spanning decades if not generations, and embracing a full range of political practices, from guerrilla warfare (as in Cuba and Vietnam) to parliamentary struggles (as in Guyana and Chile). Finally, it is only through the existence of such Third World movements that the triumphalism of empire was punctured and First-World social movments given space—in the form of both issues and constituencies—in which to grow. The upshot of these considerations is clear: the stereotypical “’60s radicals,” far from being the defining force of their generation, were just one strand of a far bigger tapestry. If this suggests their limits, however, it also points to the basis of whatever impact they had. True, they were unable to “make the revolution,” but this does not mean that they were not part of a revolutionary process. Their integration in it refers not just to the

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support they gave, but also to the understanding they gained—as to the nature of society, of political work, and of their own and others’ needs. All this may seem rather modest, but its importance is not limited to the immediate time and place in which it occurred. The revolutionary process is a long one, and it would be presumptuous to insist that a particular moment of it—especially in its early stages—should yield a clear-cut and definitive result. 2. Impact of the Red Scare In the aftermath of World War II, US society underwent the most intense and sustained period of political repression that has ever been imposed— before or since—within a constitutional framework. This fact alone deserves much more attention in discussions of the ’60s Left than it has so far received. It suggests both the reasons for the New Left’s weakness and the directions in which it would have to go in order to find its strength. The debilitating effects of the repression were far-reaching. The crippling of an already small Communist party was only the most obvious; extending out from it, however, was the more general assault on socialist and progressive ideas.4 Unlike in Europe and elsewhere, the concept of socialism became for most people simply a bad word; class, as a social science concept, was stripped of its dynamic significance; even the word “peace” became suspect. Beyond these direct effects of the repression, however, there was a particular significance to its being imposed within the established constitutional framework. On the one hand, this endowed the repression with legitimacy in the eyes of those who were not its victims—which helps account for the vast resultant conformity. On the other hand (looking to the longer-term effects), in contrast to settings where a dictatorship is overthrown, the repression does not give way to any dramatic moment of liberation. Specifically, congressional committees or individual elected officials could come and go, but the FBI, the conformist commercial media, and their collaborators in the educational system remained—as they still do decades later. This was a chilling setting within which to contemplate any form of progressive activity. We should keep it in mind before too easily passing 4  See Joel Kovel, Red Hunting in the Promised Land: Anticommunism and the Making of America (New York: Basic Books, 1994); Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

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judgment on what “should have” been accomplished, even over a period of years, by those who had to confront it. In terms of the usual mechanisms for political work, members of the new generation of activists were starting largely from scratch. Later they might rediscover resources from the past, but at the outset, they had to contend not only with a lack of organization but also with an overwhelmingly hostile surrounding culture. In a more immediate sense, however, the effect of the political context of the time, for those trying to walk fresh ground, was to put a premium on qualities that would set them apart from their ideological forebears. This could well lead to an exaggerated emphasis on “home-grown” traits, often fortified by expressions of deliberate non-conformity vis-à-vis the larger community. Later observers might label the revolt “generational” and accuse its protagonists of “amnesia”; but the generational aspect was not by choice, while the amnesia, to the extent that it was willed, served partly as an antidote to paranoia. Unfortunately it also fostered, among many activists, a distrust of organizational rigor and a distaste even for certain minimal levels of political discipline. These traits, problematic in themselves, could eventually, under adverse conditions, turn into their opposites. Shapeless structures could fall prey to manipulation, while individuals rejecting their privileged backgrounds and lacking a mature collective culture could accept unwarranted intrusions into their personal lives. In any case, it is not surprising that the New Left, lacking a solid tradition of its own, had to look partly outside its ranks—to expressions of a broader popular culture—in order to find sustenance. In so doing, it displayed, despite its shortcomings, a certain openness and generosity of spirit. This quality, seasoned with modesty in some quarters and with an irreverent sense of humor in others, was an authentic contribution to the Left’s revival. But the ultimate driving force clearly came from the most oppressed sectors, not only in Third World countries but also within the United States. 3. Mass Constituencies The harbinger of revival was the civil rights movement in the US South. Its eventual expression, as massive nonviolent protest against racist laws, had a long prehistory, encompassing both personal defiance and political organizing (notably by Communist activists).5 Out of this tradition of 5  Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1994), and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015 [1990]).

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struggle emerged a culture of resistance which, at least for the issues closest to it, was free of the conformity that pervaded most of “white America.” Large numbers of ordinary people, inured to struggle, targeted the most morally vulnerable joints of the system—the denials of legal equality and voting rights—and risked the first forays of what would come to be felt as a serious challenge to the US ruling class. As the movement grew, it drew in white supporters and activists from around the country—a development which consolidated certain of its gains but jeopardized others, eventually prompting the shift to an exclusionary membership policy on the part of the predominantly black Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, the leading grassroots civil rights organization). What does all this imply, however, for our overall characterization of the ’60s Left? In the first place, while it is true that both the civil rights movement and the subsequent Black Power movement included certain elements (whether assimilationist or separatist) that embraced a capitalist framework, the overwhelming thrust of these movements, in class terms, was in a progressive direction. That is to say, while few of the constituents articulated their position in anti-capitalist language, their collective organized presence constituted a threat to ruling-class hegemony. Even the modest demand to protect citizens registering to vote required an immense popular movement in order to gain official acquiescence. Further, the political logic of the struggle for equality pushed its leading spokesperson Martin Luther King to go beyond his initially circumscribed demands in increasingly radical directions (in terms of both his public statements and his political alliances), to the point at which he became a virtual “public enemy number one” for the FBI. From another angle, of course, it was precisely the experience of working closely with black civil rights activists that energized and inspired some of the most creative leaders of what would soon develop into the more diffuse, predominantly white-led Left and antiwar movements. For all these reasons, it is quite misleading not to treat the progressive Black movements as integral to the ’60s Left, which in any case was far from being a unified movement even apart from its racial divide. The very existence of such a divide within the movement, moreover, must itself be recognized not as an automatic given, but rather as needing to be continuously reinforced by official repression. The postwar Red Scare gestapo had a particular animus for any expression of black/white unity (a longstanding nightmare for Southern elites). Black Communists were the most dan-

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gerous of all, for they provided a bridge between the white Left and a popular constituency that could recognize and articulate its own discontent. The demise of the Communists did not end the witch-hunt, however. Malcolm X appeared never more threatening than when he broke out of his Nation of Islam cocoon and, with his exceptional magnetism, began addressing wider audiences. His most direct successors, the Black Panthers, were marked for destruction from the outset. It is important that they be remembered, however, not only as advocates of armed self-­ defense, but also for their programmatic commitment to socialism and their vigorous critiques of black separatism (most notably by Fred Hampton, for whose murder the FBI’s responsibility has been fully documented).6 Once this whole tradition of the black Left has been acknowledged, it becomes impossible to avoid questioning the larger stereotype of the ’60s Left as a movement of the privileged. Obviously individuals from comfortable backgrounds went into the movement, as they have from the time of Marx and Engels. There is also a long tradition of activists from such backgrounds having a proclivity for individual or small-group acts of violence, as with some of the nineteenth-century Russian populists. But the relative role of privileged individuals and, among them, the susceptibility to adventuristic or guilt-driven tactics, are themselves historically conditioned variables. In the particular US setting of the 1960s, Left activism arose from a great variety of directions. To the extent that the “privileged” component exercised a disproportionate role, two factors appear to be at work. First, in the relatively loose sense in which the term privilege is used in this context, the number of young people who partook of it, growing up in the postwar United States, was inordinately large. One would have had to spread the net much wider than in any previous capitalist society to draw in people who lacked their advantages. Second, we again have to recall the postwar repression, which hit the labor movement and the public school system with particular force. Under these conditions, a private school or an elite university could well become—paradoxically, and with all the attendant drawbacks—a refuge for progressive ideas. It should not be surprising, then, that young people of privilege played an important role in the white Left, especially in its early stages. But the 6  See Jeff Gottlieb and Jeff Cohen, “Was Fred Hampton Executed?” The Nation, December 25, 1976, and Philip S. Foner, ed., The Black Panthers Speak (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995).

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movement grew far broader over time, particularly as the US occupation of Vietnam became more costly. By the early ’70s, the movement’s initial antiracist and antiwar constituencies were reinforced by demands for women’s liberation, for the rights of other oppressed national or ethnic communities,7 for an end to all forms of discrimination (including by sexual orientation, age, and disability), and for sweeping curbs on environmental degradation. The breadth of these concerns, even with all their overlapping, signaled at least an implicit majority supportive of a dissident agenda. 4. Imperial Over-Extension and State Violence Just as student radicalism was only one component of a much broader movement, so also, from the other direction, the state’s response to the ’60s Left was just one element of a far more comprehensive imperial posture. As the Red Scare had already shown, the state’s repressive impulse was longstanding, and operated with little reference to either the legality or the “propriety” of Left activities. In the late ’40s, the objective was to establish a favorable climate for the then-unprecedented official commitment to worldwide US intervention on behalf of capital. Publicly, Washington advertised its posture as one of support for “free peoples everywhere”; the privately voiced advice on which President Truman was acting, however, was to “scare hell out of the country.”8 In the decades that followed, the policy goal (defense of capital) remained constant, but the need for domestic repression fluctuated. Still, extreme measures never ceased to be a live option. They peaked around 1969 with the government’s murderous assault on the Black Panthers, but this was only the culmination of a long-simmering brew of reactionary violence in which private criminal operatives and state agencies—ranging from local police to the FBI—worked in tandem. Sometimes, as during the civil rights movement, the violent initiatives were “unofficial” and the state agencies simply looked on. Even when state agencies took a more active role, however (as in FBI efforts to stoke hostilities among Black Power organizers or in the CIA’s perennial campaign against revolution7  See especially, on the Puerto Rican community, Johanna Fernández, The Young Lords: A Radical History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020). 8  Frank Kofsky, Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).

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ary Cuba), they continued to rely heavily on an extra-governmental—and extra-legal—support network.9 In terms of establishing a violent political climate, finally, we should not forget the more routine (ostensibly non-­ political) practices of local police officers patrolling oppressed communities; these created the climate, and often the spark, for spontaneous yet desperate acts of popular protest. But whatever the ebb and flow of domestic strife, it was the larger imperial setting that would guide any revision of US strategic priorities. The period of the Red Scare had brought the first assault on the New Deal, with a strong focus on legislation to weaken the labor movement (the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947). There followed a roughly decade-long truce during which popular demands were held in check, in return for the limited material benefits afforded by private-sector expansion and “business unionism.” The civil rights movement and ensuing urban uprisings burst through these restraints to drive a new round of progressive social legislation, but not before Washington’s growing overseas role—most notably in Vietnam—had begun to generate pressures for austerity at home. These had already reached a significant level by 1968, quite independently of the progress of student radicalism. Denunciations of the latter would eventually feed the mix, but it was the economic squeeze that forced a choice between social legislation (which politicians saw as a merely conjunctural requirement) and military priorities (which they equated with long-term national interests). So long as both these budget-categories (“guns and butter”) could expand simultaneously, ruling-class parties could differ over which of them deserved more attention. Once an either/or was reached, however, grassroots demands—whether against the war or for social betterment—became more and more difficult to satisfy. The antiwar position became a particular embarrassment, for even as its immediate justifications became irrefutable, its longer-term echoes undercut official pretensions to democracy and thus threatened the whole imperial structure that the war effort was bound up with. The response from above reached lethal proportions. What had begun with the selective and surreptitious murder of certain key individuals—starting with President Kennedy in 196310—culminated, by 9  See David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (New York: HarperCollins, 2015). 10  On the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and his brother (and 1968 presidential candidate) Robert F. Kennedy, see Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, 494–586, 610–613.

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1970, in the massacres of white as well as black students by National Guard units. Washington’s war strategy, meanwhile, shifted toward fewer US troops and more US bombing. The combined effect of these changes was to reduce the numbers who would engage in antiwar actions while at the same time increasing their level of desperation. While violent state repression thus increased (on Nixon’s Republican watch), top Democrat funders, unwilling to support their own party’s incremental opening to the left (the 1972 nomination of George McGovern), joined a new ruling-class consensus based on the blunt assessment—expressed in Samuel P. Huntington’s 1974 report to the Trilateral Commission—that democracy had been allowed to go too far.11 On the Republican side, the same years saw the formation of the right-wing think tanks that were to shape the Reagan agenda.12 For Left constituencies of those years, therefore, the distance between organized initiatives and policy-­impact seemed only to be growing. It was under such conditions of ruling-class non-responsiveness—carried a step beyond pre-1968 appearances—that the Left became splintered and marginalized, and that a small detachment of its activists took the turn toward guerrilla tactics.13 Looking back on that period, it is important to understand the various Left responses both in proportion and in context. The context was one of extreme state violence, especially in Vietnam but also, albeit in a more focused way, at home. The domestic face of this violence was local as well as national, vigilante as well as official, covert as well as overt. The impact was as varied as the populations of the Left against which the violence was directed. Among these, however, apart from the small numbers who took up arms and the many who retreated from politics, there remained a large (and itself diverse) contingent which sought to implement its political mission through channels that the ’60s movements had tapped only lightly if See also William F. Pepper, The Plot to Kill King (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016), and Lisa Pease, A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2018). 11  In Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies (New York: New York University Press, 1975). 12  Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics (New York: Hill & Wang, 1986); Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires behind the Rise of the Radical Right (New York: Doubleday, 2016). 13  See David Gilbert, Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012).

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at all. Through such channels, extending into every corner of the working class,14 they would build on the positive legacies of that period.

Achievements and Long-Range Impact of the ’60s Left The principal accomplishments of the ’60s Left were: (1) it led what historian Tom Wells has called “perhaps the most successful antiwar movement in history”;15 (2) it gave wide diffusion to an anti-imperialist understanding of US foreign policy, offering among other things a growing support network to defectors from the Intelligence establishment;16 (3) it generated an extensive network of communities of resistance (some of them clandestine), including an “underground railroad” for military deserters as well as hundreds of grassroots alternative newspapers; (4) it significantly reduced the climate of fear which had previously marginalized progressive social criticism; (5) it multiplied the dissemination of revolutionary ideas within the US prison population, eventually winning legal protection for prisoners against the screening of written materials;17 (6) it reestablished a visible Left presence in higher education and policy research, including radical caucuses and publications in virtually every discipline;18 (7) it launched a number of useful periodicals which continue to come out (e.g., In These Times, Dollars & Sense, Labor Notes) and injected new life into a number of older ones (e.g., Monthly Review, Science & Society); (8) it drew conscientious people of every ethnicity into the struggle against racism; (9) it stimulated—directly or indirectly—the articula14  On the broad involvement of students at non-elite universities, see Kenneth J. Heineman, Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam Era (New York: New York University Press, 1993). 15  Tom Wells, The War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 579. 16  Such as Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers (secret history of the US role in Vietnam), and Philip Agee, who broke new ground with the explosive revelations of his Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York: Stonehill, 1975). 17  I followed one such case which resulted in a Federal Court ruling in favor of the prisoners, in Indianapolis in April 1977. A related development was the emergence of prison-based degree programs following the suppression of the 1971 Attica uprising (as described in the Deep Dish TV documentary, The Last Graduation [1997]). 18  See the review essays collected by Bertell Ollman and Edward Vernoff in The Left Academy: Marxist Scholarship on American Campuses, 3 vols. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1982; Westport, CT: Praeger, 1984, 1986).

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tion of progressive demands on the part of each of the distinctively oppressed sectors of society as well as on behalf of the natural environment; (10) it inspired broad questioning of traditional gender roles; (11) thanks especially to the women’s movement, it absorbed and transmitted the awareness that what one does can never be judged apart from how one does it; (12) it challenged corporate-friendly modes of diet and health; finally, (13) it provided a schooling in activism for a significant core of people who then carried their skills into virtually every walk of life, including notably the labor movement. This is a remarkable set of achievements—the more so if we consider the prodigious power-resources of the regime against which they were primarily directed. For the first time, an assemblage of popular opposition movements in the United States had earned a measure of prestige among its counterparts in other countries. The US Left of the ’60s thus did more than just partake of a worldwide upheaval; it was a leading player. Just as the US civil rights movement influenced the African National Congress, so the US antiwar and student movements influenced student activists in Western Europe—not so much because of any effort at theoretical guidance as by virtue, simply, of articulating mass disaffection from within the world’s militarily most powerful and most aggressive state.19 But what came of all this? Why didn’t the Left go on to mount an even stronger challenge to official policies? There are several reasons why this was not immediately possible. First, given the existing balance of forces, it would have required the cooperation of a sector of the ruling class that was open to progressive reform. We have already noted, however, that top Democrats were moving in the opposite direction—a development that was further solidified in 1984 with the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council. Underlying this consideration was the evolution of the US global role, which required the ruling class—because of imperial over-extension—to bury its strategic disagreements and unite behind a policy of domestic austerity. Further difficulties had to do with the evolution of the Left itself. The ’60s Left emerged, as we have seen, in the wake of the massive internal repression that accompanied Washington’s unprecedented claim to function as arbiter to popular struggles throughout the world. The resulting 19  As Daniel Singer wrote, from Paris, “The European protesters looking ahead are joining hands with America’s new left.” Prelude to Revolution: France in May 1968 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1971), 328.

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movement had a correspondingly distinct character: on the one hand, improvised; on the other, saddled with an immediate programmatic goal of daunting scale: stopping a major imperialist war. Even today, the scope of that task has not been sufficiently acknowledged. In the frenzy of an organizing process that far outpaced the necessary discussions among coalition-partners, new constituencies burst onto the scene and demanded the opportunity to press their needs—and expound their positions—without feeling any urge to integrate them into a larger mission. The notion that a broader struggle (challenging class power) might enhance rather than impede their particular agendas was, in part, another casualty of the Red Scare. Politically, capital was all-powerful, subject only to limited protest against its policies. These policies went into high gear after 1980 (under Reagan, but with ample help from leading Democrats). They provoked a full spectrum of grassroots reactions. Most important for the Left, however, was their impact on the organized working class. During the Vietnam war, much was made of the labor movement’s support of the official stance. This did not reflect the actual attitudes of most workers (as Andrew Levison showed in his 1974 book The Working-Class Majority20), but it has nonetheless been held up—then and since—as a further reflection of the alleged political ineptitude of the ’60s Left. In fact, it had much deeper roots, for the official anointment of “business unionism,” as legislated in the Taft-Hartley Act, had of course been an integral component of imperial institution-building. The labor bureaucrats who emerged from this process were so wedded to capitalism in general, and to the State Department/CIA complex in matters of foreign policy,21 that no amount of popular pressure could conceivably have budged them. The attempt to undermine this carefully groomed labor leadership would remain an important project during subsequent decades. The potential impact of a generation socialized by the ’60s Left was shown in the half-million-strong “Solidarity Day” demonstration of September 1981—called by the AFL-CIO to protest (in Washington) the first round of the “Reagan Revolution.” Notable among the signs displayed in that march were those denouncing US intervention in Central America. This 20  Andrew Levison, The Working-Class Majority (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1974). 21  See Serafino Romualdi, Presidents and Peons; Recollections of a Labor Ambassador in Latin America (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1967).

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issue turned out to be a key stimulant to the revival of a militant rank and file in the labor movement. Its importance stemmed partly from the increasing shift abroad of US manufacturing operations and the rise of Central American sweatshops.22 But it also drew on the strength of a popular anti-imperialist response which had been honed in the struggles over Vietnam and which was sufficiently strong, by the time of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua (1979) and the rise of a popular insurgent movement in El Salvador, to mold an internal opposition in the US that could substantially limit the government’s options. By the mid-’80s this opposition had filtered into enough of the labor leadership to provoke a serious split over an AFL-CIO policy statement. In the end, however, the changes at the top of the AFL-CIO proved to be mostly cosmetic. The AFL-CIO’s most powerful foreign policy arms, the various government-funded and government-directed institutes for overseas “labor development,” were replaced in 1996 by the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, but this newer body continues to collaborate internationally with the semi-official National Endowment for Democracy (for long an arm of US intervention against left-wing governments). But although the ’60s Left had only a marginal effect on labor’s top leadership, it nonetheless modified the general culture of the US working class. Black workers in the auto industry injected a revolutionary impulse into their organizing.23 More generally, a significant minority of ’60s activists became trade unionists, and some of these went on to become union staffers, while others (especially on the West Coast) continued organizing within the rank and file, until the early 1990s, under the banner of the “new communist movement.” Still others were able to exert a progressive influence on the labor movement through their roles in higher education, particularly in Labor Studies programs. Within some unions, a critical mass of former student activists organized directly to challenge bureaucratic or crime-ridden leaderships. The most successful example of such efforts was the work of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. Thanks to Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), and despite the persistence of corrupt fund-raising practices, the Teamsters acquired a more ­ responsive leadership, with progressives holding high-level elected and staff positions for six years. The year-long educational campaign sparked by these leaders was indispensable to the union’s historic victory in the 1997 United Parcel Service (UPS) strike. 22  As documented especially by Charles Kernaghan and his Labor Committee in Support of Worker and Human Rights. See continuing coverage in the monthly bulletin, Labor Notes. 23  Dan Georgakas, Detroit, I Do Mind Dying (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1998).

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The classic downside to such advances, of course, is the risk that the new officials may end up caring more about the positions they attain than about the larger political visions that originally motivated them. This cooptation scenario will continue to exert its attractions until the shake-up within unions goes much deeper than it has so far. The answer to the associated risk, however, is not to shun the new positions but rather to make sure that those who occupy them preserve strong ties to the rank and file. Among the encouraging trends in the labor movement, we should note the increased roles of female and non-white activists and a greater openness—even at the top levels—toward the needs of immigrant workers. Antiwar and ecological groupings among trade unionists are now well established. Environmental awareness was foregrounded during the 1999 demonstrations in Seattle against the World Trade Organization, and there were expressions of mutual support in 2011 between organized labor and the Occupy movement. More recently, as the private sector of the US economy has continued to push out union jobs, a new level of militance has arisen among public-sector workers, especially schoolteachers. At the same time, labor organizing has entered a new arena in the movement against prison slavery, in which the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) is rediscovering a level of mass participation that had eluded it since the early years of the twentieth century. Similar opportunities and dilemmas have arisen in the sphere of electoral politics. To the extent that top Democrats backed the regressive turn of the 1980s, new space was opened on their left. Constituencies previously neglected by mainstream candidates were now offered serious arguments even by politicians (like Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988) who had no intention of giving up their identity as Democrats. It became once again possible for progressives to imagine winning office by running as Independents, as in the case of Bernie Sanders, a student activist of the ’60s who, after serving four terms as mayor of Burlington, was elected in 1990 as Vermont’s sole representative in the US House. The possibility of further advances along such lines was pursued by several party-projects and coalition-building efforts.24 Although their achievements were limited, the public awareness of a void needing to be filled has only grown. A further dimension of heightened activity arose in grassroots organizing that pressed directly against corporate priorities. Community move24  See Victor Wallis, Democracy Denied: Five Lectures on U.S. Politics (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2019), 82–86.

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ments against plant-closings or against toxic waste dumps—the latter often reflecting environmental racism—served in many regions to raise the level of popular awareness. The work of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles (founded in 1987) offers a striking example of such organizing. By taking a resolutely anti-capitalist stance, it broke new ground compared to other grassroots projects. It was able to involve a multiracial membership in a full range of local, national, and international issues, without abandoning its focus on immediately winnable goals. The Strategy Center’s achievements are important to our discussion, because they reflect a thorough blend of (a) Marxist analysis, (b) lessons from the ’60s on “process,” and (c) accommodation to the post-’60s sharpening of racial and ethnic consciousness.25 All these developments—the reawakening of the labor movement, the expansion of electoral alternatives, and the deepening of community-­ based struggles—carry the seeds of a popular mobilization that could grow to challenge capitalist priorities. Whether—or how soon—this happens will also depend on the movement’s ability to break the continuing corporate dominance over public information, news analysis, and the diffusion of popular culture. In this sphere too, however, there were important initiatives growing out of ’60s activism. The most direct challenges were offered by media or news-analysis projects, such as FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), the Institute for Alternative Journalism, the National Radio Project, the investigative newsletter (later website and magazine) CounterPunch, and (later) the Institute for Public Accuracy (which links journalists to radical news-sources). Imaginative TV and film productions by Michael Moore and the standup comedy performances of George Carlin stretched the limits further, showing that the routine exclusion of radical content could not be rationalized on grounds of lacking entertainment value. Newer journals of opinion launched by ’60s activists (Z Magazine, Tikkun) also helped expand the underpinnings for the developing movement, spawning a proliferation of successors, ranging from TV news operations such as Democracy Now and The Real News to the widely diffused socialist magazine/website Jacobin, the activist website Popular 25  The Center’s ability to combine these approaches reflects the career and the thinking of its director, Eric Mann, whose work in the ’60s and early ’70s spanned community, antiracist, antiwar, student, and prisoner-support organizing, and who subsequently brought this accumulated experience into the industrial workplace. See his book on “transformative organizing,” Playbook for Progressives (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011).

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Resistance, news & opinon outlets like Common Dreams, Truthout, Truthdig, Black Agenda Report, Consortium News, Richard Wolff’s weekly Economic Update, and Lee Camp’s hard-hitting comedic presentations on Redacted Tonight. Interwoven with this upsurge was a growing awareness of what had been left out of the history textbooks. Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, which has sold over two million copies since its original publication in 1980, played a special role in this regard, galvanizing a largely successful campaign to remove Christopher Columbus from his official pedestal (replacing “Columbus Day” with Indigenous Peoples’ Day in many cities and states), thereby providing the opening wedge to a sorely needed shift of national values. Three landmark books would later fill out and thereby add further authority to Zinn’s reinterpreation: William Blum’s incisive and thorough history of post-1945 US foreign interventions, David Talbot’s explosive biography of CIA Covert Operations founder Allen Dulles, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s excavation of the largely hidden history of the Native American nations.26 It is in light of all these advances that we can begin to understand how, by 2012, despite the chronic media fog of pro-capitalist ideology, a survey showed that half of the under-30 age group and half of all African Americans were sympathetic to socialism. It was on this basis that Bernie Sanders, as a Senator, was able in 2016 to mount an impressive grassroots campaign—amassing over 13 million votes—for the Democratic presidential nomination; that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) quintupled its membership in the aftermath of Trump’s victory; and that the 2018 elections brought into Congress its new cohort of radical female representatives, including the two DSA members.

When Will the Left Recover the Prominence It Attained in 1968? 1968 serves as a symbolic high-water mark for the Left that is only now beginning to be matched. How can we synthesize the relevant changes that have occurred since that time? In a broader sense, what is the differ26  William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2003); Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard; Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014).

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ence between the historical moment at which the ’60s Left emerged and the one through which we are now living? An adequate response to this question requires us to consider the subject-­matter along a number of dimensions, notably, (1) capitalism’s global strength, vis-à-vis hegemonic alternatives; (2) the legitimacy of the dominant political forces within the United States; (3) the changing composition—and changing life-circumstances—of the Left’s popular constituency (the working class and parts of the middle class); (4) the political orientation of pertinent social movements and grassroots organizations; and finally, (5) the actual strength or impact of political formations with an explicit socialist or progressive agenda. 1. Capitalism’s Global Strength In the decades immediately following 1968, capitalism seemed to grow stronger. The most obvious change was the collapse of the Soviet bloc and of all the regimes of central planning which comprised it. Pointing in a similar direction was the evolution of the Chinese Communist regime into one driven to a significant extent by capitalist criteria. Whatever negative role these regimes might earlier have played as models of socialism, their dissolution or metamorphosis nonetheless sharply enhanced the prospects for capitalism in a number of ways: (a) it opened up the vast regions of the former “Second World” to the unbridled penetration of transnational capital; (b) it sharply curtailed a significant source of economic and political support to Third World liberation movements; (c) it left the US and other capitalist governments with a freer hand in the international arena (including both military interventions and UN politics); (d) it freed capital of the specter of an alternative economic model whose very existence had served to bolster arguments for progressive reform throughout the capitalist world; and (e) it disoriented anti-imperialist solidarity movements within the metropolis as imperialism’s earlier (progressive) Third World challengers gave way—especially in the Islamic world—to an array of religious fundamentalists and independent-minded military strongmen. With all these changes, capital now enjoyed a degree of freedom of action it had not known since at least as far back as 1917. But this is not all. The years since 1968 witnessed not just a transformation of the international context but also the continuation, if anything at an intensified pace, of “normal” capitalist development. While this “normal” functioning involves practices which, in their aggregate, lead to uncontrollable

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results, its immediate manifestation is a persistent drive to guarantee the conditions for capitalism’s future success. This effort encompasses all the devices by which capital aims to augment its capacity for control, whether of the labor market, of political structures, or of popular attitudes. The years since 1968 have seen notable advances for capital on all these fronts. The labor market has become more flexible—and cheaper; elections in the US have become increasingly awash in big money; and corporate control of the mass media has become increasingly monolithic.27 Capital’s overall strengthening is reflected in the upward redistribution of wealth and income. A major vehicle for this process is technology, the constant revolutionizing of which has long been one of capitalism’s core traits. Technological advances have continued to expand capitalist options, notably by the well established pattern of making workers disposable (not only through the introduction of labor-saving devices, but also by facilitating globalization, out-sourcing, and just-in-time production).28 Computer technology has accelerated this process exponentially. The notion of a secure lifetime job has increasingly become an anachronism. At the same time, within the workplace, the power of management to monitor the worker’s every moment has reached previously unimaginable levels. A parallel development has taken place in the sphere of bio-engineering, drawing every step of the agricultural process into a web of conditions set by big corporations.29 In the sphere of marketing, similarly, the tracking of everyone’s most intimate tastes and habits has become routine.30 All this reflects a growing concentration of power, which in turn takes many forms. Corporate mergers, with the invariable resulting layoffs, become a routine phenomenon. Barrels of surplus cash fill the pockets of business executives, but with plenty left over to sustain the chronic corruption of the political process. Any residue of democracy, at the level of the state, is increasingly circumvented by an evolving network of international agreements on trade and investment, arrived at with as little public

27  See Robert W. McChesney, Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Media Criticism (New York: New Press, 2004). 28  See Kim Moody, Workers in a Lean World (London & New York: Verso, 1997). 29  R.C.  Lewontin, “The Maturing of Capitalist Agriculture: Farmer as Proletarian,” Monthly Review 50:3 (July/August 1998). 30  Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (New York: Public Affairs, 2019).

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awareness—let alone participation—as possible.31 The development of the global communications industry is both a part of this process and a key facilitator of all its other aspects. The increasingly concentrated commercial media blocks the diffusion of vital analysis, replacing it as far as possible with politically antiseptic entertainment.32 What most epitomizes capitalist triumphalism, however, is the stampede toward privatization. Beginning with the breakup of state enterpises in the former Soviet bloc, this process invaded—already by the late 1990s—virtually every sphere of what had earlier been regarded as public-­ sector activity, including, in various countries, welfare, mass transit, public utilities, education, police protection, and the prison system.33 The cumulative effect of all these developments was to create the conditions for a self-fulfilling prophecy against the viability of any publicly grounded project. With all the liquid assets that circulate in the financial sector, funds are reliably on tap to undermine or buy out any such effort that might show signs of becoming successful. In light of these combined trends, there easily evolved a widespread sense of capitalism’s having become all-powerful. Thus, even on the Left, many who still embraced the egalitarian demands of various popular constituencies nonetheless gave up on targeting capitalism as the unifying force behind what they were fighting against.34 They gave up too easily, however. In allowing themselves to be impressed by capitalism’s strengths—and also by the supposed promise of progressive approaches that try to ignore the central driving role of capi31  See Noam Chomsky, “Power in the Global Arena,” New Left Review, no. 230 (July/ August 1998), 21ff; David Moberg, “8 Terrible Things about the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” In These Times, December 16, 2015; and, on the World Trade Organization (WTO), https://www.globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/the-three-sisters-and-otherinstitutions/the-world-trade-organization.html. 32  See Edward S.  Herman and Robert W.  McChesney, The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Global Capitalism (London & Washington: Cassell, 1997); Norman Solomon, The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media: Decoding Spin and Lies in Mainstream News (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1999). 33  William Greider, One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 382f. See also Lawrence C. Soley, Leasing the Ivory Tower: The Corporate Takeover of Academia (Boston: South End Press, 1995); Ken Silverstein, “America’s Private Gulag,” in Daniel Burton-Rose et al. (eds.), The Celling of America: An Inside Look at the US Prison Industry (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1998), 156–63. 34  See Victor Wallis, “Socialism Under Siege,” and the ensuing exchange with Ronald Aronson, Monthly Review 47:8 and 48:5 (January and October, 1996).

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tal—they forgot its weaknesses. None of these were new in any fundamental sense, but they nonetheless reflect new conditions. A distinctive aspect of capitalism’s present stage, clearly evident already in 1988 (the year of Dr. James Hansen’s climate warning and of Bill McKibben’s bestselling The End of Nature), is that it has exhausted its environmental base. Although capital might have the physical means to continue expanding for another few decades, it has already brought about a level of environmental destruction beyond what can be rectified by anything short of a drastic reconceptualization of society’s production priorities, something which capital has already shown—for example, in its response to proposed measures against global warming—that it is quite unwilling to entertain.35 A second aspect of capitalism’s vulnerability pertains to its more strictly economic workings. The current period of accelerated globalization and mega-mergers is also one of heightened speculation. The financial sector accounts for an ever-growing portion of total economic activity,36 a development which has been even further intensified by the rapidity of transactions—along with endlessly imaginative marketing devices—fostered by the new technologies. But all this feverish activity nonetheless rests in the final analysis on specific goods and services being produced in specific places and sold in specific markets. These sites can be shifted around only up to a point. Expansion is ultimately limited not only by environmental conditions but also by purchasing power. Meltdowns such as the bursting of the Asian bubble in 1997 and the collapse of major US banks in 2008 serve as dramatic reminders of this reality. Finally, the current trend toward universal privatization signals the end of a period in which capital had largely neutralized its critics by absorbing and coopting their most immediately pressing demands. To the extent that capitalist regimes—with whatever degree of reluctance—had acted on the democratic mandate to guarantee a decent level of living for their populations, they had seemingly disproved (at least within their own borders) the Marxian projection of increasing polarization and misery. So much was this the case, that their ideologues could call for supplanting the very rubric “capitalist” in favor of the label “mixed economy.” At present, by contrast, while the term capitalist is still not favored in mainstream 35  Victor Wallis, Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism (Toronto: Political Animal Press, 2018), ch. 6. 36  Greider, One World, Ready or Not, 232ff; John Bellamy Foster, The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009).

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rhetoric, the mixed-economy line (or, in its earlier British variant, “We’re all socialists now”) has quietly vanished from the approved lingo. All the official talk since around the 1990s has been of “market democracy”—an unintendedly apt designation for a representative system in which votes are considered to be for sale. Certainly in the US, but increasingly also in other countries with long constitutional traditions, the notion that a state’s primary obligation is to its people has gone out of fashion. While this may serve the immediate interests of the ruling elite, it eventually portends increasing popular discontent. 2. Legitimacy of Dominant Political Forces If the persistence of capitalist power depended only on the system’s ability to satisfy human need, it would long ago have been displaced. Most of the successes capital has been able to claim for itself, in terms of the mass of the population, have referred to practices, customs, and institutions—such as the eight-hour workday, free speech, and social security—that were implemented in opposition to its own priorities. As is now becoming more widely apparent, every one of these revered acquisitions clashes with market criteria. However much they might have contributed to the system’s long-term viability, they have come under renewed attack in the very name of the market. Labor power is cheaper if contracted on a contingent basis or in settings where it lacks legal protection, in either case subjecting it to violations of the eight-hour ceiling. Free public expression, whether in electoral fora or through mass media, is viewed as being inherently dependent on fundraising capacities. And the whole institution of social security is now persistently treated by Republican politicians as though it would function better if entrusted to the beneficent vigilance of the stock exchange.37 The growing aggressiveness of market-oriented discourse sounds like a reversion to what was current in the late nineteenth century. Both major wings of the US ruling class reacted to the perceived “crisis of governance” of the late ’60s—what they saw as the “excesses” of democracy— by moving to the right. The shift was more conspicuous on the Republicans’ part, as they unified behind the openly anti-welfare (neoliberal) politics symbolized by Reagan. The Democrats have always been more divided; 37  A valuable introduction to the social security issue is Richard B. DuBoff, “Government and Social Insurance: A View from the Left,” Monthly Review 47:5 (October, 1995).

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nonetheless, their dominant sectors, organized initially in the Trilateral Commission (which sponsored President Carter) and subsequently in the Democratic Leadership Council (which sponsored Clinton and Gore), outdid themselves in endorsing the Republicans’ anti-“big government” rhetoric. Their collaboration included implementing the Republicans’ anti-welfare and free-trade agendas, performing damage-control in relation to Reagan-era scandals, and holding the line against demands for progressive legislation on behalf of labor and the environment. But what has all this meant in terms of longer-run questions of legitimacy? Beyond the epochal demystification bequeathed by the movements of the ’60s, any assessment must be tied to the evolving fortunes and susceptibilities of different sectors of the population. The pacifying powers of the media are a constant, but they can never withstand the impact either of direct suffering (like that of displaced farmers) or of a broad-based and concerted pursuit of censored truths (e.g., exposing the underpinnings of Reagan’s Central America policy). Opinion-surveys suggest a certain capriciousness on matters such as the esteem accorded to particular institutions, but the polarizing tendencies that have become engraved in US policy since 1981 have assured that overall legitimacy would never go back up to its pre-1968 level.38 Apart from surveys, however, there are several other indications of popular disaffection. One is the continuing phenomenon of low voter participation, only briefly offset in 2008 by the hopes that surrounded Obama. A second is the thinness of voters’ loyalty to both major parties, as shown in the 20 percent who voted for Ross Perot in 1992 and in later polls that have consistently shown majorities wishing to be offered alternatives other than Republicans or Democrats—a figure that reached 57 percent by 2016.39 A third indication consists of various direct mass expressions of populist-type discontent. A portion of this is voiced, albeit in distorted form, among Republican voters, some of whom respond to demagogic anti-elitist appeals voiced, in succession, by chauvinistic politicians like Patrick Buchanan in the 1990s, by the Tea Party movement around 2009, and by Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign and beyond.

38  The Harris Poll’s “Confidence Index,” set at 100 for 1966, averaged 57 for the 1970s, 51 for the 1980s, and 48 for the 1990s. The Harris Poll, 3 February 1999. 39  Jeffrey M. Jones, for Gallup (Sept. 30, 2016), https://news.gallup.com/poll/195920/ americans-desire-third-party-persists-election-year.aspx.

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More noteworthy, however, has been voting behavior within the Democratic fold. The consistent pattern here has been to defy the party leaderhip’s move to the right. This has been expressed both in support for insurgent or strongly progressive candidacies and in withdrawal of support from contenders who failed to differentiate themselves from their Republican opponents. Thus, in 1988, Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis lost a big lead by mounting a “non-ideological” campaign (claiming that the issue between him and the senior Bush was one of “competence”), and enjoyed a fleeting recovery only when he began, late in his campaign, to invoke populist themes. Later, Clinton’s first-term dithering on promises of progressive reform (healthcare; “investment in America”) led to voter-abstentions which put the Republicans over the top in the Congressional elections of 1994. In 1996, again, following Clinton’s cynical embrace of the right-wing assault on welfare, most of the Democrats’ gains in Congress came in the districts where they waged the strongest progressive campaigns. The consistent wish of the Democratic Party’s “base” for more radical policies than those offered by the leadership would again be shown in the support mobilized in 2015/16 by Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and in 2018 by the election of such progressive Congressmembers as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. Finally, neither surveys nor voting behavior can express the full measure of popular disaffection. Owing to some aspects of the dominant culture, much of the disaffection appears in twisted forms, such as heightened racism, violence against women, gay-bashing, and random expressions of extreme alienation, up to and including mass shootings—all of which intersect in varying degrees with semi-clandestine cults and armed “militia”-type groupings. All these behaviors testify to an oppressive system that has run amok and is no longer able to control its own manifestations. Nonetheless, the individual perpetrators are in many respects reacting, however irrationally, to their own devaluation or victimization. While those who have fully identified themselves with such reactions are likely to be beyond the reach of re-education, the sectors from which they come are full of people who know only, and from an early age, that the established power-holders are not their friends.40 These sectors could also 40  The fluid boundary between progressive and reactionary expressions of such alienation is explored in Catherine McNicol Stock, Rural Radicals: From Bacon’s Rebellion to the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: Penguin Books, 1997).

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be responsive to progressive appeals, as would be shown first in 2011 by the Occupy movement and then in the 2016 primaries by the support that Sanders gained in regions that had been especially hard hit by deindustrialization (and that subsequently went for Trump).41 In sum, disaffection itself knows no political label. All evidence suggests, however, that it is growing. Its right-wing expressions are indeed sobering, but there is no reason to assume that they must necessarily predominate. In the first place, while the Right owes a portion of its mass support to small-property interests, much of it comes from people whose needs would be better served, even in the most immediate sense, by progressive policies. Secondly, to the extent that right-wing tribunes (such as Rush Limbaugh) come to be recognized as sharing in some kind of dominant consensus, they lose much of their support. Third and most generally, at least a part of the right-wing appeal has to do not with its specific content but rather with the appearance it gives of being viscerally opposed to the established power-holders. In a period of growing discontent, the Left needs to remind itself that the road to greater popularity lies not in muting its positions but rather in strengthening them, not in cozying up to “moderates” but rather in unmasking them.42 3. Changing Constituencies Who makes up the audience for such efforts? In what ways has this audience changed over the past 50 years? Capital’s growing concentration and globalization have signified above all, as we have noted, a decline in the number of stable and well paid jobs available to working-class people. The holders of such jobs have ­traditionally been disproportionately white and male. Of all the sectors of the working class that have suffered in recent years, it is thus the white males who have experienced the biggest relative decline, compared to the status they enjoyed in an earlier period. It is this circumstance which tends to place those who are white and male among the most backward-looking, within the working class, and hence the most susceptible to the blandishments of the Right.  See Michel Moore’s 2017 film, Fahrenheit 11/9.  See Norman Solomon, “Joe Biden Proves That There’s Nothing Moderate About ‘Moderates’,” Truthdig (online), August 1, 2019. 41 42

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Ironically, the shrinkage of working-class job prospects followed tight upon the struggles for legal equality waged by women and by African Americans and Latinos. The historical timing of the resulting affirmative action measures was thus made-to-order for right-wing demagogy. The hardships produced by corporate deindustrialization and downsizing could then be blamed on affirmative action. The threat to traditional white male expectations appeared to be reinforced, moreover, by a steady inflow of new immigrants43—largely from those Asian and Latin American countries that had been particularly ravaged by US economic and/or military activity. All these developments made for an increasingly diverse sector of wage-­ workers. While the initial effect on the consciousness of white male workers appears to have been predominantly conservatizing, the longer-term impact of the process as a whole gives every indication of being favorable to the Left. Not only are the newly integrated sectors themselves more progressive (as shown, for example, in the steadily widening “gender gap” reflecting women’s more progressive stances on a whole range of issues); they also show signs of being able, under certain conditions, to exert a salutary influence on their white brothers.44 This is where the positive cultural impact of the ’60s movements comes into play. Once people of diverse demographic traits come into non-hierarchical working relationships with one another, the battering already administered to the old stereotypes now makes it possible for them to be swept away entirely. The oppressed have always understood more about the oppressor than vice versa, so when the doubly oppressed finally have occasion to interact with their white brothers as equals (in the workplace and in union-organizing), it is the more oppressed who will have more to teach, and it is their political vision that will more likely illuminate what needs to be done—and will thus equip them to take a leadership role in any political revival.

43  The historic link between periods of reduced immigration and those of increased opportunity for African Americans is pointed out in Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 185. See also Aviva Chomsky, “They Take Our Jobs”: And 20 Other Myths about Immigration, 2nd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018). 44  Tyree Scott, “Black Workers and the Global Economy,” Socialism and Democracy, 12:1/2 (1998), 209.

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4. Social Movements and Grassroots Organizations As established institutions come to be viewed with greater detachment and as their victims advance in self-awareness, one would expect to find stronger radical positions being expressed by the leaders of popular organizations. In practice, however, the link between popular sentiment and its organized expression is not a simple one. Just as the sentiment itself may appear in twisted form, fixing on false targets, so also the instruments set up to defend against the establishment may end up replicating establishment practices—and perpetuating the attitudes that go with them. The recent history of the US labor movement would seem to exemplify such a contradictory scenario. At the base, one finds increasing hardship, insecurity, and discontent. The insecurity, however, cuts both ways. People may no longer have much faith in existing hierarchies, but they are also fearful of anything that might portend too big a shake-up. Innovative steps may be taken but then just as quickly retracted. The drama of the Teamsters, during the 1990s, was both pivotal and typical. It was pivotal because of the leverage exercised by the Teamsters on the AFL-CIO leadership; it was typical in two major respects: (1) in that the Teamsters’ old ruling machine, resurrected by the junior Hoffa, epitomized the distinctively US model of “business unionism” bequeathed by the post-World War II Red Scare; and (2) in the contradictory character—partly grassroots, partly corrupt—of the forces that converged in 1991 to push the old machine temporarily aside. In terms of our present focus, the most significant aspect of this story is the evolution of the grassroots element, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), which, as noted above, was an authentic outgrowth of the 1960s Left. A major outcome of TDU’s patient efforts was the demographic diversification that was beginning to mark the Teamsters’ leadership. This was closely tied to an unprecedented emphasis on empowering the membership—which, together with a sustained educational campaign, was a crucial factor in the Teamsters’ successful conduct of the 1997 UPS strike. The extreme “business unionism” of the old machine was countered by the predominantly rank-and-file orientation of the TDU.  The ill-fated Carey leadership (1991–97), despite the support it received from the TDU, succumbed to a form of electoral fundraising corruption that differs only by degree from what has now become standard in US politics. A similar if less dramatic balance of grassroots and machine-type orientations characterizes the AFL-CIO as a whole. The innovative steps taken

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by the Sweeney administration (1995–2009) are notable. They include (1) a greater emphasis on organizing, (2) a somewhat reduced complicity in US foreign policy, (3) the recruitment of a more progressive contingent of union officials, and (4) an expanding dialogue with progressive intellectuals.45 At the same time, however, official labor rhetoric has preserved the notion of a partnership with capital; the bureaucratic status of top labor leaders has not been scaled back; and a big portion of the workers’ dues continues to support unconditionally the Democratic leadership (which has been deaf to AFL-CIO stands on union-related legislation and trade agreements). The force of such traditional restraints on the AFL-CIO’s militance makes the new steps it took in the 1990s all the more remarkable. The current situation is an unstable one, but it is clear that the political understanding that evolved in the course of the ’60s struggles spread far beyond the constituencies in which it originated.46 Counterposed against the increased polarization and alienation characterizing the larger society, one finds a gradual drawing together of oppositional strands, so that, within the developing Left, what originally seemed like the hermetically separate demands of distinct communities are now becoming more and more interwoven. Dissident labor organizations stress their support for the demands of all oppressed groups. Oppressed racial communities take on ecological issues in the name of environmental justice. Environmental activists (in the Sierra Club) reject an anti-immigrant agenda. The short-­ lived Black Radical Congress, founded in 1998, influentially foregrounded a rejection of sexism and homophobia.47 While many of these interfaces remain conflictive, the very fact that they have become subjects of conscious attention gives a sense of ­heightened urgency to the task of resolving them. Moreover, the struggle is cumulative: each of its sectoral expressions educates those involved toward the need for unification across a bigger canvas. It is now increasingly well understood that such unification cannot be based on the submersion of particular identities, but that it requires instead a kind of 45  Steven Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman (eds.), Audacious Democracy: Labor, Intellectuals, and the Social Reconstruction of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). 46  As of late 2019, it appears that Sara Nelson (International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA) may bring a stance more independent of the Democrats into AFL-CIO leadership. 47  “The Black Radical Congress, 1998,” special issue of The Black Scholar 28:3/4 (Fall/ Winter 1998), 46.

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respectful give-­ and-­ take, grounded in both a radical commitment to human equality and a theoretical awareness of the complex make-up of the working class.48 5. The Impact of Left Political Organizations The increasing dialogue and overlapping among Left constituencies suggests the Left’s growing maturity as a political force. This is in marked contrast to the conspicuous expressions of the years surrounding 1968. And yet, whatever the shortcomings of the ’60s Left, it remains, both in itself and in its progeny, a vital component of whatever new advances the Left might achieve. If the Left of 1968 stands out, it is in part because of the acute emergency (Vietnam) to which it was responding. But it is in part also because many of what later became known as the “new social movements” were then appearing on the political stage for the first time. Each, coming from a condition of previous neglect, was proclaiming its own needs as loudly as possible. Each, by the same token, paid relatively little attention—organizationally—to the larger setting from which it sprang. Perhaps the most surprising fact of all, about the earlier period, is that despite the vast scope of the protests and their considerable impact—both on immediate policies and on longer-term habits of mind—there was nothing in the nature of a single organization to propel them along. The Black Panther Party served briefly as an inspirational force, but it was hardly in a position to exercise structured leadership. Coalitions arose, but only with transitory and narrowly defined objectives. One might even argue, given the usual requirements imposed by political organizations, that if a more disciplined entity had had much of a role, it would have had a stifling effect on the ferment that was then taking place. So much of the enthusiasm that was generated came from the sense of making one’s own discoveries! Still, there is an enormous difference between igniting protests and building a movement that can survive and grow. In terms of movement-building, there were nonetheless some advances in the post-1968 period. Above all, thanks in part to the work of the new

48  See Robin D.G.  Kelley, “Identity Politics and Class Struggle,” New Politics, no. 22 (Winter 1997), and Wallis, Red-Green Revolution, ch. 8 (on intersectionality).

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communist movement,49 unions increasingly reached out to African-­ American, Latino and Asian-American workers. Meanwhile, at the electoral level, there were by the late 1990s several parties with broadly progressive agendas, each filling a distinctive role in terms of constituency, region, and strategy.50 Given the strength of established institutions, all this had little immediate impact, but it was nonetheless a notable step beyond previous levels of independent political organizing. The basis for further advances was laid in the cultural evolution of the working class that we have noted. The electoral expressions to which all this would eventually lead—13 million votes for Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries; seats in Congress won by progressives in 2018—have already elicited high-level alarm-signals about the “dangers” of socialism (as in Trump’s 2019 State of the Union speech). The history of the US Left has been marked by three extraordinary periods of repression: one during and after World War I, the second following World War II, and the third—focusing with particular ferocity on radical Black organizations—beginning in the late 1960s. This cumulative experience, converging with the historic effects of US racism and with a deeply ingrained individualism, has had a disastrous impact on the Left. It goes far toward explaining the movement’s propensity for spontaneism, sectarianism, and fragmentation. The ’60s Left, emerging in the wake of the post-World War II Red Scare, did what it could to break out of this cycle, but its free-wheeling virtues also constituted a weakness—one which could be overcome only gradually. The steps taken in this direction in the 1990s were led largely by people who came to political awareness—in some cases at quite a young age— around 1968. The common legacy they derived from the experience of the ’60s was not an “answer” but rather a disposition to pose questions. People who became radicalized at that time, whatever precise roles they played, could not long remain convinced that the range of practices then being promoted by various sectors of the Left—from mass demonstrations to heavy personal transfigurations—was sufficient (or in some of its aspects even appropriate) to the larger goal of movement-building. This does not 49  See Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (London: Verso, 2002), and Dan Berger, ed., The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010). 50  See David Reynolds, Democracy Unbound: Progressive Challenges to the Two-Party System (Boston: South End Press, 1997).

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mean that the activities were not needed at the time; it just means that any further steps would require—because of the historic ruptures imposed by repression—breaking new ground, that is, finding new ways to organize for the long haul. The necessary framework for such organizing has been evolving gradually since the 1980s.51 While it remains true that most people in the US are not easily reached by organs of Left opinion, it is also the case that the Left’s networks have spread out far enough and deeply enough to give them a role in shaping popular response to major issues of the moment. Examples include: (1) building broad opposition to US Contra-aid programs in the 1980s; (2) mobilizing quickly against the Gulf War in 1990–91; (3) informing a wide audience, in 1998, of the secret OECD negotiations in Paris for a Multilateral Agreement on Investment, leading to an embarrassed suspension of that project; (4) continuously exposing the anti-working-class impact of corporate globablization, beginning with the 1999 actions in Seattle against the World Trade Organization; (5) mounting massive protests in early 2003 against the impending US invasion of Iraq; (6) seizing the initiative on human rights, as in the exposure (later taken up by Amnesty International) of abuses in the US criminal justice system; (7) extending the Left’s presence in multiple dimensions after Trump’s 2016 victory; and, more generally, (8) providing a continuous stream of information and analysis to activists working with mass constituencies on specific issues. With so wide-ranging an informational infrastructure, the Left’s incipient political organizations do not need to rely just on their own resources to create an informed constituency. The ruling class, needless to say, will continue its practice of trying to marginalize any political education efforts by smothering them in a blitz of privatizations, media-orchestrated diversions, and repressive measures. But it will not be able to hide the effects of the misery, the alienation, and the ecological destruction its policies are imposing. As awareness of all this spreads, so will the demand for explanations—for an understanding that will constitute a springboard to action. The answer to our initial question might therefore be put in these terms: The surrounding conditions propitious to a Left revival have advanced, but not yet to the point of producing a cohesive political force. Such a climactic development will require a conscious process of unifica51  For an overview, see Bhaskar Sunkara, The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality (London: Verso, 2019), ch. 8.

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tion among diverse movements. In order for this process to be successful, the moment must be right, which means that all the component strands of activism must have come to recognize the interests they have in common. Are we now approaching such a conjuncture? Either the necessary steps will soon be taken, or the opportunity to take them will be buried in the crush of environmental breakdown, repression, and war.

CHAPTER 10

From Black Liberation to Mass Incarceration: A Documentary Journey

The Black Panther Party Revisited The Black Panther Party, despite its short life-span, has much to tell us about the conditions for a revolutionary politics in the United States. Brought to prominence by direct confrontations with police in Oakland, California (in 1966), but inspired from the outset by a larger vision, the BPP quickly built up a wide following. In so doing, however, it set off the loudest possible alarm signals in the nation’s power-centers. The result was an official repressive campaign of unprecedented ferocity, which destroyed the party within a few years and inflicted a long-term setback not just on its own constituency but on the whole of the US Left. In seeking to recover the Panther legacy, there is no better place to start than with Lee Lew-Lee’s remarkable two-hour documentary All Power to the People: The Black Panther Party and Beyond. Made in the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising (which Lew-Lee witnessed as a cameraman for Network news), the film maintains a good balance between historical framing, first-hand narrative by Panther veterans (with an American Indian Movement subtext), and commentary on repression featuring prominent FBI- and CIA-whistleblowers. These qualities earned the film prime-time TV exposure abroad as well as numerous awards at home. Characteristically, however, the US media oligarchy kept it off the air where it mattered most. What the Networks feared about the film differs little from what the government had feared about its protagonists a generation earlier. It’s not that the information in the film was new, but the film brings it to life, © The Author(s) 2020 V. Wallis, Socialist Practice, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35066-6_10

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compresses it, and makes it accessible to people at every level of familiarity with the issues raised. The film is clearly sympathetic to the Panthers (Lew-­ Lee was himself a former Panther), but what is more important is that it provides a major part of the framework needed in order to understand the party’s vulnerability. This is a necessary step in defining the Panthers’ legacy, and it makes the subsequent steps a bit easier. Why is such a process of definition important—and a matter of legitimate concern—to those who, like myself, are not a part of the Panther constituency? My own view is, in the first place, that the overriding issue is how to build an authentic popular movement, and that the only viable approach to the necessary diversity of such a movement is the old slogan “All for one, and one for all!” The “one” originally meant any individual, but it can just as easily be a constituency defined by any particular form of oppression; the slogan itself, in turn, is one of reciprocal support rather than of domination or control. Secondly, in the specific setting of a country in which the working class has been racially divided, it is clear that no popular movement can make headway—against the priorities of capital and on behalf of real human needs—unless it is resolutely multiracial. Third, the Panthers themselves had a distinctive importance in this regard, not only because of their strong roots in their own community, but also because of their consistent advocacy of collaboration across racial lines. Although Lew-Lee’s film skirts the ideological debates on such matters, it dramatizes the moral force of a unified response to injustice, suggesting at the same time that it was this very prospect which most alarmed the defenders of privilege. Malcolm X is thus shown, in the sequence preceding his assassination (1965), concluding a public lecture with the words, “I, for one, will join in with anyone, I don’t care what color you are, as long as you want to change this miserable condition.” Gunshots are then heard before the scene shifts, after which we hear commentaries (from former political prisoner Herman Ferguson and CIA whistleblower Philip Agee) suggesting a link between Malcolm’s death and US counterintelligence. Martin Luther King’s death, just three years later, appears in a similar context, despite the different path by which King arrived at his “dangerous” posture. He is shown denouncing the Vietnam war and, in a TV soundbite, affirming the need for a “revolution of values” while giving unexpected vibrancy to John F. Kennedy’s dictum about peaceful and violent revolution (viz., that those who make the former impossible make the latter “inevitable”). Commentaries on King’s death (most notably, that of

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ex-FBI agent Wesley Swearingen) do not even mention the alleged hit-­ man but instead focus squarely on J. Edgar Hoover’s longstanding vendetta against King.1 Former BPP Chairman Bobby Seale, earlier in the film, cited Malcolm X, with his call for “not Integration but Freedom,” as the party’s major precursor. Just as Malcolm’s message, however, was more universal than was acknowledged by his detractors, so King’s was more radical than portrayed by those who oversaw his posthumous sanctification. Although the two leaders never linked up organizationally, they nonetheless became the twin targets of official repression. This very fact constitutes an important backdrop to the campaign against the Panthers. While official rationalizations for the campaign stressed the Panthers’ armed challenges to police authority, the disruption of the party left no dimension of its work untouched. Even the program of free breakfasts for school children came under attack, as the FBI pressured churches to deny it space.2 In the film, the repression is omnipresent, reaching a climax in the carefully planned assassination (in 1969) of Chicago BPP leader Fred Hampton. Hampton, at 21, was already a particularly vital player in the larger movement, in view of his unique role in politicizing neighborhood gangs and in building multiracial alliances. Kathleen Cleaver, in an interview, cites him as the originator of the Rainbow Coalition that would later be taken up first in Boston (around Mel King) and then nationally (around Jesse Jackson). Hampton had a distinctive ability to articulate theory and strategy in popular language;3 he is here shown, at an outdoor rally, speaking words that define his mission as one of revolutionary scope: “Racism is an excuse used for capitalism.” Both the details of Hampton’s murder and the larger pattern of COINTELPRO repression have already been extensively documented.4 The film can offer only the most fleeting glimpses of the relevant paper 1  On the role of US government agencies in the King assassination, see William F. Pepper, The Plot to Kill King (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016). 2  Winston A.  Grady-Willis, “The Black Panther Party: State Repression and Political Prisoners,” in Charles E.  Jones, ed., The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered] (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998), 374. 3  See for example Hampton’s 27 April 1969 speech, in Philip S.  Foner, ed., The Black Panthers Speak (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995 [1970]), 138–144. 4  See Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1988). Both authors are interviewed in Lew-Lee’s film.

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trail, but it provides stark testimony from Panther activists (including, among others, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and George Edwards) about the suspicions, splits, frame-ups, and killings that were thus orchestrated. The general pattern of police harassment is unremitting, and many of the charges were made to stick, mostly on the basis of fabricated evidence and many resulting in long prison sentences (invariably longer than for “non-political” defendants convicted of similar offenses). For authoritative information on this type of practice, however, the written word is a more useful medium than film.5 Of singular interest in Lew-Lee’s film, nonetheless, are comments from George Edwards, citing the opinion of ex-CIA officer John Stockwell to the effect that BPP co-founder Huey Newton was, possibly as early as 1971, subject to manipulation by CIA-type “psychological operations.” Apart from additional references to high-handedness and drug-­ involvement on Newton’s part, we also see some particularly telling shots of a rather dazed-looking Newton—hands quivering, eyes glistening, and with a continuous smile—saying that “the people are not interested in socialism at this time” (around 1974) but that if they were ever to express such an interest “democratically,” the Panthers would be the first to support them. From its specific focus on the destruction of the Panthers, the film turns to a wider look at the government’s repressive mechanisms and activities, encompassing the assault on the American Indian Movement (AIM), the development of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the onset of the “drug war.” The campaign against AIM parallels the one against the Panthers; the fraudulent conviction of Leonard Peltier,6 here criticized by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, is among its offshoots. FEMA, with its concentration camps, and the drug war, are touched on only briefly. We get a flashed page of Gary Webb’s investigative series on the Los Angeles drug market, while Philip Agee comments on federal complicity in a process that led, as he puts it, to the depoliticization of “a whole generation of young black males.”7 5  See Grady-Willis, “The Black Panther Party: State Repression and Political Prisoners”; also Churchill and Vander Wall, eds., Cages of Steel: The Politics of Imprisonment in the United States (Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press, 1992). 6  See Jim Vander Wall, “A Warrior Caged: The Continuing Struggle of Leonard Peltier,” in Cages of Steel, 244–69. 7  The CIA’s long-delayed acknowledgment of its role in this process was reported in the New York Times, 17 July 1998, A1. For background, see Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press (London: Verso: 1998).

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Following a brief tribute, in the form of a photo-gallery, to current US political prisoners and prisoners of war, the film’s leading interviewees and its director invite us to reflection. This would ideally be the conversation of a live audience, but the issues I would pose for discussion are these: (1) are there any important dimensions of the story that are missing from the film? (2) is there anything about the Panthers’ own origins and/or conduct that might have facilitated the government’s repressive agenda? (3) which ideas and practices of the Panthers remain of permanent value? As to missing dimensions, I think first of language. The popular Panther rhetoric of the period is gone, not only from the retrospective interviews but even from most of the archival selections. “Pig” appears in passing only once, although it is a concept that was so widely used that both Huey Newton and Bobby Seale gave public rationales for it at the time.8 Language that was strong to some but offensive to many was, for better or worse, endemic. Newton wrote at one point, “We had all sorts of profanity in our paper and every other word which dropped from our lips was profane.”9 A second missing dimension is the prison struggles. There is no mention, for example, of George Jackson, a Field Marshal of the BPP, whose prison writings made him one of the best-known revolutionaries of that period. Thirdly, no attention is given to ideological differences between the Panthers and other sectors of the Black Liberation movement. The upshot of these omissions is to make the Panthers appear somewhat less controversial than they were in their own time. Insofar as this film is meant to be introductory in character, the effect may be intended and may even be justified. But it does not absolve us from having to take the next steps. In fact, a greater awareness of the problematic dimensions of the Panthers may eventually give us a fuller appreciation of their qualities. The Panthers’ vulnerability is a huge topic, and I cannot hope to do it justice here. In some ways, much like the larger Left movement which they helped shape, the Panthers came on the scene in response to an emergency. Although Malcolm X had sounded the tocsin, the urban black populations were still largely without any grassroots political expression. The Panthers were the first to respond at a level that began to address the real problems. Should they be blamed for not coming into being with a fully 8 9

 The Black Panthers Speak, 61, 82.  Ibid., 277.

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developed democratic organization? At any event, their language reflected a certain bravado and masculinism—sometimes spilling over into an easy acceptance of violence—which undoubtedly made disruption somewhat easier than it might otherwise have been.10 Another expression of the same problem, discernible in the film though not emphasized by it, is the way in which Seale, even while criticizing Newton’s power-plays, nonetheless describes all the countermeasures in terms of his own personal actions. The larger vulnerability reflected in all this has everything to do with the Panthers’ meteoric rise to prominence, in an implacably hostile official environment. The BPP was hastily grafted onto the chaotic conditions of an oppressed community. Party and community alike were affected, moreover, by the highly competitive, super-individualistic ethos of the dominant culture. Although many of the party’s cadre were well aware of this problem, and fought persistently against its effects, the organization as a whole, once it had attained the national spotlight, was never granted a moment’s respite to recover its balance. Battered relentlessly by every state institution, the Panthers spent much of their energy in futile conflicts far removed from the implementation of their political program. This could not but have a disorienting effect, with sometimes tragic results.11 But whatever the Panthers’ weaknesses or failings, they left an enduring positive legacy. This is seen most clearly in the steps they took to organize and educate their communities. They popularized the demand for community control of police and drew similarly wide support for their free breakfast program. In addition, they established free clinics and encouraged independent popular education. Beyond all this, as an autonomous grassroots organization, they never had any fear of being “controlled, or partly controlled, by whites,” and thus were able, as Eldridge Cleaver put it, “to sit down with whites and hammer out solutions to our common problems without trembling in our boots about whether or not we might

10  Chris Booker, “Lumpenization: A Critical Error of the Black Panther Party,” in Jones, The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered]. 11  Right-wing and mainstream critics, following the lead of David Horowitz, have built up a cottage industry of decontextualized horror stories about certain Panthers or former Panthers. I would not wish to question the severity of some of the cases they describe, but I do question the critics’ sense of proportion. They routinely disregard, on the one hand, the many ways in which state repression set the tone for people’s interaction and, on the other, the numerous examples of BPP members who, despite enormous imposed hardships (especially in prison), have maintained their integrity.

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get taken over in the process.”12 The resulting openness allowed the Panthers to keep their focus on capitalism as the people’s principal enemy. The underlying insight, the metaphoric violence, and the closeness to the people are fused in Fred Hampton’s extraordinary spoken parable of political education: [T]heory’s cool, but theory with no practice ain’t shit…. What are we doing? The Breakfast for Children program. We are running it in a socialistic manner…. People are gonna take our program and tell us to go on to a higher level…. What’d the pig say? He say, “Nigger—you like communism?” “No sir, I’m scared of it.” “You like socialism?” “No sir, I’m scared of it.” “You like the breakfast for children program?” “Yes sir, I’d die for it.” Pig said, “Nigger, that program is a socialistic program.” “I don’t give a fuck if it’s Communism. You put your hands on that program motherfucker and I’ll blow your motherfucking brains out.”13

The Carceral State and Surplus Punishment The heyday of the Black Panther Party corresponded to the apogee of the revolutionary surge of the 1960s. The BPP was at the center of that historical moment. It fed into and was in turn fed by a widespread popular culture that rejected all the trappings of capitalist domination. The extraordinary threat that this culture posed, in the eyes of the ruling class, would require an all-out response. That response, in order to be effective, could not limit itself to immediate repressive steps; it would have to reshape the entire social and political environment out of which any possible future movement for Black Liberation could grow. It was this agenda of preempting a new upsurge that gave rise, beginning in the 1970s, to the distinctive American institution of mass incarceration. The documentary film 13th offers a powerful introduction to this phenomenon. Director Ava DuVernay’s explicit intent was to explore and bring critical attention to the Prison Industrial Complex.14 The film’s title refers to the 1865 amendment to the US constitution, according to which slavery was abolished “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” The story told by 13th thus goes back to 12  Eldridge Cleaver, “An Open Letter to Stokely Carmichael,” in The Black Panthers Speak, 105. 13  The Black Panthers Speak, 139. 14  She says this to Oprah Winfrey in an interview that accompanies the film.

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the early chain-gangs of black prisoners—men arrested for petty offenses under the post-Civil War Black Codes who were then contracted out to perform labor that they had previously performed as privately owned slaves. Now they were under state control, but they still worked for no pay and under the continuing threat of draconian punishment. Images of nineteenth-century chain-gangs appear at both the beginning and the end of the film. In between, we are presented with archival clips and commentary reflecting the history of black oppression in the United States from the time of the 13th amendment right up to the present. What the film most directly brings out is the deadly continuity of the oppressive practices—ranging from disenfranchisement to lynchings to police attacks—across superficially distinct historical periods. What it encourages us to reflect on, beyond this, is the degree to which the structures of oppression have effects that go far beyond their immediate victims. This global impact of the Prison Industrial Complex is suggested in the clip that we see from a 1980 speech by right-wing strategist Paul Weyrich, where he articulates in six words what has remained to this day a central though rarely acknowledged tactic of the system of domination: “I don’t want everybody to vote.”15 13th is certainly a film that everyone should see—especially that whole vast sector of the US population which, whether through prejudice or inertia or media-fostered ignorance, self-righteously refuses to look at anything that might dislodge its fiercely worn ideological blinders. With racist assertions no longer officially acceptable in the US, we all need to be reminded—as we are by 13th—of the ways in which racist practice continues to permeate political life. An especially effective passage in the film is where it cuts back and forth between scenes of aggression at a 2016 Trump campaign rally—stoked by the future president himself—and scenes from the 1950s of violence inflicted by police and vigilantes against black people. The whole history persuasively frames the present-day embodiment of the US’s “peculiar institution” of mass incarceration, which entombs 1 in 3 black men at some point in their lives.16 Ironically, however, what the 15  The racial dimension of voter-suppression is expertly illuminated by journalist Greg Palast. See his 2016 book and dvd, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. http://www.gregpalast.com/. 16  Report of The Sentencing Project to the United Nations Human Rights Committee Regarding Racial Disparities in the United States Criminal Justice System, August 2013

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film does not take up at all is the literal perpetuation of slavery in today’s prison system. In fact, the demand to repeal the 13th amendment’s “exception clause”—to amend the amendment—is at the core of a current nationwide movement of prisoners against being forced to work for next to nothing or, in some of the southern states, nothing at all.17 Also not highlighted in the film is the systematic application of surplus punishment, including physical abuse, medical neglect, and psychological torture. Although we are shown the horrendous treatment of Kalief Browder—a youth who was falsely charged and never tried—on NYC’s Rikers Island, we are not told about the nationwide web of “supermax” facilities, or about the widespread use of sensory deprivation and prolonged solitary confinement. The single word that summarizes the film’s narrative is criminalization. Criminalization serves to confer legitimacy on all the inequities and indignities that the system perpetrates on people of color. The practices are then rationalized as being aimed not against a particular ethnicity but rather against a category of persons—implicitly unworthy—who have rejected the norms of civilized society. The suffering endured by such “criminals” is presumed to flow directly from their own misdeeds, and therefore not to merit any concern on the part of “law-abiding” citizens. The stereotyping of prisoners as criminals—or “offenders,” in the official lingo—makes it possible for much of the public to unthinkingly accept the preposterous idea that, within the space of a generation, there could have occurred a sudden quintupling of an identifiable character-type within a given society—to wit, a surge of “criminals” in the United States that suddenly arose starting in the mid-1970s. In fact, the ballooning of the US prison population reflects key measures taken by the government to address a systemic crisis. Political protest was at a peak in 1969 when Richard Nixon became president. The Black Panther Party was rapidly expanding, and was tagged by the FBI as the “greatest threat to national security.” Eager to suppress the black revolt but no longer able to target people on the basis of “race,” Nixon instead invoked the specter of crime. State agencies, acting either (http://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Race-and-Justice-ShadowReport-ICCPR.pdf), 1. 17  Abolition of prison-slavery was a central demand of the “millions4prisoners” march of August 19, 2017 and of a work stoppage at a number of prisons around the country in August/September 2018.

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directly or through surrogates, could assassinate the most inspirational black leaders (Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Fred Hampton), and could frame and lock up many others, but this was not enough to assure pacification of their popular base. Here is where the “war on drugs” came in. It subjected street-transactions to the same level of surveillance and manipulation as had previously been deployed against revolutionary organizations like the BPP.18 Legislation passed under Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton lengthened sentences for even minor drug-related offenses, and also made it harder for criminal defendants to appeal from state to federal courts. At the same time, the lure of the illegal drug trade was augmented as neoliberal economic policies—including corporate globalization, deindustrialization, and the attack on welfare—cut into working-class job-opportunities and incomes. From the standpoint of capital’s need for a labor force, there were more hands available than necessary. Welfare had to be undercut because it made the unemployed less vulnerable. With well-paying jobs gone, with welfare gutted, and with the resultant volatile populations, a higher level of control was seen as necessary. Hence the disproportionate presence of police in poor neighborhoods, especially those whose inhabitants share a common culture and therefore a potential for collective resistance. Hence also the over-representation of those communities in the prisons, whose primary function is to warehouse what from a capitalist perspective is surplus population. In this general structure of control, prisons stand at the apex. The “offender” label is thrown into question, however, by the overwhelming preponderance of plea-bargaining—as opposed to conviction at trial—in determining prison sentences. Bronx Democrat Charles Rangel, interviewed in 13th, says that plea bargains determine the outcome in 97 ­percent of criminal cases. This refers to the federal level, but state practices run in the same range.19 Yet even a relatively short prison term amounts to 18  Michelle Alexander, who is extensively interviewed in 13th, describes how Nixon hatched the war on drugs, in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2012), 40ff. The political agenda underlying the drug war is discussed in The Roots of Mass Incarceration: Locking up Black Dissidents and Punishing the Poor, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Johanna Fernández, eds., special issue of Socialism and Democracy, 28:3 (November 2014). 19  Jed S.  Rakoff, “Why Innocent People Plead Guilty,” New York Review of Books, November 20, 2014, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocentpeople-plead-guilty/.

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many more years of punishment. This is because of laws—or policies of private corporate entities—that are unrelated to the legal sentence for a given offense. Ex-prisoners are thus subject to being denied employment opportunities, student loans, food stamps, access to public housing, and, crucially, the right to vote. Many of these hardships vary by state or locality, but the disenfranchisement is estimated to extend nationally to about six million potential voters, overwhelmingly people of color. This aspect of surplus punishment is noted in 13th. Another aspect that should not be forgotten is the impact on prisoners’ households, whose members are also punished both materially and psychologically by the incarceration of their loved ones. But the most glaring expression of surplus punishment is the abuse of the prisoners themselves. Of course, the incidence and the severity of such abuse varies by state, by institution, and with immediate contingencies. But there is an enabling ideology and a corresponding staff-culture which gives rise to common and widespread practices. There is moreover a continuum between these practices and the harder-to-conceal practices of the police, operating in neighborhoods whose populations they seek to keep in line. Guards and police are alike in functioning as occupation forces, and have no accountability to those whose lives they oversee. Where stop-and-frisk laws are in effect, police have the same arbitrary power as prison guards. But even without such laws, there are countless petty rules that can serve as pretexts for detaining someone, and once the detention has been made, the cop is in control, and for a person of color to challenge that control is to run a mortal risk.20 The point here is that the very mindset that gives police the license to kill gratuitously—that is, even when they are clearly in no danger—also tells prison officials that they are entitled to inflict both physical and psychological torture on the people in their custody. At the higher levels of power, this is rationalized in terms of what is allegedly required for the sake of maintaining order; at the lower levels of implementation, that is, in the conduct of prison guards, it takes the more direct form of finding ­satisfaction in subjugating and humiliating those over whom they have been given total control.21 20  Steve Martinot, “Probing the Epidemic of Police Murders,” Socialism and Democracy, 27:1 (March 2013). 21  See Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, “The Abuse Goes On: The Corrupting Dynamics of Power in a Texas Prison” (2017), http://rashidmod.com/?p=2374. Regarding the assumption that extreme methods must be used to maintain order, there is an extraordinary memoir

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Accounts of such behavior occasionally penetrate media indifference, as in the case of a mentally ill prisoner in Florida who in 2012 was scalded to death—locked for two hours in a steaming shower by guards who then ignored his cries.22 Cases of beatings, of deliberate medical neglect, and of destruction of prisoners’ property—in various states—are too numerous to itemize.23 Equally widespread is the practice of long-term solitary confinement, imposed especially on organizers. Forty-four states have supermax prisons, in which solitary confinement is the norm.24 New repressive practices are continuously introduced. Although they are not all equally severe, they point in a consistent direction. In one New York State prison, an additional wall was put up, a few years ago, just outside the window of the visiting room, exclusively in order to block one’s view of the hills in the distance. In Virginia, the visiting system was reorganized in 2014 so that you are no longer put on a visiting list by each prisoner you might visit, but you instead have to apply for visiting status on the system-wide website, which, except in the case of family-members, only allows you to visit one prisoner in the state. In many local jails, it is now becoming common to allow visits only via video—an arrangement that institutions find attractive because it saves staff time while also providing, like the notorious prison-phone system, an opportunity to extort payment from visitors (most of whom, like their brothers and sisters behind the walls, come from poverty).25 Common to all such steps is the further isolation of prisoners from normal life, whether in the form of contact with family and friends or in the form simply of visual variety in one’s surroundings.

from a 1971–72 Massachusetts experience that shows exactly the opposite: Jamie Bissonette et al., When the Prisoners Ran Walpole (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2008). 22  Report in Miami Herald, June 25, 2014, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ community/miami-dade/article1972693.html. 23  For reports by Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, see http://rashidmod.com/?page_id=166. For reports by Keith “Malik” Washington, a leader of the anti-slavery drive, see http://sfbayview.com/?s=keith+malik+washington. 24  Albert Woodfox, released in 2016 from Angola Prison in Louisiana, had been held in solitary for 43+ years. Kevin “Rashid” Johnson has been in solitary, in five different state systems, for most of his nearly 30 years of incarceration. For a brief overview of the practice, which routinely victimizes over 80,000 prisoners in the US, see http://solitarywatch.com/ facts/faq/. 25  National Public Radio report (2016), http://www.npr.org/2016/12/05/504458311/ video-calls-replace-in-person-visits-in-some-jails.

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While the topic of mass incarceration is ably introduced by 13th, we begin to see the full impact of the phenomenon only when we recognize that the people it ensnares are not just locked up for a certain period of time; they are continuously subjected to additional punishment, which not only makes their confinement more painful, but also extends itself, for those who are fortunate enough to be released, far into the rest of their lives. Behind this whole constellation of practices lies a self-perpetuating culture of mistrust. The culture in question is not, of course, embraced by everyone, but it is reinforced at the highest levels. It is integrally tied to the extreme social inequality that has arisen in the US. And it is expressed on the global stage by the argument that in order for “us”—a deliberately unspecified entity—to be secure in the world, “we” must have a bigger arsenal of weapons than all the other military powers combined. This perversion of the concept of security—lumping popular needs with capitalist interests—appears consistently whether we’re examining the worldwide network of US military bases or the domestic mechanisms through which the potentially most rebellious sectors of the population are kept under control. The priority given to exercising control reflects an underlying antagonism of interests. The overgrowth of the US penal system, in turn, reflects the failure of the country’s “democratic” structures to restrain even the most draconian of ruling-class impositions. The resulting prison climate of suspicion, tension, and periodic outbursts should be assessed in the light of an alternative model. The segment on Norwegian prisons in Michael Moore’s 2015 documentary, Where to Invade Next, offers both the evidence and the argument for an approach which says that confinement is punishment enough, and that beyond that, the focus can be on rehabilitation. To anyone who thinks that this approach is unrealistic, the only possible reply is: this shows how deeply the culture of domination has entrenched itself in our society.

CHAPTER 11

Revolution and Counterrevolution in Latin America: The Filmed Experience

Three noteworthy films take us from the Cuban Revolution of the late 1950s up to the Chilean project of peaceful revolution and its violent overthrow by the Pinochet coup of 1973. In between these two moments came the failed attempts, in indigenous-majority countries of South America, to replicate the successful Cuban model of guerrilla warfare. Ernesto “Che” Guevara, together with Fidel Castro, led the Cuban guerrilla army to its 1959 triumph; eight years later, seeking to spark a continent-­wide revolution, Che and a small band of local recruits were isolated—and he himself captured and put to death—in the lowlands of Bolivia. The two-part film Che (2008), directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benicio del Toro, re-enacts the respective trajectories of victory and defeat. We look first, though, at a more generic depiction of guerrilla struggle, in Jorge Sanjinés’s fictional drama, The Principal Enemy (1971), loosely based on Peruvian experience of the mid-1960s. Finally, for the Chilean attempt at a “legal road to socialism,” we turn to the unique documentary tapestry of its last months, Patricio Guzmán’s three-part film The Battle of Chile (1975–79).

The Principal Enemy For guerrilla warfare to be successful, the fighters must be supported by the masses of the people. The same rule applies to a film about guerrilla warfare or, in fact, about mass political struggle of any kind: The ­constituent © The Author(s) 2020 V. Wallis, Socialist Practice, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35066-6_11

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population must enter the film directly. It cannot be replaced by professional actors, however skillful. Only on the basis of such popular participation will the film have an impact on its most important audience, namely, people like the ones that it is about. In an immediate sense, the impact will come simply from the viewers’ identifying with those who appear on the screen. More important, however, is the underlying process which made such a screen appearance possible. This is where the politics of revolutionary filmmaking comes in. Its basic principle is that a director learns how to reach the people only by going through the process of enlisting their collaboration. The filmmakers are themselves a band of guerrillas, with their special equipment and often with their strange language. The burden is upon them to persuade the entire community that they are on its side. The Principal Enemy is a product of this type of work.1 It is a people’s film in the fullest sense. Its title refers to US imperialism; its main protagonists are the inhabitants of an Indian village in the mountains of Peru. The credits, placed at the end, do not specify whatever division of functions might have existed between director, performers, and technical workers. Some 15 names are given, with that of Sanjinés distinguished only by being at the head of the list. The villagers of Rajchi are gratefully mentioned. And a final note indicates that the film is intended as an instrument of struggle, addressed above all to the peasants of Latin America. The main language of the film is Quechua. The events, drawn from actual Peruvian experience,2 are introduced by a veteran Indian peasant-­organizer who serves as narrator. The story is a straightforward one of traditional injustice, a revolutionary response, and official repression. It begins with the peasant Julián Huamantica having lost his only bull. He suspects the landlord Carilles of having stolen it. Accompanied by his family, he goes to confront Carilles, whose insults provoke him into a direct accusation. Carilles and his henchman respond by killing Huamantica and beheading him. When Huamantica’s fellow peasants learn of this act, they proceed en masse to capture Carilles. A majority then votes not to kill the landlord but to bring 1  See the interview with its director, Jorge Sanjinés, Cahiers du cinema, No. 253 (Oct.– Nov., 1974). 2  For the historical episode on which the plot of The Principal Enemy was based, see Héctor Béjar, Peru 1965: Notes on a Guerrilla Experience (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), 93–101.

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him before the local judge for trial. The judge, after getting the police to release Carilles from the peasants, takes their depositions—not only about the murder but also about some of Carilles’s earlier acts against them— and promises to draw up a report for “the authorities.” The peasants then go home. When the selected witnesses are called back “to testify,” they are arrested on trumped-up charges and imprisoned for terms up to four years. Some of the peasants now speak of rising in revolt, but they have no specific plans. At this point, the narrator introduces us to a band of a dozen or so guerrilla fighters, coming to “bring justice.” They gradually win the confidence of the peasants by placing their skills at the people’s disposal and by sharing even in some of the heavier agricultural work. They are soon in a position to talk explicitly about revolution. The peasants are receptive, and they ask for the guerrillas’ help in dealing with Carilles. The guerrillas manage to capture Carilles and his servant. This time, a People’s Court is established. An immediate trial is held, with mass participation, and the two are condemned to death and executed. A celebration is then held. The guerrillas tell the peasants that the land held by Carilles, which had been stolen from their ancestors, now once again belongs to them. As for themselves, however, they say that the time has now come for them to leave in order to fight elsewhere. They invite any of the peasants to join them. After much deliberation, only three end up doing so. The others stay back, not for lack of sympathy but simply because of heavy responsibilities. They express their support with gifts of food and clothing. The scene now shifts to the forces of counterrevolution. A small detachment of government soldiers, posing as part of the guerrilla band, learns the whereabouts of the guerrillas. Back at Headquarters, we see a US colonel directing the counterinsurgency operation. In two final scenes, we are shown, first, troops terrorizing the almost defenseless peasants, and then, on different terrain, a shootout between government troops and the guerrillas. The shootout produces heavy casualties on both sides, but ends with the troops fleeing while napalm-induced flames rise in the background. The film ends as it began, with the old narrator. He expresses confidence that despite all losses, the peasants will eventually gain their liberation, for they are the majority. The one hint at an appraisal of their immediate experience came earlier, just after the villagers’ farewell to the guerrillas. At that point, he said that if only the revolutionaries had not departed, “we might have organized and done better.”

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Expressed in passing rather than in conclusion, this hint of criticism, however unmistakable, is extremely gentle—perhaps more so, even, than Régis Debray’s book-length critique of Che,3 which Debray embarked upon only reluctantly and which he concludes by saying, “Che seems to survive his last venture better every day, seeming somehow bigger than his own frustrated plans even though it was the whole of himself that he put into them.” Likewise in The Principal Enemy. The guerrillas emerge in a strongly positive light, not only in terms of their moral qualities, but also—in contrast to Che’s band—in terms of their success in winning the peasants’ trust. To some extent, this reflects the actual experience of Peru, where the various revolutionary groups of the early 1960s gained a much firmer popular foothold than Che was to get in Bolivia. But still they eventually met defeat, and the film has to reflect this. Under such conditions, we may well see the film’s main purpose as being that of building in its peasant-­audience so strong an awareness of the need for revolution that even scenes of the most horrendous repression—peasants dragged from their fields and pushed off a cliff—will not be able to shake it. To the degree that this is accomplished, the question of pinpointing the specifics of the defeat becomes secondary. It is enough for the film to show that the question must be raised. So far as an answer is concerned, it confines itself to the most general level. On the one hand, the plot shows the role of a “principal enemy” who is beyond the reach of any single community. On the other, it indicates at least one key juncture at which things might have been done differently. Conceivably, there are any number of additional issues that the film might have focused upon but did not. It showed no discussion within the guerrilla band. It said nothing about the balance of forces in the region as a whole. And, despite the heavy consequences which flowed from Carilles’s execution, the film suggested no other way in which he might have been dealt with. But are these omissions to be regarded as a drawback? I think not. I say this not because I consider such questions unimportant (which I do not). Rather I feel that they would naturally be raised in any case by an audience of potential participants. We must recognize the film’s role as being that of a catalyst, not a compendium; a stimulus to action rather than a critical treatise. No film about an ongoing process can give us “the last word” on political strategy. In the end, this can only be provided by a triumphant 3

 Régis Debray, Che’s Guerrilla War (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1975).

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outcome; and the details of the answer—as of the questions—will be different for each particular regional or national setting. A major filmic dramatization must be suitable for many settings. It can more easily be dispensed with for the strategic discussions than it can for overcoming the initial hurdle of revolutionary work, that is, to penetrate the apathy and the resignation that flow from centuries of powerlessness. In this sense, a film such as The Principal Enemy will fulfill its revolutionary purpose to the extent that it encourages peasants to take their first step—with eyes open to the dangers, but above all in the conviction that society leaves them no other recourse. In every respect, the full impact of this film presupposes the social viewing situation for which it was intended. The principal enemy (imperialism) has its principal challenger, which is not the atomized consumer of exotic experiences, but rather the peasant collective symbolized by the village of Rajchi. It is this collective which has lived the injustices shown and which therefore recognizes that the depictions are not exaggerated. It is this collective which, hampered by isolation and illiteracy, can accept an elementary discourse on imperialism as new insight rather than as stale propaganda. As the peasant-audience responds to both the dramatization and the “lesson,” the already present collective consciousness of that audience will reinforce the film’s call to action by multiplying the film’s impact upon each individual consciousness. At the same time, as a cohesive audience is subjected to an unusual stimulus, the film inevitably generates discussion. What might be viewed as omissions, then, if we were to consider the film in isolation, will be amply filled in the wake of its actual projection. The dynamic by which this is accomplished will be a direct continuation of the social process through which the film was made. This social or collective dimension, both in the creation of a film and in its reception, is what is characteristically blocked at both ends by the capitalist marketplace and consequently ignored in bourgeois criticism. And yet it is precisely the dimension that we need to build upon here in the Global North, even though our communities might be more elusive than those of the Andes. We need to do this if we are ever to achieve a film culture which can truly educate its audience rather than merely reinforcing a habit of passive—even when shattering—consumption. In this respect, we have much to learn from the Latin American film art represented by Sanjinés. And to the extent that there has been—already discernible in the 1970s—a growing “Latin Americanization of the United

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States,”4 there may be more of a potential public for such work than we might have suspected.

Che: Part I and Part II Seeing Che and then reading about it prompts reflections on the larger political project that inspired its protagonist. One wonders to what extent the scope and thrust of that project—socialist revolution in Cuba and beyond—can be conveyed to audiences of a new generation through a focus on that particular individual. The reviews of Che are politically predictable. Commentators who parrot the dismissive labeling of Cuba’s revolutionary regime as a totalitarian dictatorship are scornful of the film—their hostility only magnified by its length. They cannot get beyond noting that Guevara ordered executions of Batista henchmen in the aftermath of the 1959 victory. Any notion of situating those decisions in relation to the prior regime’s conduct—and the intense mass repudiation it aroused—would no doubt be viewed by them as mere apologetics. They reject the revolution on principle (just as US officialdom after 1979 denounced the Nicaraguan revolution even though it abolished the death penalty), and no film that gives a respectful treatment to one of its leaders can be expected to change their minds. What gives Che Guevara an appeal that eludes such gatekeepers is his unique trajectory from the perils of guerrilla warfare to a position of power and renown, and then back again to clandestinity, danger, and eventual capture and assassination. The two phases of this trajectory—shown respectively in Parts I and II of the present film—are inseparable in defining who Che was. Revolutionary leaders in power, no matter how faithful to the ideals that inspired them, are always vulnerable to the charge that they value their position of authority more than they do their original commitment to social justice. Che’s withdrawal from state functions was the most conclusive proof that no such accusation could be leveled at him. It was at the same time a tribute to the larger vision that enabled him to think that way. Che’s legacy thus beams an aura of integrity that reaches beyond those who share his politics or who know much about his life. However much 4  A chapter title in R. Barnet and H. Muller, Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations (Simon & Schuster, 1974). As used by these authors, the term refers to structural similarities (e.g., increased poverty), not to immigration.

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his iconic status may have been degraded by commodification (the ubiquitous T-shirts), the aura underlying it is one that will continue to perturb defenders of privilege. Among the messages it conveys is that no amount of economic, political, or military might can withstand the moral force of a mobilized population. Corollary to this, and implicit in Che’s practical optimism, is the idea that while corrupt regimes have much to hide, their revolutionary challengers thrive on bringing every dilemma and every social antagonism to the surface. The task, therefore, for anyone wanting to build on Che’s example—a goal embraced by this film’s producers5—is not to feed into a legend of heroism but rather to develop an awareness of both the objective hurdles and the positive human qualities that are involved in dismantling structures of oppression. This is a tall order, certainly a challenge to any attempt at reenactment. As predictable as the hostility to Che shown by commercial taste-makers are the reservations, qualifications, and overall ambivalence expressed about the film by so many of those who on political grounds might have been expected to welcome it. Much of such criticism emanates from a misplaced literal-mindedness. One reviewer, for instance, laments the fact that the film’s Fidel (Demián Bichir), although a skilled actor, lacks Castro’s physical stature and charisma. Such details do not seem to bother those who care about the film’s basic subject matter, which does not end with the personal traits of even its main protagonist. In a post-screening appearance in Cambridge, Massachusetts, producer and lead actor Benicio del Toro was asked about the film’s reception in Cuba. Remarking on the Cubans’ positive response, he told of an Afro-Cuban veteran of the revolution present at the Havana screening who was portrayed in the film by an actor with blond hair and blue eyes. Asked whether this bothered him, the veteran replied that it was of no importance in terms of the film’s authenticity. Of course, any number of real omissions can be found. This is not a biography of Che (his early development was portrayed in The Motorcycle Diaries), nor does it offer more than the briefest glimpse of his private life. As for his role (between 1959 and 1965) in Cuba’s revolutionary government, this is represented almost exclusively in the form of flash-forwards from the pre-1959 guerrilla struggle (Part I of the film) to scenes from when he spoke at the United Nations General Assembly in 1964. There is 5  See Benicio del Toro, “The Impossible Dream” (interview), Sight & Sound, January 2009.

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thus no attempt to encompass his significant (and controversial) impact on the economic transformation of Cuba, or his role in Cuba’s internal struggles of that period. What the UN scenes (including interviews and small talk) offer is a sense, on the one hand, of Guevara’s intellectual agility and his understanding of imperialism and, on the other, of his detached and ironic attitude toward the trappings of power. These flash-forwards, then, serve to dramatize the outcome of the victorious struggle of Part I, and thereby also to frame the tragic unfolding of Che’s subsequent Bolivian venture (1966–67), which is the theme of Part II. Just as the film as a whole is not a “life” of Che, so also the account in Part I, based as it is on his Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War,6 does not purport to be a full history of how the revolution came to power. It mentions only in passing the urban middle-class opposition to the Batista regime, whose importance in the whole process we do not need to debate here. The reason the revolutionaries based in the countryside prevailed is that it was they who routed Batista’s armed forces, having successfully mobilized the Cuban peasantry—a large portion of which was made up of seasonally unemployed cane-cutters on the sugar plantations.7 The focus of Che’s narrative, and hence of the film, is on understanding how this mobilization was carried out. The film’s depiction of this process did not strike me—contrary to the assertions of certain hostile reviewers—as in any way hagiographic. True, we see Che at one time or another applying his medical expertise, encouraging a peasant recruit to become literate, and coughing from his asthma. But the film’s emphasis is less on his uniqueness than on the egalitarian camaraderie that prevailed among the guerrilla fighters. More revealing in a political sense are the guerrillas’ interactions with the local population. Here Guevara’s revolutionary implacability is fully reflected. While the guerrilla band is open and welcoming to those desiring to join the struggle, and is willing to allow them a probationary period after which they are free to leave, it follows Che’s lead in showing no mercy to those who inform on the group or whose misconduct risks disgracing the revolution in the eyes of the people. The film does encourage reflection on such matters, showing discussions of them within the guerrilla band. There is no way to pretend that  Trans. Victoria Ortiz (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971).  See Maurice Zeitlin, Revolutionary Politics and the Cuban Working Class (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967). 6 7

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decisions made in such a context are necessarily the right ones; a degree of guesswork is sometimes unavoidable. What we come to see, however, is that the moral dimension of those battlefield choices is fully recognized. A remarkable trait of Che’s writings is the candor with which he speaks of the day-to-day routines of guerrilla struggle, in which what might otherwise be passed off as casual lapses of vigilance can suddenly take on life-­ and-­ death proportions. The challenge is sometimes as much to the patience of the participants as it is to their courage. It would be difficult to convey this on film without some slow-moving passages. Where in Part I the guerrillas’ forest routine is offset by repeated reminders of eventual success, in Part II (based on Guevara’s Bolivian Diary8) its heaviness is unrelieved. Interestingly, the experience of this latter part is what the filmmakers started out from. Director Steven Soderbergh at first thought of just casting occasional backward glances from the Bolivian campaign to Che’s earlier career. Only later did those planned recollections expand to comprise the entirety of Part I.9 In any case, it is clear that whereas for the film’s viewers Che’s triumph frames his subsequent defeat, the opposite dynamic was at work in the film’s gestation. Either way, though, the interplay of the two components is ever-­ present.10 There is an inescapable irony in watching how a man who has held US imperialism up for condemnation before the entire world can be brought back to a situation in which his fate and that of his movement are placed in the hands of a taciturn Bolivian peasant whom he has unsuccessfully cajoled with his medical services. His very persistence, in that context, appears all the more remarkable. The only cinematic counterpoint in Part II to the guerrilla campaign is the arousal of the Bolivian military government and its US backers. More chilling, however, than their predictable counterinsurgency plotting is the diffidence of the rural population. The guerrilla band, cut off from any external supply lines, was without recourse. Its presence in such hostile surroundings reflected the disconnect between a global analysis of the empire’s vulnerability and the clashing reality of a people who—as also experienced by Che the previous year in the Congo, albeit for different  Ed. Robert Scheer (New York: Bantam Books, 1968).  del Toro, “The Impossible Dream,” 37. 10  J. Hoberman of the Village Voice makes a similar point in one of the more perceptive reviews I have seen (https://www.vqronline.org/essay/behold-man-steven-soderbergh%E2%80%99sepic-film-biography-che). 8 9

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reasons11—had not yet developed a capacity to challenge the empire’s oppression. The consequent hopelessness of the guerrilla campaign is so insistently impressed upon us that it comes as a surprise when Che, captured and doomed, is shown a fleeting expression of warmth by a young soldier assigned to guard him. And yet, however incongruous the global analysis might have appeared in such a desolate setting, the ultimate impact of Che’s guerrilla campaigns has played out over a bigger canvas. His abortive mission in the Congo proved nonetheless to be an early step in Cuba’s long-term involvement in Africa, one of whose fruits was a major military victory (in Angola) over the South African apartheid regime—a decisive moment in apartheid’s collapse.12 The impact in Latin America would be more diffuse. The Bolivian defeat ended any thought of an external jump-start to revolution, but guerrilla warfare—indigenously based—would continue to spark popular movements with notable impact especially in Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution of 1979 and later (1994) in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Broader than Che’s strategic legacy, however, is his moral legacy, expressed in the depth of his personal commitment and also in his internationalism. These traits have attained a resonance in Cuban society which is not even noticed by those who see in that country only its material challenges and its harsh response to subversion. Cuba projects an ethic of service which would be unimaginable on such a scale in a capitalist society, and it has indeed begun to show results at a global level which may prove— in our new age of military robotics—to be a more effective anti-imperialist strategy than was Che’s admonition (1967)13 to “create two, three, many Vietnams.” Cuba’s global presence now takes primarily the form of doctors, teachers, and disaster-relief teams. It has for years provided hurricane-­ relief all over the Caribbean; its earthquake-relief has extended as far as Pakistan, where its workers stood out in their readiness to share the

11  See Ernesto “Che” Guevara, The African Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo, trans. Patrick Camiller (New York: Grove Press, 2000). 12  For background, see Richard Gott, Introduction to Guevara, The African Dream; on the outcome, Fidel Castro, “Cuba and the End of Apartheid,” Socialism and Democracy, 10:1 (1996). 13  See Michael Löwy, The Marxism of Che Guevara, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 102. On military robotics, see P.W.  Singer, Wired for War (New York: Penguin Press, 2009).

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­ ardships of those they were helping.14 Supporting a wave of elected revoh lutionary regimes in Latin America (beginning with Venezuela and Bolivia), thousands of Cuban health workers have provided service in poor communities. And, in an astonishing gesture of reconciliation, Cuban doctors performed a cataract operation, forty years later, on the Bolivian soldier who had carried out the execution order against Che Guevara.15 No better monument could be imagined to this warrior and doctor. The effectiveness of “Che the film,” like that of any cinematic representation of political struggle, will ultimately depend on how it can be used in raising awareness. Part of this job will depend on the rest of us. The contribution of the film itself—for which Del Toro, Soderbergh, and their team deserve great credit—is to have provided context for a full appreciation of Che’s integrity.16

The Battle of Chile17 The Battle of Chile became an instant classic. I know of no more eloquent depiction of working people acting collectively on their own behalf and in furtherance of a larger vision. Chile’s workers were militarily suppressed after Pinochet’s 1973 coup, but this film will keep alive the memory of their exemplary resourcefulness, solidarity, and commitment. This is, of course, just part of what the film is about. The rest, as recounted in Parts I and II, involves on the one hand the heavy machinations of the bourgeoisie (US as well as Chilean) to abort the workers’ gains and, on the other, the complex divisions and debates that emerged within both sides of the central clash of forces. The more universal dimensions of the whole experience are the focus of Part III.  Part III brings us into close-up contact with the workers, the pobladores (residents of popular neighborhoods), and, at one point, the peasants. We encounter again some of the faces from Parts I and II, but 14  Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, “Cuban Doctors in Pakistan: Why Cuba Still Inspires,” Monthly Review, 58:6 (November 2006). See also Monthly Review, 60:8 (January 2009), special issue: Cuba, 1959–2009: A Half-Century of Socialism. 15  “Cuban doctors help Che Guevara’s killer,” Brisbane Times, September 30, 2007. 16  See also Michael Principe, “Debunking a Myth or Distorting the Record: Samuel Farber on Che Guevara,” Socialism and Democracy, 31:3 (2017). 17  Part I. The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie (1975); Part II. The Coup D’état (1976); Part III. People’s Power (1978); Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997) + Interview with director Patricio Guzmán. 4-disc DVD set (Icarus films, 2009).

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this time with an opportunity to dwell on them. We also meet more workers speaking to us from their worksites. And we witness a remarkable exchange about land-takeovers between a representative of the politically cautious Unidad Popular (UP) government and a community of embattled peasants with a no-nonsense spokesman. The issue for the workers here, as throughout the film, is how much to take the process of change into their own hands. The question of expropriating unused farmland is posed in the most urgent practical terms, as being essential to maintaining food supplies for a population put at risk— and challenged in its commitment—by the bourgeoisie’s concerted disruption of all normal economic activity (especially transport). The debate of the peasants with the government official mirrors a similar clash in Part II, at a union meeting, between a temporizing young Communist leader and an impassioned older worker who is fed up with legal restraints that block workers from taking control of production. Another unforgettable moment in Part III is a female factory worker at her worksite remarking that “el pueblo organizado es inteligente” (“the organized people are intelligent”). Throughout, we see reminders of this intelligence being put into practice, as workers and peasants mobilize tractors and pickup trucks to provide transit services, and as pobladores staff neighborhood depots to assure equitable distribution of scarce consumer goods. Toward the end of Part III, moving to the nitrate mines of Chile’s arid North, we glimpse a lively lecture from an educator/organizer, and we are shown with pride some of the improvised spare parts that have been crafted, on site, to replace embargoed imports from the US. The film’s closing shot is of a wide expanse of desert, conveying desolation, but with the voiced expression of a distant hope. At a number of points throughout Part III—which Guzmán himself describes as a tribute to the workers—we hear the strains of the UP anthem “Venceremos” (“we will win”). Most typically, it is played by marching bands, which we see accompanying big demonstrations. But as the end approaches, we also hear it just on the soundtrack, mournfully intoned by an Andean flute as the camera rides along a few yards behind a young worker loping past several desolate city blocks—walls adorned with UP graffiti—hauling a rickety wagon with an undefined cargo. The grit, the love, and the pathos of the people’s struggle are fused in this shot. In Chile, Obstinate Memory, filmed in 1996 (six years after Pinochet’s forced withdrawal from power), Guzmán—who was living in Paris—makes

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a return visit to Chile, bringing The Battle of Chile with him for its first-­ ever screenings within the country. In a remarkable scene near the beginning of Obstinate Memory, a band of young musicians marches through the streets of Santiago—using the score brought back by Guzmán from composer Sergio Ortega’s Paris exile—playing the long-forbidden strains of “Venceremos.” The reactions of startled onlookers—ranging from rebuff to resonance, the latter alternately joyous, melancholy, and defiant—evoke the full span of emotions that marked the clash of a generation earlier. The rest of the film is part nostalgia-cum-disclosure, and part a rekindling of the perennial political debate. We meet, for example, the father of assassinated cinematographer Jorge Müller Silva (to whom The Battle of Chile was dedicated) and also Ignacio Valenzuela (Guzmán’s uncle), who tells how he received each day’s harvest of film-footage until all 20 hours’ worth could be smuggled, thanks to Swedish Ambassador Harald Edelstam, out of Chile. But above all we see reactions—both from contemporaries and from much younger people—to the film itself. The polarization of basic loyalties is undiminished. Some of the coup’s defenders voice respect for Salvador Allende (the Socialist president) at the level of personal integrity—his willingness to die rather than surrender— but their deeper reactions signal the void of political understanding that was created by the subsequent coup regime. The notion that workers on their own had the capacity and the will to keep the economy going—with the “respectable” elements of society doing all in their power to disrupt it (as happened in October 1972 and again in mid-1973)—seems to fall outside the mental categories of the bourgeoisie. As one elegant female student says of the workers: “Why did they occupy the factories? They should have been working.” The confrontations in The Battle of Chile are a head-on challenge to bourgeois prejudice. For those who survived the coup’s aftermath with their sensibilities intact (including some who were too young in 1973 to understand what was going on), the effect of the film’s revelations is overwhelming. Guzmán does not spare us the raw emotions of these viewers. It remains true, however, that for all the affection some of its protagonists may inspire in us, The Battle of Chile is also—as Guzmán wished it to be—a great analytic film. The latter aspect facilitates the political reckonings that have been going on ever since. But it is the fusion of analytic clarity with emotional intensity that has given the film its lasting resonance. One of the conservative viewers in Obstinate Memory describes the Pinochet coup as the first hammer-blow in the “fall of communism.” The

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Battle of Chile allows us to turn this around and to see the activation of Chile’s workers as the first glimmer of “twenty-first-century socialism”: a succession of popular movements throughout Latin America which, as in Chile of the 1970s, would win elections but which would also go further and would push more strongly against the limits of bourgeois legality. 1989 marked the fall of the Berlin Wall. But it was also the year of the caracazo, the crushed popular uprising in Venezuela which nonetheless was the opening salvo in that country’s Bolivarian Revolution.18 The latter process was characterized by its leader Hugo Chávez (a former mid-level military officer) as “peaceful but armed,” and with a conception of socialism distinguished from earlier state-centric versions precisely by its emphasis on direct empowerment of workers. Fittingly, Venezuela’s oil workers in 2002 replicated the feat of Chile’s copper workers in 1972, in rescuing both their own industry and the country’s elected leadership from a politically driven “strike” by capital. The first two parts of The Battle of Chile, however, constitute a sequential narrative of the six months from the March 1973 congressional elections to the September coup. The vibrancy of that period emerges with unique clarity in a live, primetime TV debate—shot straight off the flickering tube—between a left-wing student leader and a conservative senator. The elegantly dressed senator is defending the chaotic disruptions being instigated by his allies, while the casually dressed student is upholding the constitutional order. There are lots of rapid-fire exchanges; above all, a nationwide audience is overwhelmingly polarized behind one or other of the speakers. This is just one episode of the film, but it is emblematic of the whole. The Battle of Chile personifies class struggle in a uniquely powerful way. It does so in terms that are universally intelligible, with an authenticity that could never be achieved through merely symbolic figures. In this sense, it goes beyond all previous “people’s films.” The masses here are not merely participating; they are, in effect, writing their own lines. As for the ruling class, it does not have to be portrayed by professional actors; its own faces show more of its character than could the most carefully chosen stereotypes. 18  My remarks about Venezuela are based on Richard Gott, Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution (London: Verso, 2005); D.L. Raby, Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today (London: Pluto, 2006); and the 34-minute documentary film The Bolivarian Revolution: Enter the Oil Workers (www.globalwomenstrike.net, 2004).

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But beyond all this, the film maintains a level of excitement which is unknown in most documentaries and almost unimaginable in one of such length (the narrative of Parts I and II totals 191 minutes). The immediate reason for this is yet another step in the perfection of the film’s genre, namely, that all the contending positions which come into play are presented in action. Not only are there no professional performers, but even the public figures who do appear are almost always shown “live”—never in any extended interview setting. The only significant use of interviews is in eliciting the completely unrehearsed responses of the film’s ultimate protagonists: the politicized non-politicians on both sides of the confrontation. The camera is everywhere—on the streets, in the living rooms, in the factories, the offices, the neighborhoods, the meeting halls, in the presidential palace, and in parliament. Coming to the scene in the midst of the prolonged crisis which had begun with Allende’s election in 1970, it bears direct witness to every major episode of his final months in office. As if to underline the camera’s omnipresence, there is one sequence added to the film from the work of an Argentine TV cameraman, who filmed his own death from the gunfire of a Chilean army officer. The moment of swirling and blurring which records this act comes at a dividing point in the course of events (the June 29 coup-attempt); it ends Part I of the film and is repeated in the opening frames of Part II. Although the hero/victim was not a member of the Battle of Chile collective, the emphasis given to his sacrifice is a clear statement of the filmmakers’ guiding conviction: that they themselves, along with their medium, have a central role to play in the class struggle. The perfection of the documentary is thus assimilated in yet a third way with the peak of artistic achievement. If the focus on “real people” maximizes authenticity, and if the direct filming of conflict maximizes excitement, so also—on the director’s part—the fullest commitment to the role of observer reflects the most complete immersion in the reality that one is filming. The director goes beyond controlling the movements of the film’s characters. The characters move themselves, but the director transmits, compresses, and heightens the interaction by knowing what their movements will be. In the case at hand, director Patricio Guzmán does not tell any of his subjects what to do, but, as he later made clear,19 he anticipates their 19  For this and other points regarding the making of the film, see the important interview with Guzmán conducted by Julianne Burton, in Socialist Revolution, No. 35 (Sept.–Oct. 1977).

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actions with as much assurance as if he had so directed them. The example he refers to involves the filming of a street battle, but the political understanding in question is reflected in every aspect of the filmmaking process. At the most immediate level, it dictated that the project should be kept unpublicized, and that each day’s footage should be promptly hidden. More generally, Guzmán’s political awareness dictated a basic judgment about the film’s objective—namely, that it could best serve the revolution not by promoting any single interpretation of the events, but rather by recording the Chilean experience as thoroughly and completely as possible, with full attention to the wide range of forces that could be found on both sides of the conflict. That so all-inclusive an approach could be applied without sacrificing any of the film’s intensity is a tribute both to the filmmakers and to the Chilean working class. The filmmakers knew where to be, how to get there, and what to do with the material. They gained the trust of those for whom the truth was important (e.g., workers debating the government’s strategy), while using appropriate subterfuge against those who had something to hide (e.g., a bourgeois household, which they entered posing as representatives of the conservative TV network). And when the footage was at last recovered in Cuba, months after the coup, they applied the full measure of their skill and insight to shaping the final product: alternating scenes of individuals and of crowds, of talking and action, of leaders and constituents, of friends and enemies, of conciliators and intransigents. When all else has been said, though, what remains the most exceptional aspect of this film is the subject matter itself—in the words of the film’s sub-title, “the struggle of a people without arms.” As to the immediate outcome of this struggle, there is never any doubt, for the film opens with the act which buried Allende’s “legal road to socialism”—the bombing of the presidential palace. But the perspective this gives us in no way diminishes the film’s impact. We know that the military threat was in varying degrees present all along, but if anything, this makes the workers’ advances even more impressive. For a North American audience, in particular, it is a continuous revelation to feel the depth of the people’s fighting spirit—in their demonstrations, their meetings, their performance of vital daily services, in their spontaneous comments, and, as the end draws near, in their embryonic acts of resistance. But while we identify with the workers, we also ask ourselves whether there is any way they could have won. The film does not presume to answer this question, but it provides eloquent examples of the people’s

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frustration at not being able to take stronger measures of control and self-­ defense. We hear factory workers demanding firm leadership from the government, and we hear working-class housewives calling for the distribution of arms. All this comes, however, only during the final two months, by which time the Armed Forces have already seized the initiative. With reactionary violence endemic, we can well appreciate the futility of Allende’s continued emphasis on the legal process, but at the same time it seems clear that any hope for building an effective popular counterattack is already too late. If the key to a workers’ victory is to be found, it is not in the period covered by the narrative part of the film (Parts I and II). The sequential account begins only after Allende has been in office for more than two years. What it shows are, in effect, the final stages of the battle, after the prevailing strategy on the side of the Left has already been irrevocably determined. This strategy, embodied mainly by the Communist Party but also accepted by Allende, was essentially one of doing whatever was necessary to keep the Armed Forces’ leadership neutral. It was assumed that this could be achieved as long as the government respected the Constitution, in particular, by not allowing any expropriations to be carried out except through the regular legislative process—a restriction which in practice, after 1971, meant no expropriations at all. Adhering to this limitation, the idea was to win over the “progressive” sectors of the middle class and to isolate and discredit the Right. The alternative strategy is still expressed in the film, but with less real hope of success than it had had at an earlier point. According to this approach, as expressed within Allende’s coalition by the Socialist Party leadership and from outside by the MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left), any notion of Armed Forces neutrality was in the long run illusory. A direct clash with the bourgeoisie was inevitable and indeed had already been taking place ever since the first plant shutdowns following Allende’s election. The “middle class,” at least in its commercial sectors, was hopelessly tied to the big bourgeoisie. The only chance for a Left victory lay in extending the active role of the working class on all fronts, including organizing the unorganized (typically in the smaller businesses) and ­ encouraging rank-and-file politicization within the Armed Forces—an approach for which a case could be made in legal terms as long as the objective was to counteract plotting against the duly constituted government.

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The last real choice between these two alternatives had come in the aftermath of the “bosses’ strike” of October 1972.20 The workers at that time had spontaneously taken over their closed factories in order to keep the economy going. In so doing, they had rescued Allende from the first concerted effort to overthrow him. The means they had used, that is, the factory takeovers, were of course illegal, but it was the bourgeoisie that had broken the rules first by going outside established channels to accomplish an essentially political objective. Allende at that point had the option of declaring the factory takeovers a fait accompli and accepting the shift of the political struggle to a new plane involving the rapid extension of organs of popular self-rule, all of which he could have justified by arguing that the enterprise owners had themselves chosen to abdicate their economic responsibilities. He chose, however, the opposite course. Yielding to the sanctimonious outrage of the bourgeoisie, he agreed to restore the seized properties in return for what amounted to a truce, to be enforced by military representation in the Cabinet, for the remainder of the period up until the March 1973 congressional elections. If there was any single act which interrupted the workers’ forward movement, that was it. And for what? Even with a major electoral gain by Allende’s Popular Unity (UP) coalition, no serious observer could expect it to win the 50+ percent that would have significantly improved its legal position. This was not because its programs were anti-popular, but rather for two other reasons. First, foreign and domestic reaction had effectively counteracted many of the advances in people’s immediate living conditions, and second, there was still a sizeable unorganized sector of the working class which believed the promises of “moderate” opposition parties (especially the Christian Democrats) to give them the same social benefits that the Left was trying to provide. What the workers’ alternative represented was not only the direct realization of measures which were beyond the reach of the government, but also a tangible demonstration to the unorganized of the basis on which they themselves could run their affairs. In The Battle of Chile, we see some of the continuing examples of such popular control, in both factories and neighborhoods,21 but its scope was not as great as it would have been without Allende’s retreat. 20  For a full account of the balance of forces during that crisis, see Gabriel Smirnow, The Disarmed Revolution: Chile, 1970–1973 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979). 21  For fascinating insights into the success of the workers’ efforts, see Juan G. Espinosa and Andrew S.  Zimbalist, Economic Democracy: Workers’ Participation in Chilean Industry, 1970–1973 (New York: Academic Press, 1978).

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Of course, no one can say for sure whether an unchecked workers’ advance in November 1972 could have withstood a right-wing counterattack. What is certain, however, is that the military was not yet prepared, at that stage, to carry out a successful coup. (This is admitted even by a strong defender of Allende’s concessions.22) Allende evidently hoped that a head-on clash could be postponed indefinitely. This made it impossible for him to recognize, or perhaps even to consider, that the risk level for the working class might be lower at that moment than at a later date. What ended up happening was that the Right got itself a grace period. The popular forces acted with deliberate restraint during the electoral campaign. And the bourgeoisie, disappointed by the voting results—which brought gains for Popular Unity and ended any hope for impeaching Allende—had a chance to make a fresh start after March in its insurrectionary project. The rest of the story is unfolded for us on the screen. The opposed forces are no longer well matched, but this is not immediately apparent. The Left from the outset has far outstripped the Right in its numbers of active supporters, and this politicized mass remains visually impressive right up to the end. At first, it can still win some real victories against right-wing obstruction. Mass demonstrations thus succeed in discrediting the impeachment campaign against Allende’s ministers and also in isolating the basically political strike that took place at one of the nationalized copper mines. But once the Armed Forces move into action (they never really retreat after June 29), the game is essentially up. The disintegration of the Left proceeds apace, being in fact speeded up rather than reversed by the awareness of impending disaster. For the organized workers, the stakes have been raised too high to permit any turning back, and we watch several of them as they say that they would sooner die than give up their gains. For Allende, on the other hand, the stranglehold of the Right grows so tight that he accepts without a word of protest the violent intimidation campaign which the military carries out against these same workers in their factories. The workers criticize the government for its weaknesses. The Communist union leader (though not identified as such) suggests that they do not understand the complexity of the issues. Only at a ceremonial level can workers and government

22  Edward Boorstein, Allende’s Chile: An Inside View (New York: International Publishers, 1977), 212.

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act in concert. On September 4 they join forces for the biggest demonstration yet. On September 11 comes the coup. In the debate on Chile which permeated the Left worldwide after the coup, each side drew sustenance from what happened in those final months. In an immediate sense, both sides are right. It is undoubtedly true, as the Euro-communists claimed, that Allende, for all his moderation, ended up defying the bourgeoisie by refusing to abandon the Left’s program entirely. But it is also true, as their left-wing critics argued, that Allende’s hope of avoiding repression merely by respecting legal norms was without foundation. As a document, The Battle of Chile provides materials for both sides of this debate. The only pertinent omission it might be charged with is its failure to show the full extent to which the official Left ended up demoralizing its militant base. (During the final weeks, for example, Allende publicly denounced rank-and-file sailors who had been organizing to defend his government against their pro-coup officers.) By not accentuating this level of breakdown on the Left, the film rescues the UP leadership from at least the bitterest charges that might be made against it. On the other hand, though, any such possible benefit to the “moderate” position is more than counterbalanced by the positive view the film gives us of the class-conscious workers. It is their words and actions that account for the film’s tremendous emotional impact. The Battle of Chile thus remains before all else a film of the people. As such, it shows us some of the hidden human potential that emerges under crisis conditions, and in so doing, provides support and inspiration for the more radical approach. By not taking an explicit position in the Left’s debate, the film will remain accessible to all sectors of the Left. By abstaining from showing us the more disgraceful moments of the UP’s debacle, it encourages us to cast any criticism of the UP leadership in terms of specific errors of approach and strategy rather than in terms of facile epithets of betrayal. But by showing the insufficiently tapped militancy of the Chilean workers, it gives us some sense of the depth of the UP’s missed opportunity. Revolution, after all, depends above all upon the consciousness and ­commitment of the oppressed masses. Where the UP leaders lacked faith in what this could achieve, The Battle of Chile offers us a gripping and compelling corrective.

CHAPTER 12

Song and Vision in the US Labor Movement

Genesis of Labor Song The longest-standing fount and propagator of American labor songs, and in some ways their exemplary embodiment, has been the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), popularly known as the Wobblies. The first edition of their Little Red Songbook appeared in 1909. In a note to the 36th edition, which was published on May 1, 1995, we read: “Today’s IWW hopes this Little Red Songbook will help make workers’ history, not just preserve it.” The Songbook’s prefatory material also includes the Preamble to the IWW Constitution, which puts forward the following declaration (taken from Marx’s 1865 pamphlet, Value, Price, and Profit): Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wage system.”1

The one sentiment vital to all working-class struggles is that of solidarity. Solidarity is what makes it possible for each of us to think beyond our personal interests to some kind of common good. Even the most narrow trade-unionist agenda draws on this sentiment. Ralph Chaplin’s song 1  This statement was added in 1908 to the original constitution of 1905. The texts of all IWW Constitutions are available at https://www.iww.org/PDF/Constitutions/2010IWW Constitution.pdf. The importance of the IWW’s contribution to labor music is underscored in Ted Gioia, Labor Songs (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 233ff.

© The Author(s) 2020 V. Wallis, Socialist Practice, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35066-6_12

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“Solidarity Forever,” a legacy of IWW days,2 thus remains the anthem of the much-diminished US labor movement of today. Solidarity in its fullest expression transcends boundaries of occupation and locality, of culture, race, gender, and nation. At whatever level it is felt, solidarity is what strengthens each of us to take risks when doing so becomes necessary to the pursuit of our collective goal. Insofar as it fortifies us all to face down those risks, it also provides a kind of backup to each of us, at once reducing our individual vulnerability and increasing the likelihood of our joint success. There is a link between the capacity for solidarity and the ability to define the struggle in broad human terms. “A fair day’s wage” is a demand stripped of class-content. It is bland enough not to be controversial in itself, even to the bosses. But it also treats wages as though they were governed by some kind of objective standard. This is misleading in two ways. First, it implies that the wage is in principle an equitable arrangement, whereas the essence of the wage is that it is a mere token payment, largely conditioned by market forces and unreflective of the workers’ real needs (let alone their real input). Second, the notion of “fairness” itself is relative. What seems fair to the workers may not seem fair to the boss, and what is judged as fair by one set of workers may be undercut by the lower expectations of another set. If the noblest expressions of the labor movement are songs like “Solidarity Forever” (with the visionary line “We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old”), its meanest manifestations are the taunts hurled at strikebreakers, as in the song “Are You a Scabby?”3    You fawn and you caress [the boss], you bow and you stoop,    You’re enough, by God, to make a maggot puke.

While the rage against strikebreakers is understandable, the reality is that they are typically among the most downtrodden members of their class— those who nowadays are more commonly stigmatized by ethnic slurs or as “illegal aliens.” From the beginning, the bosses have sought to take advantage of such demographic divisions (including also the gender division), 2  Set to the tune of the [US Civil War] Battle Hymn of the Republic, “Solidarity Forever” first appeared in the 1916 edition of the IWW Songbook. 3  Text in Jerzy (George) Dymny, ed., The Canadian Wobbly Songbook (Toronto: IWW, 1990), 12. For additional “scab” songs, see The Little Red Songbook, 36th ed. (Chicago: IWW, 1995), 28, 54, 61, 68, 77.

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playing off one group against another and fostering a competitive culture in which those who enjoy even modest benefits adopt hostile and exclusionary stances toward anyone they might view as threatening their status. The IWW has always resisted this dynamic. It immediately distinguished itself from other early labor organizations not only by its uncompromising rejection of class society, but also by its clear commitment to inclusiveness in matters of race. This was a matter of principle and hence of moral conviction, but it was grounded at the same time in material interest, in that the surest way to neutralize potential strikebreakers was to recruit them into the union. Partly because of severe government repression, however, the IWW did not become the predominant force in shaping the US labor movement. There was only one major wave of labor militancy in later years: the one that sparked the birth of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) in the 1930s. This generated its own crop of radical songs,4 although the CIO itself would eventually revert to the model of “business unionism” made already familiar by the AFL (American Federation of Labor), in which union bureaucrats—later to become very highly paid—collaborate with capital and its political agents in narrowing the political horizons of the rank and file. The impact of this turn was partly offset by the antiracist work of Communist organizers in the South and the United Auto Workers in the North, all of which would later be reinforced by social movements from outside the trade unions.5 Thanks to such developments, some of the IWW’s commitment to inclusiveness eventually became common currency—at least in words. But its larger vision of a world without bosses long remained “off the table.” That the IWW nonetheless remained the emblematic repository of American labor songs tells us something about those songs’ function. Their role is to inspire. To inspire, they must evoke deeper and more universal feelings than those elicited by the self-interest of narrowly defined groups. Like the IWW itself, they transcend the limits of collective-­ bargaining demands and encompass the full span of human aspirations. 4  Ronald D. Cohen, Work and Sing: A History of Occupational Labor Songs in the United States (Crockett, CA: Carquinez Press, 2010), 94–101. 5  See Robin D.G.  Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 228–31; Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor (New York: Basic Books, 1995), ch. 11 (“Uneasy Partners”).

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To view labor music as a call to resistance is thus to see labor in its universal aspect: as an activity originally common to all humans, and subsequently evaded (during the mature and vigorous years of anyone’s lifespan) only by small, exploiting minorities. Resistance is directed precisely at the oppression inflicted by those minorities, but this oppression takes a wide range of distinct forms, of which dictatorial command over work-rhythms is only the most immediate. The same ruling class that sets workers’ time-­ and-­ motion protocols or that decides when workers are no longer “needed”—when profit can no longer be generated by their labor—also shapes our physical surroundings, designs belief-systems for us, and, among other measures of control, seeks to distract us, corrupt us, divide us from one another, and turn some of us into killing machines. In the process, it generates poverty, war, psychological scarring, and environmental devastation. There are no clear dividing lines among these channels of domination (or among their effects). They emanate from a common source, and they are mutually reinforcing. By the same token, there can be no sharp lines of demarcation among the various dimensions of resistance. Songs about work or about union organizing mix easily with laments about personal hardship, and these can take any number of directions, as individual narratives become vehicles for conveying widely shared experiences. Not surprisingly, the great songwriters are unconstrained by topic-­ boundaries. In this, they are true to the lives of those they sing for. We must therefore understand “labor movement” in an inclusive sense. It does not consist just of trade-union members (who now make up less than 10 percent of the US workforce); it embraces a much larger constituency, of which union organizations are at present only an imperfect expression. The labor movement is, literally, the working class in motion. As a class—rather than just an “interest organization”—it has aspirations beyond the day-to-day crumbs it must seek from the capitalists. Artistic expression may or may not entail explicit reference to such aspirations in their broadest sense—wherein people imagine “another world”6—but it evokes a pertinent radicalism by the very scope of the feelings it brings together, whether they link diverse individuals and groups, or whether they span different dimensions in the life-experience of any single person.

6  Borrowing here from the slogan made familiar by the World Social Forum: “Another world is possible.”

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Moreover, just as “labor music” cannot be tied, in its lyrics, to any precise topical focus, so also, going beyond the question of verbal content, it is not limited to any single musical genre. Of course, topical songs, especially when putting forward a narrative, draw typically from the tradition of the ballad and are in that sense justifiably classified as “folk.” But the folk label, despite its original meaning, took on a broader usage in the post-World War II years. By that time, the efforts of folklorists had converged with the ongoing work of activist songwriters to create a broader repertoire in which traditional songs and original compositions to some extent merged. Although this new “folk” category had a broader audience than did the earlier music, its classification in contradistinction to popular (or “pop”) music nonetheless carried with it an implicit marginalization— implying that folk music was something other than popular. In fact, the supposed dichotomy between “folk” and “popular” seems to reflect what was at first a politically grounded classification (more on this below) but which subsequently became solidified in step with marketing strategies—whose impact could only increase as the recording industry expanded and as competition for radio-audiences intensified. All such genre-boundaries are relative, however, and they begin to blur as soon as we remind ourselves, for example, that blues music evolved out of chants elicited from the forced labor of slave times, and then further developed into instrumental jazz compositions.7 In a similar fashion, songs from the early years of union organizing consisted typically of fresh lyrics set to widely familiar hymn-tunes. Well into the 1940s and ’50s, artists who later came to be classified as folksingers enjoyed broad commercial diffusion. In later years, the formal rubrics displayed in record shops, together with growing corporate control over radio outlets, made such crossing of the lines more and more difficult. Nonetheless, moments of heightened popular mobilization—epitomized by huge demonstrations against the Vietnam War and by the half-million participants in the 1969 Woodstock Festival—erased all boundaries, establishing a tradition of political engagement which a wide array of bands and songwriters would continue to uphold. 7  See Alan Lomax, The Folk Songs of North America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 573ff; LeRoi Jones, Blues People: Negro Music in White America (New York, William Morrow, 1963); Sidney Finkelstein, Jazz: A People’s Music (New York: International Publishers, 1988 [1948]).

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Labor Song in the United States The place of song both in physical work and in mass protest appears to be universal. What is distinctive about labor songs in any one country will reflect what is unique to that country’s overall history. The US case is one in which multiple streams have come together to form whatever there is of a common working-class culture. This much can no doubt be said of many countries, but the combination within the same borders of a plantation economy based on slave-labor and a relatively advanced industrial economy based on wage-labor—replenished by immigrants from almost every part of the world—has set the US experience apart since early on, and with long-lasting effects. Our focus on labor songs prompts us to seek a class-based community, but when such varied backgrounds come into play, a common working-­ class culture does not arise spontaneously. Two or more sub-groups may share “objective” class ties, in the sense of being alike victimized by highly disadvantageous conditions of work, imposed by a single class of large-­ property owners, but it is not at all unusual for one of the oppressed sectors to try to disavow any possible commonality with those whom they view as being below them. The most enduring manifestation of this practice has been the formation of a racially defined “white” identity during the Colonial period of US history—an identity which, although initially created as a device for institutionalizing Black slavery, persisted long after formal enslavement was ended.8 It is noteworthy that of the two sections in Lomax’s Folk Songs of North America devoted to songs from the South, the only section containing a whole category of “work songs” is the one entitled “The Negro South.”9 Outside of the South, the most enduring work songs emerged later, especially in the mining regions of the Western “frontier.” Contrary to the persistent academic stereotype of the frontier as a region of widely shared opportunity, what marked it especially was the climate of unrestrained 8  See Theodore W. Allen, Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race, ed. Jeffrey W. Perry (Stony Brook, NY: Center for the Study of Working Class Life, 2006). This 40-page pamphlet summarizes the findings of Allen’s 2-volume study, The Invention of the White Race, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 2012). 9  The preeminent traditional work song “John Henry” (“Steel gon’ be the death of me”) is also included in this section, although under the heading of “Ballads.” The other Southern section contains—under the heading “Hard Times and the Hillbilly”—a few work songs, mostly of more recent vintage (notably, “16 Tons,” written by Merle Travis in 1947).

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land-grabs, vigilantism, and openly venal local authorities, unabashedly at the service of capital. In this setting, which is where the IWW found its strongest base, labor songs took on a new dimension. Instead of being about the work-process itself, they were about organizing. The working-­ class songwriter Joe Hill—a Swedish immigrant who joined the IWW in California in 1910 and was martyred by a Utah firing-squad in 191510— explained the importance of his widely popular verses (set to well-known tunes) in quite practical terms: “A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once. But a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over”—and can thereby impress itself on far greater numbers of people, including those who are unable or unmotivated to read.11 In addition, music transcends language barriers—a virtue applied to great advantage in organizing workers of “forty different nationalities” for the Lawrence, Massachusetts textile industry strike of 1912.12 Finally, the Irish revolutionary James Connolly, a contemporary of Hill, took the argument beyond one of comprehension and diffusion to one of depth of commitment: No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, the fears and the hopes, the loves and the hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant, singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinctive marks of a popular revolutionary movement; it is the dogma of a few, and not the faith of the multitude.13

The emotions associated with solidarity and struggles for justice, particularly when they cross boundaries of geography and culture, carry us to the highest levels of expressiveness. No single genre can claim ownership of this domain, but it can be entered and filled by particular artists. One such artist was Paul Robeson, whose incomparable bass voice gave 10  See William M. Adler, The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon (London: Bloomsbury, 2011). 11  Hill, quoted in Dorian Lynskey, 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs from Billie Holiday to Green Day (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 18 (citing Philip S. Foner, The Case of Joe Hill [1965], 11). 12  Gioia, Labor Songs, 234. 13  James Connolly, “Revolutionary Song” (1907), in Owen Dudley Edwards & Bernard Ransom (eds), James Connolly: Selected Political Writings (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1907/xx/revsong.htm.

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­ orldwide resonance to the songs of many epochs, languages, and culw tures. The Negro spirituals were a permanent and distinctive part of his repertoire, but he also became the world-acclaimed bearer of Alfred Hayes’s inspiring tribute, “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” (music by Earl Robinson). Robeson combined the discipline and finesse of a classically trained singer with the elemental moral force powered by a global struggle against oppression. He transformed songs of religious faith or entertainment into calls to arms, as in the narrative of workers along “Ol’ Man River” (the Mississippi), for whom the words “get a little drunk” eventually gave way, in his later renditions of that song, to “show a little grit” (“… and you land in jail”).14 His identification with the labor movement took the form not just of abstract solidarity, but of bringing his performances directly to workers on the front lines. When he was interrogated in 1956 by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, much of his prepared statement (which he was not allowed to deliver) consisted of a list of mainly workers’ organizations around the world whose invitations he was prevented from accepting because he had been denied a passport.15 Robeson was probably the most world-renowned of the artists who came under ideological assault in that period, but all tribunes of working-­ class culture were affected. The weight of the attacks testifies to the depth of the sentiments that, from the standpoint of capital, had to be rooted out and discredited. No songwriter did more to give expression to those sentiments—from the Depression years through the 1940s—than Woody Guthrie. His formative experiences were of the hardships of working-class life. Through a mix of commitment, impulse, and circumstance, he never fully escaped those hardships; yet his vision, as expressed in song, was cast in universal terms. More specifically, his signature composition, “This land is your land…”—with its narrative evocation of the unemployment lines and its depiction of “private property” as an obstacle to personal ­freedom—

14  Robeson’s modification of the original lyrics (from Showboat) is well known. He also changed “I’m tired of livin’ and scared of dyin’” to “I must keep fightin’ until I’m dyin’.” Paul Robeson, Jr., The Undiscovered Paul Robeson (New York: John Wiley, 2001), 293. 15  Text of Robeson’s Statement to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, in Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove, eds., Voices of a People’s History of the United States (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004), 380f.

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evolved as a deliberate repudiation of the ubiquitous “God Bless America.”16 Guthrie was a living refutation of the widespread ideological mantra according to which advocacy of socialism, communism, and anti-racism (unless one was a direct victim of racial discrimination) was the posture of a privileged—and hence hypocritical—“liberal elite.” The popular radicalism he embodied would in the long run pose a threat to capitalist hegemony. It could be tolerated up to a point, in the interests of “class peace,” but it was especially incompatible with the agenda of global counterrevolution taken up by the US ruling class under the bipartisan rubric of the Truman Doctrine (proclaimed in 1947).17 To implement this agenda in the face of widespread hopes for what in later years would be called a “peace dividend,” it was necessary to stigmatize the whole radical-­ democratic culture that had evolved in the 1930s—stimulated in part by New Deal-funded arts projects and perhaps best encapsulated in the song “Ballad for Americans”18—and which had in some respects been reinforced by the anti-fascist coalition of the war years. Robeson was one of many artists to be silenced, as the whole “folk” tradition, with songs of working-class struggle at its core, came under attack. The repression of those years established a kind of cultural divide between the radical song styles that preceded and followed it. It was not that the old motifs disappeared, but the underlying impulses had to present themselves in a different guise. The sometimes almost sentimental expressions of warmth and unity which typified the activist music of the ’30s became sullied under an onslaught that sought to paint them as no more than Communist propaganda. Just as the concept of peace became thus tarnished, so also did the effort to evoke common class interests across boundaries of nation and race. Artists such as Pete Seeger and his 16  See Mark Allan Jackson, Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), ch. 1. 17  The most thorough overview of this phenomenon is William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2003). On the links between the US global agenda and internal repression, see Richard M. Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism (New York: Schocken Books, 1974). 18  Sung by Robeson in November 1939 to a CBS radio audience of millions. See Robbie Lieberman, “My Song Is My Weapon”: People’s Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930–1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 40. “Ballad for Americans” (lyrics by John La Touche, music by Earl Robinson) was originally written for a WPA [Works Progress Administration] theater project (Wikipedia).

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collaborators tried through various venues—songbooks, performances, recordings—to keep the earlier hopes alive, but their ability to retain wide audiences depended in part on their eventually diluting the political content of their performances. This was largely a tactical choice; it did not diminish their readiness to defy congressional inquisitors (as Seeger notably did, citing the First Amendment argument, which, by questioning the legitimacy of the investigations, exposed him to the risk of being prosecuted for “contempt”). But the bigger impact of the witch-hunts lay in drastically curtailing the ability of the public—in particular, the working class—to think freely about political matters and to stand up for its common interests, in the face of inducements toward a purely “private” definition of one’s life-goals.19 The latter approach fit well into the model of business unionism, which was a major beneficiary of the anticommunist campaigns, becoming in effect—after passage of the Taft-Hartley Act (1947)20—the only officially acceptable paradigm for trade-union practice. Labor music, however, although born and nurtured in the tradition of radical class struggle, could not be fully jettisoned even by those who favored an accommodation with capital. But while many of its most eloquent words (as in “Solidarity Forever”) remained unchanged, once they lost their original context of an oppositional culture, their recitation became merely ritualistic. The lines might still be sung, in pep-rally fashion, but their wider message no longer resonated. New songs written within this accommodationist framework might still borrow at times from the deeper working-class culture, but a shallow agenda could inspire only ephemeral expressions.21

19  This atomization was epitomized in suburbia. On the political agenda behind federal promotion of suburbs, see Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (New York: Basic Books, 2000), esp. ch. 8: “The McCarthy Hearings on Housing.” 20  Taft-Hartley was a landmark measure to scale back labor’s gains from New Deal legislation; it specifically excluded from legal protection any union that failed to disqualify Communists from elective office. 21  The light-hearted mockery which labor songwriter Joe Glazer applied to the bullying inquisitor Senator Joseph McCarthy—in a song about McCarthy based on “McNamara’s Band” (text in Glazer’s memoir Labor’s Troubadour [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001], 112)—is emblematic, in the sense of targeting the style, rather than the substance or impact, of the anticommunist crusade. (Glazer’s career as a trade union official included an overseas stint in the 1960s with the US Information Agency.)

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Evolution of Songs of Protest Since the 1960s The relationship between organized labor and artistic creativity has been problematic from the start. Some have viewed the two as antithetical; others have seen them as mutually supportive. The more hopeful side of this interaction has shown itself primarily in periods of mass mobilization. It is in such periods that one can find the requisite convergence and sense of common purpose between individual artists (performers and/or composers) and the people whose traditions they draw on—and whose interests they try to serve. The postwar repression ruptured the convergence of the 1930s and ’40s. It could not, of course, put a permanent end to popular protest, but what it did mean is that subsequent waves of activism—together with their musical expressions—would be much less (if at all) centered around the labor movement. This effect would in turn be reinforced by the large-­scale shift of industrial jobs (where unionization had been most successful) to low-wage regions in other countries. To the extent that protest-music lost its labor roots, it sometimes took on a more individualistic or cynical cast. In so doing, it could still express a widespread malaise, but without offering, even implicitly, an alternative vision. Under the circumstances of a newly reawakening social consciousness (following the disintegration of the Old Left), a stance of this sort, blending skepticism, sarcasm, and irreverence, may have been the only one that—whether intentionally or not—could shake large numbers of people out of their apathy. This understanding is what enables us to politically situate Bob Dylan—a pivotal figure who crossed musical genre-lines, created a whole new litany of popular expressions that helped define the culture of the ’60s (“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”), and yet resolutely shunned links to any organized movement.22 But for songwriters who still had a sense of mission, there remained a lot of issues to address. While not neglecting longstanding questions of social injustice (poverty, racism, etc.), they also broached, among other things, matters of social conformity, political hypocrisy, gender oppression, environmental degradation, and the horrors of war. The scope of

22  As Dorian Lynskey puts it, Dylan embodied “the I protesting the we.” 33 Revolutions (n. 11), 66.

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what these artists put forward is prodigious. I can only touch on a few highlights here. Pete Seeger remained an iconic presence in the midst of the social movements of the 1960s. Always a tribune for labor organizing, he crossed seamlessly, in his advocacy, into the civil rights struggle, for which he adapted and popularized the song that eventually became its anthem, “We Shall Overcome.” And in 1967, at the height of the US troop-presence in Vietnam, he made a successful end-run around corporate censorship to reach 7 million listeners with the first broadcast performance of his allegorical song, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,”23 in which the Mississippi River (used in World War II as a training site) served as stand-in for any future quagmire: “We were [in successive verses] knee-deep/waist-deep/ neck-deep in the Big Muddy, And the big fool said to push on.” Radical performers have always faced the challenge of reaching people beyond their core constituencies. But the core constituencies themselves expanded dramatically during this period. It was among the younger activists of the civil rights movement that this first became apparent, as the apartheid regime of the Southern states highlighted the hypocrisy of the official US claim to be fighting for freedom in Southeast Asia. Once the principal legal demands for civil rights had been met (a process that culminated with the Voting Rights Act of 1965), opposition to the Vietnam War became the common plank for every strand of social protest and revolutionary organizing. The radical sentiment underlying this stance found expression in one of the climactic moments at the vast Woodstock festival (August 1969), when Jimi Hendrix’s electric guitar howled out what had become, for so many victims of repression (at home as well as abroad), the terrifying violence embodied in the star-spangled banner. In the context of a commitment to activism, however, the exemplary songwriter of this period was Phil Ochs. His trajectory rose and fell with that of the antiwar movement, but his songs covered the full span of social issues. He fused the wit and irreverence of his age with a conversational style, always clear and sometimes lyrical. Above all, he saw himself as a political actor and was dependably available to sing for mass demonstrations. But how did Ochs’s radicalism fit in with labor sentiment in his time? Enormous publicity was given, in 1970, to a clash between flag-waving construction workers and antiwar protesters. And indeed the AFL-CIO  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXnJVkEX8O4.

23

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leadership, seeing its own role only in narrow trade-unionist terms, remained unwilling to question official definitions of the “national interest.” Yet the pro-war posture of these sectors of the labor movement clashed with the basic interests of the working class, as corporate/military priorities triggered a sharp turn away from progressive social policies— including those promoting the freedom to organize—thereby setting in motion the sharpened social polarization, deregulation, and financialization which culminated in the economic crash of 2008. Not only was war not in workers’ interest; most of them did not even think that it was in their interest. Contrary to the impression given by media hype, out of all sectors of the US population, the working class was the one that least favored the US presence in Vietnam.24 But its opposition to such policies was inchoate. It could rise to a high pitch among workers who were actually sent into combat, and who, tormented by the absurdities and the cruelty of their mission, gathered in large numbers to cheer antiwar entertainers. And the scope and depth of their disaffection was confirmed as military discipline crumbled.25 But their rebellion was not organized, any more than was the discontent of their communities at home. The working class was unrepresented politically, in that its members lacked a political instrument for acting together on their own behalf. Working-class consciousness thus remained in a kind of limbo, in which it has largely persisted. On the one hand, workers’ disaffection could to some extent be tapped for electoral purposes by one or other of the dominant (bourgeois) political parties. On the other hand, workers would fairly quickly recognize in every case—whichever of the two parties held top office—that their needs had not been addressed.26 Despite whatever hopes might be raised every four years, the more enduring feeling was thus one of powerlessness. In the absence of a politically significant working-class

24  Andrew Levison, The Working-Class Majority (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1974), 158–63. I refer to all adult members of the working class as “workers,” irrespective of whether they are employed, unemployed, in the armed forces, in prison, or retired. For discussion of who constitutes the working class, see Michael Zweig, The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret, 2nd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 29–36. 25  On opposition to the war from within the armed forces, see David Zeiger’s documentary film Sir, No Sir! (2006). 26  Nothing is more predictable than the drop in popular “approval ratings” between the beginning and the end of each president’s tenure in office.

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movement, discontent blended—even if uneasily—with acquiescence to much of the dominant cultural paradigm. These contradictory pressures frame much of what can be said about popular protest singers of the last few decades. What is surprising, in view of the prevailing culture, is how much of recent popular music in the English-speaking world is actually the work of artists with left-wing or at least populist sympathies. One can be reminded of this by reviewing the remarkable assemblage of bands and songwriters described in Dorian Lynskey’s 33 Revolutions per Minute;27 they span the entire gamut of contemporary styles, from rock to punk to reggae, from country to hip hop, while also including artists who defy categorization. In terms of our focus on the US working class, however, the emblematic singer, among those with audiences in the millions, is clearly Bruce Springsteen. Both his roots and his song-repertoire point to this. His best-known song, “Born in the USA,” became a cause célèbre in the presidential campaign of 1984. With lyrics lamenting the economic hardships of working people, its title (and refrain) nonetheless became the touchstone for some rosy patriotic flourishes on the part of the incumbent Ronald Reagan. Springsteen’s intent, as a biographer puts it, was “to rouse America, not coddle it”;28 his response to the misappropriation of his words, however, was studiously ambivalent. Whatever the immediate considerations behind this ambivalence, the underlying tension that it reflected was shown in other ways, not only by Springsteen himself but by others as well. Lavishly promoted performances become increasingly characterized by deafening levels of amplification. Lyrics become indistinct, if not completely drowned out. Audiences for such events typically end up focusing little on the content of the lyrics in any case.29 If the lyrics have an oppositional character, this means that their potential political impact can therefore be regarded by music industry magnates as negligible—a small price to pay for the ample box-office revenues that flow in. We thus witness a paradoxical situation, in which stances supportive of the working class are embraced by many of the most popular artists but are 27  Cited above, n. 11. The book provides lively introductions to the various artists, and has a useful appendix listing their albums. 28  Christopher Sandwood, Springsteen Point Blank (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995), 212. 29  Ray Pratt, Rhythm and Resistance: The Political Uses of American Popular Music (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 182.

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to a large extent neutralized by a combination of (1) how the artists are promoted (the star system), (2) how any explicit message they might put forward is blurred (obfuscation of lyrical content), and (3) how the dominant, commercially mediated culture has shaped the audience’s receptivity. The neutralization is imperfect, however, making the situation inherently fluid. The dynamics of co-optation and subversion co-exist in a precarious balance, from which politically committed artists may occasionally find ways to break out without losing their audiences.

Labor Music Today How, then, to analyze the current situation of labor music? On the one hand, we have the old standbys that are sung, at least in their refrains, by almost everyone. Several of these have already been mentioned here (Solidarity Forever, This Land Is Your Land, We Shall Overcome), and there are others too (such as Which Side Are You On?, Bread and Roses, Union Maid, and the communist anthem, The Internationale). On the other hand, we have a long tradition of labor and radical songwriters—like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Anne Feeney, and more recently David Rovics—who perform sometimes for large audiences. Guthrie even wrote two of the above classics (“Union Maid” as well as “This Land…”). Although many songs coming out of this tradition have become well known, they are nonetheless more apt to be listened to than to be collectively sung. Their function, in any case, is to convey an argument or a narrative. However moving they may be, they demand conscious attention to the lyrics. In between these two poles, though, are all the songs whose diffusion is mediated by the music industry and which thereby permeate the social environment, often becoming known casually and subliminally, as broadcast background music, heard countless times. Within this latter category of songs, as we have seen, working-class themes and progressive politics occupy at best a shifting and problematic position. Overall, the more powerful the working-class movement, the greater the popularity of the more radical artists. After the end of the Vietnam war (1975), when activism ebbed in the US, radical politics found a stronger musical foothold in England, where The Clash, for example, drew 80,000 in 1978 to a Rock Against Racism concert in London, while Billy Bragg played a major role, a few years later, in building support for a national miners’ strike. Meanwhile, for less massive but more militant audiences, Leon Rosselson created a repertoire comparable to that of Phil

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Ochs in its wit, musicality, and breadth of vision.30 Tom Morello, co-­ founder in 1991 of the American band, Rage Against the Machine, would later credit The Clash, along with the hip hop band Public Enemy, for his own politicization.31 If class struggle came most sharply into focus in Britain, what most notably developed in the US beginning in the late 70s were the pounding rhythms and often vitriolic language of hip hop. Originating in the depressed New York neighborhood of South Bronx, hip hop nonetheless had from the outset a global dimension and international resonance.32 It was an expression of the economically marginalized sectors of the working class, but its defiant and relentless beat quickly engaged other sectors, especially among youth. Perhaps even more dramatically than any previous genre, hip hop embodied a two-pronged rejection of the social milieu from which its protagonists emerged. In part, this took the form of a kind of bullying self-aggrandizement (the mode favored by the music industry), but in part—sometimes in the same performers—it took the form of “fighting the power.”33 The rebellious stance exemplified both by Rage and by the more political hip hop bands flowed back into the labor movement. A high and perhaps pivotal moment was the massive response by Wisconsin workers, in early 2011, to the right-wing governor’s attempt to revoke collective-­ bargaining rights for public-sector employees. This occasioned an exuberant and driving song by Morello entitled “Union Town.”34 More generally, there are hints of a revived appreciation of past artists who previously had been under a cloud. Thus the AFL-CIO website in 2011 encouraged its viewers to link to a celebration of Paul Robeson on the part of the National Maritime Union. Clearly, the scope and repercussions of the 2008 financial crisis have continued to spread. Promises to solve the resulting devastation by 30  Other major singers of class struggle from Britain include A.L. Lloyd, Ewan MacColl, and Dick Gaughan. 31   Interviewed by Keith Olbermann, August 2011, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=h8g8JxWA33U. 32  Robin D.G. Kelley, Foreword to Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, eds., The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture (London: Pluto Press, 2006), xi. 33  See Yusuf Nuruddin and Victor Wallis, eds., Hip Hop, Race, and Cultural Politics, special issue of Socialism and Democracy, 18:2 (2004). 34  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ZT71DxLuM.

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­ easures from above lost credibility as the Obama administration failed to m capitalize on what was seen by many to be the most promising political threshold in recent memory. Instead of the “new New Deal” that some projected—in which public funds would be allocated to useful, labor-­ intensive, and decently remunerated social projects (including support for the performing arts)—the dominant approach was one that maintained the previous administration’s military priorities and, on the domestic front, limited itself mostly to tax-credits and private-sector subsidies. Economic insecurity therefore continued to pervade working-class life. At the same time, in the sphere of education, a heightened emphasis on competition and testing drew allocations away from the public sector (including in particular its cultural programs). These trends would deepen under the Trump presidency. The historical moment is thus one that could spark a long overdue re-­ radicalization of the US working class. Certainly there is no lack of provocation. The question is whether gut-reaction can translate into purposeful political practice. Right-wing politicians and media are expert in tapping into the anger of certain oppressed sectors, but they do so by building on a mindset—involving competitiveness, religiosity, and national chauvinism—which is already promoted by the dominant commercial culture, manifested in the consumerist imagery that fills many of the most widely diffused music-videos. If the working class is to organize successfully on its own behalf, it needs a cultural matrix of its own: one with a diversity of forms of expression to match the diversity of its membership; one that can inject—as did the IWW, with its appeal across lines of “race” and nation— a solidly grounded moral force into all its practical efforts. No medium is more suited to carrying out this task than that of song, which can instruct at the same time that it inspires. Of course, this has been known since even before the time of the Wobblies. But the process of implementing it requires constant reinvention. The dominant powers of the present pose new obstacles to anyone who would challenge them. Those performing traditional working-class jobs have been scattered across the globe, and the ready sense of unity they might have had in an earlier epoch has been fragmented politically. Dollars have framed the official political debate more tightly than ever. Low wages, combined with union-busting, sub-contracting, and cutbacks of social services, have forced people to work longer hours with less security—often at more than one job—just to maintain their households. The relentless burden saps the

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quality of their lives and takes away the time and energy they would need in order to respond effectively. And yet there are promising developments as well. Most immediately, 2018 and 2019 have seen a dramatic upsurge in strike activity in the US, with the 2019 autoworkers’ strike the longest in a half-century. Sources of this rediscovered strength surely include the cumulative impact of the song traditions we have examined, multiplied by the greater technological facilities for propagating popular ideas and sentiments. There is, moreover, an “up” side to the many negative things that have been happening. As more and more occupations are destabilized, a greater range of skills is represented among the un- and under-employed. As wider swaths of the population are caught up in the prison-industrial complex, the prisons themselves increasingly become schools of political awareness.35 And while globalization spurs an economic “race to the bottom,” it also awakens greater numbers of people to drawing inspiration from acts of collective resistance in faraway places. Signs of cultural resistance have been growing. Even before the huge 2011 protests in Wisconsin (against union-busting legislation), grassroots actions in many parts of the country displayed the continuing creativity of those who see the underlying class issues that are at stake. A notable development in this period—as original as the sit-down strikes of the 1930s— was the “flash mob,” in which at least a dozen solidarity activists enter the site of some retail service (like a hotel or a supermarket) and suddenly form themselves into a singing or dancing group, with instrumental accompaniment, and perform a specially composed song of protest for the local workers and customers. The performers disperse and vanish after just a few minutes, but with the whole act videotaped for diffusion over the Internet.36 Such fleeting occupations of business space would subsequently be overtaken by prolonged occupations of public space. The Wisconsin State House, which was occupied continuously for over two weeks, was the site of the first such volley. Occupy Wall Street, which began in September 2011, marked, in conjunction parallel actions throughout the country, a new historic level of public awareness and militant dissidence, clearly 35  See the exchange of prison letters in Part Two of Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, Defying the Tomb (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2010). 36   See the “Hark! Walmart” Flash Mob at http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Gz1nWKV0YxE.

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t­ argeting the core institutions of capitalism. Songs directly expressing this awareness were written and sung by, among others, David Rovics, Dave Lippman, and Makana.37 As political tensions grew further in subsequent years, bands with large followings also turned to radical political critique, as for example the rock band The Killers in their bitter and powerful song about border walls, racism, gunfire and mass incarceration (with video directed by Spike Lee), “Land of the Free.”38

37  David Rovics, “Occupy Wall Street”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvLs-8GBWQ; Dave Lippman, “Occupation is on”: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=BTvJO2TlG_o; Makana, “Occupy the Planet: We Are the Many”: http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=8tCeC0xYQdo. 38  The Killers, “Land of the Free”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIT0ucf_gys.

CHAPTER 13

Conclusion

End Times? We return now to the planetary emergency evoked at the beginning of this book. Seeing the necessity for socialism has always involved recognizing that any response to a perceived emergency short of radical social transformation will have a historically fleeting impact at best, and will for most people (the vulnerable majority) mean continued subjection, over the long term, to unacceptable conditions. With the onset of environmental collapse,1 the grim future already faced by working-class people now confronts everyone. Making the case for socialism—for the complete dissolution of capitalist power relations—requires showing, in every sphere of activity, the toxic impact of relationships of domination. Of course, it has always been possible in theory to focus exclusively on eliminating the class aspect of domination. But experience has shown that unless the other dimensions of oppression are also addressed—and unless even the class dimension itself is understood to include, beyond the mere expropriation of capital, the overturning of power relations at the workplace2—the project will sooner or later end in failure. That is to say, the purportedly revolutionary regime 1  See the continuing reports by environmental journalist Dahr Jamail at truthout.org, as well as Naomi Klein, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019). 2  See Richard D. Wolff, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (Chicago: Haymarket, 2012).

© The Author(s) 2020 V. Wallis, Socialist Practice, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35066-6_13

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either will collapse (as in the Soviet Union) or will itself become the face of restored class power (as in China). Taking in the full secular span of human existence, it has been possible, up to now, to view the establishment of class rule as a relatively recent aberration, set against millennia of egalitarian community life.3 Along with class rule—and just as much of an aberration—came domination over nature, which began with the private appropriation of fields and forests and would go on to include the unrestrained extraction of subsoil resources, depletion of aquifers, decimation of marine life, manufacture of toxins, and, most recently, the deliberate torching of vast stretches of tropical jungle. But as the toll of all forms of domination reaches unprecedented extremes, with global capital suppressing all resistance (often with vindictive cruelty, and with a culture that increasingly spawns individual acts of terror),4 the possibility of restoring a regime of ecological sanity and social equality appears more remote than ever. A point has now been reached where the destructive impact of this evolution has so hugely outstripped the control-capacities of human agency, that even the most far-reaching restorative measures face overwhelming obstacles.5 What humanly generated force, after all, can stem the melting of polar ice-cover, the warming oceans and die-off of life-­ sustaining coral, the rising sea levels and calamitous storms, or the disappearance of glaciers that feed vast river basins? How can the relatively hospitable global climate of the last eleven millennia—with its balance of cold and warm, cloud and sunshine, wet and dry, predator and prey—ever be brought back? The convulsions of the natural world that have been unleashed by human practice are of such a scale as to dwarf even the most revolutionary possible reconfigurations. A socialist response is indeed more urgently needed than ever, but we should have no illusion that it will be able to fully mend the “metabolic rift”—the rupture in the web of interdependent 3  Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams, Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017), 176–78. 4  An example of official cruelty, supported by both major parties, is the devastating US economic war on Venezuela (see venezuelanalysis.com); countless mass shooters in the US replicate such heartlessness in their individual vendettas. See Henry A.  Giroux, American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism (San Francisco: City Lights, 2018), ch. 4 (“The Culture of Cruelty in Trump’s America”). 5  See Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the EarthSystem (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016).

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natural processes6—that has been so crushingly imposed and relentlessly deepened by capital. Even partial remedies, however, can save many lives and can improve the quality of existence generally. The various spheres of human endeavor can be examined with this goal in mind. Although the damages accumulate faster than the power to restrain them—and are even accelerated by the deliberate invasive practices of predatory capital (spurred on by regimes like those of Donald Trump and of Brazil’s fascist president Bolsonaro)— our collective awareness of this process may nonetheless lead to steps that are worth taking for the sake of the immediate wellbeing of those living in the present and the near future. Our species is at a moment of reckoning. Collective death—human extinction—is a real prospect within the next few generations. Although it is less certain than the death of particular individuals, there is nonetheless an effective parallel, in the sense that until the terminal moments of an individual’s life, the end point remains unknown and the possibility of proactive steps remains open. For an individual, this may sometimes take the form of redemptive acts (whether religiously inspired or not). For communities—including even very large ones—the equivalent would lie in fusing together, albeit belatedly, all the most noble expressions of human potential in a final push to offset if not ward off an otherwise unmitigated loss. The socialist/communist movement has always been grounded in a vision of the full actualization of all human faculties. We need only recall the invocation by Marx and Engels of a society “in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”7 One might add—inversely, and underscoring the contrast with what’s possible in class-divided society—the requirement that “the free development of all is the condition for the free development of each.” The aspiration to such development never ceases, but its paths to realization grow or shrink with the historical moment. What are the present possibilities for responding effectively to the ecological crisis? At best, there might be a level of restoration that could

6  John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009), ch. 9. 7  Communist Manifesto, last sentence of Part II.

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s­ignificantly prolong the conditions for a good life, for everyone.8 At worst—that is, even if nothing holds back the march to ruin—the awareness itself will carry the potential to dignify, in ways yet to be seen, the twilight years of a species that, for all the harm it has done both to itself and to the rest of the natural world, has attained certain peaks of expressive achievement. We are prone to grasp the full qualities of anything only when we are on the verge of losing it—or have already lost it. Ecological awareness will remind us of the intricate patterns of mutual dependence (strikingly shown in recent nature films) of all the diverse life forms, from the microscopic to the gigantic. Recognizing these patterns will mean that we see the place of our own species—in its various historical guises—in its relation to all the others. If and when an apparent end point comes into view, new patterns and expressions—and possible agendas—may appear. The process will continue for as long as any of us survive.

Scope for Possible Action Given the overriding threat to our species-existence, what then are the more immediate conditions that we must navigate? The most glaring is the unprecedented concentration of wealth, both globally and within the world’s military hegemon, the United States. The underlying drive for capital accumulation, bolstered by capital’s deadly arsenal, relentlessly accelerates the existential threat while at the same time impeding effective opposition, as its political agents occupy and surround whatever regular channels for such expression might seem to be available. The popular response, despite occasional dramatic expressions especially by ecological activists (from Greenpeace to 350.org to the Sunrise Movement to “System Change Not Climate Change” to Extinction Rebellion to the Global Climate Strike), is far from having reached a commensurate level of mobilization and coherence. It is held back, most directly, by the extreme fragmentation—internal as well as international—of the popular or working-class majority. And the capacity to overcome this fragmentation is obstructed by an array of official policies, longstanding cultural patterns,

8  For concrete measures, see https://bio4climate.org/ (Biodiversity for a Livable Climate) and Ashley Dawson, Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (London: Verso, 2019).

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and—increasingly—­individual acts of eco-fascist terror.9 Cutting across this configuration of power and powerlessness is the steady proliferation of new technologies of surveillance and communication. How can the discussions in previous chapters help us address all this? I respond here with a series of “theses” which, while recalling or supplementing points made earlier in these pages, aim above all at enabling us to come to terms with the present moment. (Key points are italicized except in the final thesis, which summarizes the strategic perspective running through the entire book.) 1. The idea of socialism in the US has now re-entered political discourse on a scale that makes it a viable premise for policy proposals. Capitalism has since the 2008 financial meltdown been popularly discredited to the point where challenges to it can no longer be marginalized. While noncapitalist approaches to particular social issues still face political hurdles, it’s no longer possible to claim that the needs to which they respond can be adequately met by applying capitalist—or “market”—principles. This is now well established in such key policy-areas as housing, education, mass transit, and healthcare, as well as environmental protection. In all these areas, market pressures leave broad swaths of the population underserved and/or subjected to crushing debt. Measures grounded in socialist criteria—emphasizing universal rights over market-based access—have broad support,10 and the forces that obstruct them can be easily seen as doing so from a vantage point of their own financial stakes. The appointment of fossil-fuel management personnel to administer environmental policy is only the most blatant example of this. Such conflict-of-interest appointments, although particularly glaring under the Trump presidency, have been standard practice through most of US history.11 In some spheres, such as foreign policy, they may be filtered

 See Giroux, American Nightmare and, on eco-fascism, Klein, On Fire, 40–49.  See for example Howard Ryan, Educational Justice: Teaching and Organizing Against the Corporate Juggernaut (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017), David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, with Ida Hellender, Bleeding the Patient: The Consequences of Corporate Health Care (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2001), and Judith Dellheim and Jason Prince, eds., Free Public Transit (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2018). 11  See G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? (seven editions, 1967–2014). 9

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through membership in think tanks, but this does not make them any less direct an expression of capitalist class interest.12 2. The most immediate obstacle to a majoritarian popular movement in the US is the social/political fragmentation of its natural constituency, the working class. This fragmentation has deep roots in the country’s history, as we saw in Chap. 2, and is constantly reinforced by institutional and cultural factors. These structures converge to reproduce and amplify inequalities based on “race,” gender, nationality, religion, sexuality, age, and ability. Impositions in the matter of race bear clear signs of the capitalist market, from the earlier commerce in slaves to the subsequent creation (via specially designed criminal laws) of a captive labor force, to the later imposition (through the real estate market) of residential segregation and the subsequent dilution (through discriminatory measures including gerrymandering) of the voting power of oppressed populations—all of which are buttressed by an unbroken tradition of racist beliefs and aggressions.13 Even when specific impositions are legally overridden, the barriers they generate linger on, leading those who are subjected to them to adapt in various ways that may lighten their immediate burden—for example, by valorizing cultural separateness—but that reinforce the social chasm. In any case, the resulting separation of peoples obstructs communication across the imposed lines of division. Each category of discrimination or oppression has its particular dynamic, which for individuals may be either aggravated or offset depending on the position they occupy within the class hierarchy; but in every dimension of oppression, the initial impact on the affected persons (typically) is to encourage an identitarian self-definition—whereby you view yourself in terms of your assigned category— which obscures the common class interest that cuts across all the distinct demographic identities.14

12  See Laurence H. Shoup, Wall Street’s Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976–2014 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2015). 13  See Victor Wallis, Democracy Denied: Five Lectures on U.S. Politics (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2019). On the problematic nature of the concept of “race,” see Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life (London: Verso, 2012), ch. 4. 14  Victor Wallis, “Intersectionality’s Binding Agent: The Political Primacy of Class,” New Political Science 37:4 (December 2015) (slightly revised as ch. 8 of Wallis, Red-Green Revolution). See also Michael D. Yates, Can the Working Class Change the World? (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018).

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3. Summing up so far, we see on the one hand that the basic alignment of class interests in US society has become increasingly clear, at least to the extent of showing the capitalist class’s indifference to the wellbeing of everyone else—an impression reflected in the Occupy slogan of “the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent.” On the other hand, however, the divisions within the 99 percent have not diminished. Capital persists in stoking those divisions as much as possible. The identitarian culture emerges not only as a natural reaction of particular oppressed groups seeking protective cover or a positive self-image. It is also encouraged from above, via the systematic application of tokenism—a conspicuous practice of the corporate media and the corporate-dominated political parties, all of which mount a “rainbow” display of celebrities, but without advancing the matching policies that would give substance to their supposed message. Tokenism would have us believe that a particular population’s needs have been met if select individuals who are presumed—on the basis of a single matching trait (“race,” gender, etc.)—to “represent” it are put in positions of high visibility. This practice facilitates ignoring the needs of the masses, who continue to be deprived of economic security and respect. Tokenism encourages voters to attach more importance to politicians’ demographic traits than to the social/economic interests that their policy-advisers and their programs reflect.15 4. In addition to fostering illusions in the populations that it supposedly responds to, tokenism sparks resentment in those whom it ignores, who then can easily become convinced that if they experience economic and social deprivation, it’s not because of their class position but rather because they don’t possess the demographic traits that have been tagged—albeit in tokenistic fashion—for compensatory advancement. These are the “neglected” individuals (disproportionately heterosexual males of European descent) who, as we saw in Chap. 9, constitute the shock troops of white nationalism. They provide a ready audience for appeals to racism, xenophobia, homophobia, religious bigotry, etc. They are the classic constituency of those who will vote against their own interests for the sake of electing political leaders who, on the fascist model, validate their resentments. Beyond voting, many of them are primed—and egged on by such 15  Victor Wallis, “The Plague of Tokenism,” Green Horizon, no. 28 (Fall/Winter 2013/2014); available at http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/05/12/the-plague-oftokenism/.

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leaders—to physically attack populations that they view as enjoying undeserved protection (although they do not extend this threat to those whose protected status derives from class privilege). 5. The presence of such a sector offers a popular base for the most unabashedly self-interested policies of the capitalist ruling class. We noted in Chap. 1 the symbiosis of the Republicans’ and Democrats’ public postures: the Democrats being able to denounce the Republicans’ bigotry and “knownothingness” while the Republicans accuse the Democrats of being socialists—as a result of which both can get away with ignoring the economic, educational, environmental, and healthcare needs of the general population. Underlying the Republican/Democrat collusion at the present time is the mutual reinforcement between, on the Republican side, the essentially fascist mindset—often translated into physical assaults— emanating from the white-nationalist constituency and, on the Democrat side, the particularistic (identitarian) preoccupations of all the other demographic groups which, were they united, would constitute a popular majority. Being targeted by the white nationalists underscores the concern of each particular oppressed group with its own predicament and thereby reduces its disposition to think politically about allying with other oppressed groups—the first step toward creating a class-conscious political force capable of challenging the order that has caused it so much pain. 6. Mass political participation now unfolds within a communications regime that has been substantially transformed within the span of a generation. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, together with smart-phone technology, have upended all traditional forms of human interaction.16 The effect of the new framework has been double-edged. On the one hand, a form of social media has arisen in which everyone has the opportunity not only to express o ­ pinions, but also to broadcast—thanks to ubiquitous instant video—factual reports of a kind that previously emerged (if at all) almost entirely through the work of investigative journalists. The wide diffusion of such reports—epitomized by videos of police killing unarmed civilians—has an undeniable democratizing impact. On the other hand, however, the platforms for all this activity are 16  See Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (New York: Public Affairs, 2019), and my review in Jump Cut (ejumpcut.org), no. 59 (2019); also Wallis, Red-Green Revolution, 188–90.

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mega-enterprises with their own agendas, in which the genuinely subversive revelations are absorbed into a sea comprised overwhelmingly of trivia, but from which emerge self-reinforcing networks of often dangerous cults whose potentially huge followings can propagate their obsessions without fear of being restrained by any influence outside their own narrow circles. Meanwhile, information about everyone is routinely collected (whether for commercial or “intelligence” purposes), and capitalist management reserves the power, in partnership with government agencies, to decide what kinds of expression should be obstructed by their search engines—or suppressed entirely—under the all-purpose pretext of combating “extremism.” 7. The spread of socialist awareness threatens to unmask the pattern whereby the underlying class antagonism of capitalist society, instead of showing itself directly, is hidden behind the clash between white nationalists (including police officers) on the one hand and the various particular oppressed groups (including refugees and immigrants) on the other. The complicity of white nationalism with capitalist interests becomes increasingly unmistakable as the socialist presence grows. Not surprisingly (although the link is not automatic), socialist ideas have the highest levels of popular resonance in communities that have been the most oppressed. It is thus hardly coincidental that a majority of the most progressive elected officials in the US Congress, since 2018, have been women of color from districts with high rates of poverty. As a result, the capitalist class, while seeking to disassociate itself from racism (as in its tokenistic support for a politician like Obama), can at the same time accept if not encourage the overtly racist agenda of a figure like Trump, who from the beginning of his presidential run has publicly instigated and applauded racist assaults.17 Given the broader culture of official and vigilante violence that has marked US history, it is unsurprising that the response of Trump’s nationalist “base” to the perceived socialist incursion has included hundreds if not thousands of death-threats against such high-profile advocates as these congresswomen.18 17  A revealing precedent to this was a recorded 1971 phone-conversation (released in 2019) between then-President Richard Nixon and future President Ronald Reagan, in which both used vulgar racist terms to refer to African diplomats. Democracy Now! August 2, 2019. 18  The unrestrained promotion of such viciousness is illustrated in this August 2019 news item: “A North Carolina billboard that went up last weekend advertises a local gun shop underneath the images of four familiar young congresswomen of color: …

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8. To the real emergency of environmental breakdown, the Trump cabal has responded with various manufactured emergencies, most notably with Iran and Venezuela (the latter initially declared by Obama but escalated by Trump), and at the US/Mexico border. The panic over immigration, in particular, links up with the racist fear of a change in the demographic balance of the US electorate. The measures taken against immigrants and for suppressing the votes of people of color are all devised in the context of a populist appeal to white nationalism, but with the additional aim—central from the standpoint of the ruling class—of blocking the emergence of a hegemonic anti-capitalist force, which would be led precisely by these “non-white” sectors, as foreshadowed in some of the legislative initiatives of the new progressive members of Congress. The Democratic party leadership has collaborated in seeking to block such initiatives by using the accusation of Russian influence not only against Trump but also against any leftist insurgency within the DP itself.19 In so doing, it is seeking to marginalize the principal constituency of popular opposition to the dominant white-nationalist agenda. We thus again see the two parties’ collusion, but this time with the added risk of sparking conflict with Russia as a basis for bringing the two parties together, leaving domestic needs unmet. 9. To the acceleration of environmental breakdown is now being added a heightened threat of nuclear war. New disclosures of US military studies conducted as early as 1961 confirm scientists’ fears about the danger of “nuclear winter,” which, by virtue of the huge amount of dust that a series of nuclear explosions would draw into the stratosphere (too high to come back down to Earth with rainfall), would shut out sunlight and kill virtually all vegetation and hence also all animal life.20 Trump’s withdrawals from international agreements—on the climate, on Iran, and on nuclear

the same four congresswomen Donald Trump has spent the last few weeks targeting with racist attacks on Twitter and in campaign speeches.” https://thinkprogress.org/ billboard-gun-shop-threatens-democratic-congresswomen-8179be91d794/. 19  The “Russia” accusation was used in the 2016 presidential nomination race to stigmatize disclosures about unethical practices of the Clinton campaign and again in 2019 (after an early debate among 2020 contestants) in an attempt to discredit criticisms lodged by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard against Senator Kamala Harris. For critical analysis, see reports by former CIA officer Ray McGovern at consortiumnews.com. 20  Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 141ff.

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weapons—and his ramping up of the US drive to global supremacy21 heighten the perennial risk of great-power conflict. In the same way that mass participation will be needed for the broad task of ecological restoration, so also will it be needed, more immediately, for building the political force necessary to halt the march toward nuclear holocaust. What has to be understood, however, is that the aggressive steps that could lead to such a disaster will remain politically attractive to a leadership that is incapable of addressing the needs of the majority and which therefore is in perpetual search of artificial pretexts for asserting its authority. 10. The possibility of nuclear war is only the most catastrophic variant of an unfolding conjuncture that, even apart from it, was (and is) already fraught with mortal danger. The environmental crisis is, like nothing else, the concern of every human being, not only in the sense that it affects everyone, but also in the sense—and it cannot be repeated too often—that everyone’s involvement will be required to assure even the most minimal chance of long-term species survival. Such universal involvement, as I have argued in Red-­Green Revolution, is necessary not only to ward off calamity (to the extent that this is possible), but also to shape the structures that will provide continuing guidance to the process of recovery and restoration. This task goes far beyond a mere shift in the ways that energy is generated; it entails a revolutionary change in the way that the human species as a whole relates to the rest of the natural world—meaning most immediately an end to the drive for p ­ erpetual economic expansion.22 The projects involved in the Green New Deal, far-reaching as they are, represent just the initial steps in this direction.23 To undo capitalist hyper-development means in part restoring patterns of human behavior that prevailed in an earlier epoch, but this cannot be done without ending the hegemony of the capitalist class itself. This signifies a thoroughgoing social transformation—as the only escape from the existential threat.

21  On the structural pressures embodied in Trump’s policies, see John Bellamy Foster, Hannah Holleman, and Brett Clark, “Imperialism in the Anthropocene,” Monthly Review, 71:3 (July–August 2019). 22  For a critique of certain leftists’ acceptance of economic expansion, see John Bellamy Foster, “The Long Ecological Revolution,” Monthly Review, 69:6 (November 2017). On problems with solar power, see Dustin Mulvaney, Solar Power: Innovation, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019). 23  See John Bellamy Foster, interviewed by Vaios Triantafyllou, 9 February 2019, https:// truthout.org/articles/a-green-new-deal-is-the-first-step-toward-an-eco-revolution/.

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V. WALLIS

11. Do we have the collective power to rise to this challenge? The answer will come in practice, and will depend on initiatives from many directions. This book has offered a partial assemblage of relevant experiences and arguments. As our discussion of workers’ control (Chap. 7) has suggested, people not ordinarily given to activism can rise to extraordinary heights of engagement at certain historical moments. This capacity is not bounded by particular national cultures. Our examination of socialist projects both in and out of positions of state power—and in various stages of revolution—has shown that despite the hazards of authoritarianism on the one hand and spontaneity on the other, it is possible to identify and steer a middle ground, comparable to the blend of structure with emotional drive that characterizes authentic creativity. Key to achieving such a balance is the capacity to recognize and transcend superficial dichotomies, such as those that assert an inherent antagonism between democracy and a vanguard (Chaps. 2 and 6), between humanity and nature (Chap. 5), between bottom-up and top-down initiatives (Chap. 7), between proactive and defensive strategizing (Chap. 8), between legal and extra-legal revolutionary activities (Chaps. 8, 9, 10, 11), or between the interests of the working class as a whole and those of the particular demographic groups that comprise it (Chap. 4). Finally, in looking at some of the artistic expressions of political struggle (Chap. 12), we remind ourselves of ways in which it is possible to overcome artificial ­barriers—erected for purposes of distraction, incitement, or control—to the deeper levels of human communication. In sum, the elements of an effective response to the existential threat can be found in the history of socialism and in the insights of Marxian thought. It is up to us to draw out these elements and synthesize them in ways that take into account both the overall predicament and the varying circumstances in which we now find ourselves. Underlying the question of whether we can do this, however, is the question of whether sufficiently vast numbers of people will be able to tap into the basic sense of solidarity on which, as a species, our survival originally depended. Solidarity subsists as a largely suppressed value within capitalist society, but has shown its force in some of the exceptional moments we have looked at: among production workers suddenly rising, amidst revolutionary turmoil, to the challenge of collective self-­ management, and among service workers (from Cuba) responding across

13 CONCLUSION 

237

often great distances—sometimes in emergencies—to support peoples whose needs for healthcare, education, disaster relief, or armed support outstripped what their own leaderships could provide. We know that individuals have the capacity to rise above the financial calculus imposed by capital; the question is whether they/we can create the political force that will be needed in order to generate such solidarity on a massive scale.

Index

A Abu-Jamal, Mumia, 174 accountability, 19, 33, 35, 50, 53, 92 advanced capitalist countries, 60f, 98, 140 advertising, 26 affirmative action, 164 Africa, 22, 141, 194 African Americans, 2, 22f, 155, 164n, 171–83 African National Congress, 150 age discrimination, 28, 146 Agee, Philip, 149n, 172, 174 agriculture agrarian reform (Chile), 114 capitalist, 15, 26, 76, 79f in the Spanish revolution, 110 Alexander, Michelle, 180n alienation, 162, 166 see also under Marx, Karl Allende, Salvador, 113–16, 117, 197, 199–204

American Federation of Labor-­ Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), 151f, 165f, 207, 216f, 220 partnership with capital, 166 American Indian Movement, 171, 174 American Institute for International Labor Solidarity, 152 anarchism, 34, 109, 110, 112, 114 cultural impact of (Spain), 113 Angola, 194 anticommunism, 40f, 51 Livre noir du communisme, 134 The Lesser Evil, 134 anti-globalization movement, 140 antiwar movement, 149, 150, 216 in labor organizing, 153 arms industry, 26 artists, 69, 215 Asia, 22 Attica uprising, 149n

© The Author(s) 2020 V. Wallis, Socialist Practice, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35066-6

239

240 

INDEX

B Barcelona, 110, 111, 112 Batista regime (Cuba), 190, 192 Berklee College of Music, 9 Berlin Wall, fall of, 37, 39, 120, 197 Bin Wahad, Dhoruba, 174 biodiversity, 86 biotechnology, 79, 157 Black Agenda Report, 155 “black lives matter,” 30 Black Panther Party, 28f, 145, 146, 167, 171–77 challenges to police, 173 free breakfast program, 173 language, 175 legacy, 176f “threat to national security,” 179 violence, 176 vulnerability, 175 Black Power, 144, 146 Black Radical Congress, 166 blues, 209 Blum, William Killing Hope, 155 Bolivia, 185, 193f, 195 Bolsheviks, 47, 48, 54, 55, 102f, 129f global perspective of, 60 Bragg, Billy, 219 Braverman, Harry Labor and Monopoly Capital, 89 Brazil, xii, 227 Bolsonaro, 227 Brest-Litovsk Treaty, 129, 130 Browder, Kalief, 179 Buchanan, Patrick, 161 bureaucracy/bureaucrats, 51, 53, 89, 130 in US labor movement, 151, 166, 207 bureaucratic rule, 38, 65 Burkett, Paul Marx and Nature, 15 Bush, George H.W., 180 “business unionism,” 207, 214

C Camp, Lee Redacted Tonight, 155 capitalism, 6, 13f, 83 crises of, 26, 39f deformation of people, 91 global scope, 17, 41 global strategy, 43 “normal” development, 156 overproduction, 40 public sector growth, 51 relations of production, 89 restoration of, 14 role in shaping socialism, 40, 47 unsolvable problems of, 59 capitalist class, 5, 43, 57, 66, 72 transnational interests of, 58 Carey, Ron, 165 Carlin, George, 154 Carr, E.H., 47 Carrillo, Santiago, 112 cars, private, 15, 26 Carter, Jimmy, 161 Castro, Fidel, 185, 191 Central America, 151f, 161 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 146f, 151, 174 central planning, 84, 88–93 Chaplin, Ralph, 205 chauvinism, 52 Chávez, Hugo, 120, 122f, 198 childcare, 69 Chile, 7–9, 22, 101, 106, 113–16, 117f, 141, 185, 195–204 debate on, 204 factory takeovers in, 114–16, 197f, 202f Popular Unity (UP), 196, 202, 204 China, People’s Republic of, 14, 18–20 Cultural Revolution, 19 improved living standards, 51 rightward evolution, 98, 156, 226

 INDEX 

civil rights movement (US), 7, 28, 143–47, 150, 216 Clark, Ramsey, 174 class analysis repressed (US), 142, 151 as basis for self-organization of the oppressed, 66 as a deliberate construct, 68 domination, 225 interest, 78 privilege, 145 class consciousness, 43, 109, 123 ecological, 24–27 obstacles to, in US, 22 in relation to anti-oppression struggles, 56f stigmatized (US), 4, 213 class struggle filmmakers’ role in (Chile), 199 in history, 74 and labor music, 214 personified, 198 Cleaver, Eldridge, 176 Cleaver, Kathleen, 173 Clinton, Bill, 29, 161,162, 180 COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program [FBI]), 173 colonized regions, 58 see also Third World commodities, 16 Common Dreams, 155 Commoner, Barry, 77 communal landownership, 110 communism, 87, 89, 97 “end of,” 10, 197 Marx’s conception of, 75 Communism, 134 Communist League, 127 Communist Manifesto, 21, 74 on crisis, 82 see also Marx and Engels Communist Party Chilean, 201

241

German, 130f international position on Spain, 113 Soviet, 91 Spanish, 112 US, 27f, 142, 143, 145 “comparable worth,” 69 compromise, 107, 125, 128–30 Congo Che Guevara in, 193f Connolly, James “Revolutionary Song” (quoted), 211 Consortium News, 155 consumers, 77f, 80 luxury consumption, 26 protection, 88 conversion, economic/ecological, 34, 52 cooperatives, 119, 124 coordination, economic, 110, 117 corruption among Russian workers in 1917, 103, 108 conflicts of interest, 229 of the electoral process, US, 133 see also elections, money in CounterPunch, 154 criminalization, 23, 179 crises economic and environmental, 26f, 49 see also financial meltdown (2008) Cuba, 28, 190–95 CIA campaign against, 146f ethic of service, 194f, 236 involvement in Africa, 194f revolution, 7, 51, 120, 141, 190 socialism in, 20f workers’ control in, 100, 120f cultural transformation, 19 culture access to, in Soviet Union, 90 capitalist, 44f, 219, 221 of cooperation, 119 of domination, 183

242 

INDEX

culture (cont.) of equality, 61, 120f impact of ’60s movements, 164 of mistrust, 183 oppositional, 33, 180, 221 of participation, 122 of prison guards, 181 of US working class, 152, 168, 210, 214 of violence, 226 Czechoslovakia, 101, 118 D Debray, Régis Che’s Guerrilla War, 188 Debs, Eugene V., 4, 27 decentralization, 121 De Gaulle, Charles, 53 deindustrialization, 163, 164, 180, 215 del Toro, Benicio, 185, 191, 195 democracy “excess of” (US), 29, 148, 160 grassroots vs. bourgeois, 50 increasing constraints on, 157 “liberal,” as “lesser evil,” 134f and vanguard, 34 see also voting rights Democracy Now, 154 Democrat/Republican duopoly, 2f, 29, 131–33, 137, 232 impact on US working class, 217 popular rejection of, 161 and Russiagate, 234 Democratic Leadership Council, 29, 150, 161 Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), 31, 155 Deng Xiaoping, 19 deregulation, 4 dialectics, 41–47, 54, 63, 71f, 105 application to organizing, 56

of a divided world, 48f, 134 defined, 41 and irony, 54, 57 relation of part to whole, 45f of transition, 47f dictatorship anarchists on, 112 at enterprise level (Lenin), 104 “proletarian” (Gramsci), 109 Die Neue Zeit, 127 disability rights, 28, 146 Dollars & Sense, 149 domination class, 13, 225 inherent in class relations, 72 over nature, 226 Dukakis, Michael, 162 Dulles, Allen, 155 Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne Indigenous Peoples’ History of the US, 155 DuVernay, Ava 13th (film), 177 Dylan, Bob, 215 E ecological activism, 228 economic growth/expansion, 14f, 25f, 39, 58f, 105f, 123, 235 Edelstam, Harald, 197 education, public, 52, 221, 229 Edwards, George, 174 El Salvador, 8, 152 “electability,” 131 elections money in, 137, 157 progressive gains in (US), 168 electoral work, 33, 125 corruption of electoral process (US), 133 Marx and Engels on, 126–28

 INDEX 

Ellsberg, Daniel, 149n energy, 24–26 Engels, Friedrich Dialectics of Nature, 79 The Peasant War, 55 on street-fighting, 127f England/Britain, 81, 219f environmental crisis, 9, 14f, 23, 58, 64, 77, 159, 215 activism around, 228 capitalist restoration and, 54 as a class issue, 24–27, 123 responsibility of advanced countries, 60f scope of, 226 urgency of, 1f, 225–28, 235 environmental justice, 166 environmental racism, 154 environmentalism bourgeois vs. Marxist, 77 Europe, Eastern, 9, 64, 88 Europe, Western, 99, 109, 118, 136, 150 Exxon Mobil, 24f F FAIR, 154 fascism Italian, 106, 107, 113 mindset, in US, 232 Spanish, 111, 112, 113 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 29, 142, 144f, 146, 173, 179 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 174 Feeney, Anne, 219 Ferguson, Herman, 172 financial meltdown (2008), 123, 159, 221, 229 financial services, 26 financialization, 159, 217

First International, 5, 17 flash mobs, 222 folk music, 209, 213 fossil fuels, 23, 24f divestment from, 30 Foster, John Bellamy The Ecological Revolution, 15 France May 1968, 53, 101 2017 election, 133 Franco, Francisco, 111, 113 full employment, 69 G gay rights, 28 attacks on, 162 support for, 166 see also sexual orientation gender, 24, 56, 57, 67f, 150, 206 “gender gap,” 164 oppression, 215 genetic engineering, 16, 79f, 86 geological epoch, new, 1, 5, 27 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 53 Germany, 101, 109, 118 1932 Hitler/Hindenburg election, 131 Giolitti, Giovanni, 107f glasnost [opening], 50, 52 Global North/South, xii see also Third World Gorbachev, Mikhail, 73, 78 Gore, Al, 29, 161 Gramsci, Antonio, 109 Green Party (US), 31 Grenada, 8, 38 Guantánamo prison, 135 Guatemala, 40 guerrilla warfare, 120, 185, 187, 191–94

243

244 

INDEX

Guevara, Ernesto “Che,” 185, 190–95 Bolivian Diary, 193 Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 192 moral legacy, 194f Guthrie, Woody, 212f, 219 Guyana, 141 Guzmán, Patricio Battle of Chile (film), 185, 196–204 Obstinate Memory (film), 196f H Hampton, Fred, 29, 145, 173, 180 on political education (quoted), 177 Hansen, Dr. James, 159 Harvard University, 7 Hayes, Alfred, 212 healthcare systems, 132,162, 229 reversion to fees (China), 20 Hendrix, Jimi, 216 Hilferding, Rudolf, 131 Hill, Joe, 211 hip hop, 220 Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism, 9 Hobsbawm, Eric, 1 Hoffa, James [Jr.], 165 Honecker, Erich, 53 Hoover, J. Edgar, 29, 173 Horowitz, David, 176n House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), 212 human impulses, need to transform, 60f human rights, 169 Hungary, 101 Huntington, Samuel P. Crisis of Democracy, 148 I identity politics, 63, 71, 166f and common class interest, 230 “white” identity, 163, 210, 230

ideology, bourgeois, 78 conflation of capitalism with democracy, 136 primacy of “market” criteria, 160 Ignatieff, Michael The Lesser Evil, 135 immigration, 23, 164, 210 panic over (US), 234 imperialism impact on working class, 21f US, in Latin America, 186 US labor foreign policy, 152, 166 In These Times, 149 Indiana University, 9 Indianapolis, 8, 149n Indigenous Peoples’ Day, 155 individualism, 4, 168, 176 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), 27f, 153, 205–07, 211, 221 Little Red Songbook, 205 industrialization, 109 Soviet, 105 inequality in China, 20 global increase in, 64, 228 inherent in class-division, 57, 68 spheres of, 230 in US, 183 Institute for Alternative Journalism, 154 Institute for Public Accuracy, 154 intellectual property, 80 intellectuals, 69 and the labor movement, 166 intersectionality, 32n, 63, 67, 72, 167n Iran, 118, 234 2005 election, 133 Iraq, US invasion, protests against, 169 Islamic State (ISIS), 136 Israel, 137 Italy, 101, 106, 107–09, 117f

 INDEX 

J Jackson, George, 175 Jackson, Rev. Jesse, 153, 173 Jacobin, 154 jazz, 209 Johnson, Kevin “Rashid,” 182n K Kennedy, John F. assassination of, 147 on peaceful vs. violent revolution, 172 Kennedy, Joseph P., 4 King, Rev. Martin Luther, Jr., 144, 172f, 180 King, Mel, 173 Kornai, Janos, 90 Ku Klux Klan, 28, 52 L labor market, 157 labor movement (US), 150, 151–54, 165 broader than unions, 207f increasing diversity in, 153, 164 Labor Notes, 149 Labor/Community Strategy Center, 154 Latin America, 7, 20, 22, 100, 123, 141, 164, 185–204 Latinos, 164, 168 Lawler, James, 85–87 leadership, 17, 34, 93, 101, 119 Mao’s practice, 19 role of oppressed sectors, 164 unaccountable, 28 Lebowitz, Michael The Contradictions of Real Socialism, 88–93 Lee, Spike, 223 Left movement (US), 4, 27–31, 139–70 of 1960s, 7f, 28, 32, 70 accomplishments, 149 basic traits, 168 pragmatism of, 65

245

privileged participants, 143, 145 prospects for unification, 166, 169f response to “end of communism,” 9 legitimacy, 161 Lenin, V.I., 34, 44, 102, 128–30 “Left-Wing” Childishness…, 104 “Left-Wing” Communism…, 128, 130 On Compromises, 128 What Is to Be Done?, 128 on Taylorism, 103–05 on workers’ control, 102f, 113 “lesser evilism,” 126, 131–33 Leval, Gaston Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, 119 Levison, Andrew The Working Class Majority, 151 Lew-Lee, Lee All Power to the People (film), 171–74 liberal democracy, 135f Limbaugh, Rush, 163 Linskey, Dorian 33 Revolutions per Minute, 218 Lippman, Dave, 223 Lomax, Alan Folk Songs of North America, 210 Lukács, György, 134 History and Class Consciousness, 37n, 41n lynchings, 178 M Makana, 34 Malcolm X, 145, 172f, 175, 180 Mann, Eric, 154n Mao Zedong, 18f, 20 “market democracy,” 159, 160 “market socialism,” 83-88 markets, 13f, 83–88 capitalist, and racist practices, 230 pressures, 19, 26, 44, 157, 229 psychological effects, 85

246 

INDEX

Marx, Karl 1844 Manuscripts, 73f Capital, 13, 73, 76, 89 Critique of the Gotha Program, 76, 83 Value, Price, and Profit, 205 alienation/estrangement, 18, 42, 74, 75, 81 “associated producers,” 15, 34, 89, 93, 125 democratic vision, 65 distrust of “leaders,” 119 “excretions of production,” 76f labor and nature, 76 as organizer, 17, 32, 87, 126 on slavery, 22 “species-being,” 75, 81 systemic vision of, 67 on technology, 16 value, 75f on working-class women, 81 Marx and Engels on capitalism’s global scope, 21 on class consciousness, 32 on “desertions” from ruling class, 33 on electoral strategy, 146–48 on “free development of all,” 89, 227 and privileged backgrounds, 145 on “ruling ideas,” 136 when not to support the “lesser evil,” 127 on world revolution, 58 Marxism, 10, 14, 18f, 28, 37 alleged “death” of, 63–65 analysis of capital, 13f, 69 association with “first-epoch” regimes, 62 continuing relevance of, 54–58 scope, 55, 69 Marxist method, 17, 37, 41, 67 mass incarceration, 4, 29f, 64, 177–83 mass shootings, 162, 226n McCarthyism, 28, 214n McGovern, George, 148

McKibben, Bill The End of Nature, 159 McNally, David Against the Market, 84, 86 media, “alternative,” 29, 149, 154f, 169 activist websites, 31n media, corporate/bourgeois, 1, 31, 52, 65, 142 censorship, 171, 216 deployment of tokenism, 231 equating market with popular will, 46 increasing concentration of, 158 popular skepticism about, 161 men, 68 Mészáros, István Beyond Capital, 123 “metabolic rift,” 226f Mexico, 194 military forces Chile, 115f, 201 US, 147, 183 used against worker control, 101 “militias,” 162 minimum/living wage, 30, 88, 205f “mixed economy,” 3, 159f Mondragón cooperative, 123 money, abolition of, 110 Monthly Review, 7, 149 Moore, Michael, 154 Where to Invade Next (film), 183 Morello, Tom, 220 Mozambique, 38 Müller Silva, Jorge, 197 Müntzer, Thomas, 55 music industry, 209, 218f, 220 N Nation of Islam, 145 national contexts, 17, 41, 46 National Endowment for Democracy, 152 National Maritime Union, 220

 INDEX 

National Radio Project, 154 nature, conquest of, 79f Nazi regime, 51 and Communism, 134 intervention in Spain, 113 invasion of Soviet Union, 48 non-aggression pact, 28 rise of, 130f needs, basic, 98 Nelson, Sara, 166n neoliberal era, 4, 71, 139f, 160, 180 Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 127 Neues Forum (GDR), 53 “new communist movement,” 152, 167f New Deal, 3, 29, 31, 147 arts projects, 213 New Economic Policy (NEP), 129 “new social movements,” 28, 32, 71, 167 New University Conference (NUC), 8 Newton, Huey, 174, 175f Nicaragua, 8, 38, 152, 190 Nixon, Richard, 148, 179, 233n North Korea, 20 O Obama, Barack, 4, 132, 161, 221, 233 obsolescence, planned, 26 Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, 162 occupational safety, 88 Ochs, Phil, 216, 219f Occupy movement, 2, 30, 140, 153, 163, 222 Ollman, Bertell Market Socialism, 84–88 Omar, Ilhan, 162 oppression, xii, 208 non-class forms, 69 by race and gender, 67f sectors affected, 32 structures of, 5, 164, 191 totality of, 66

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, 92n Ortega, Sergio, 197 P Pakistan, 194 parental/family leave, 69, 88 Paris Commune as democracy, 65 suppression of, 47 parliamentarism, 127f participation, popular, 2, 15f, 54 barriers to (US), 23 in Chile, 115, 202 in China, 19, 124 in Cuba, 121 culture of, 122 fear of, 54 in filmmaking, 186 low level in US, 161 need for, 235 in revolutionary Spain, 110 in Soviet Union, 18 universal, 33 patents, 80f peasants, 116, 186–88 in Bolivia, 193f in Chile, 114, 195f in China, 19 in Cuba, 192 in Soviet Russia, 129 Peltier, Leonard, 174 perestroika [structural change], 59 Perot, Ross, 161 Persian Gulf states, 22 Peru, 186–88 Pinochet, Augusto, 185, 195, 196 plea bargains, 180f Poland, 53, 101 Solidarity, 46, 53 police, 26, 147, 174, 176, 180 beatings of black people, 178 killings by, 29, 181, 232

247

248 

INDEX

Popular Front (Spain), 110f, 114 Portugal, 101, 118 postmodernism, 71 poverty/the poor, 29, 30, 86, 208 powerlessness, 189, 217, 229 prison industrial complex, 177f, 222 prisoners, 9f, 23, 29, 30, 149, 178 movement against prison slavery, 153 prisons, 26, 180–83 abuse in, 181f long terms, 23 Norwegian, 183 as “schools of public awareness,” 222 solitary confinement, 182 “supermax,” 179, 182 privatization, 4, 158, 159 adverse effects of, 53 of body parts, 81 in China, 124 in Spanish Republic, 112 proletariat, 42 see also working class proportional representation, 131 Public Enemy, 220 Puerto Rico, 133 R “race,” 230n racism, 22–24, 60f, 162 capital’s complicity in, 233f class aspects, 57, 69 death threats, 233n impact on politics, 168, 178 Nixon/Reagan phone-call, 233n structural, 30, 230 struggle against, 28, 149 Rage Against the Machine, 220 Rainbow Coalition, 29, 173 Rangel, Charles, 180 Reagan, Ronald, 148, 160, 180, 218, 233n

reductionism, 78 religion, 56 Renmin University of China, 10 repression, 64, 102, 186f of anti-racist organizing, 144 impact, in US, 168 in Italy, 108 of popular movements, 16 post-1917, US, 27 post-1945, US, 4, 6, 28, 142f, 144, 145, 151, 168, 213f, 215 in Soviet Union, 18, 50, 51 of workers in Russia 1918, 104 revolution, 40, 204 guerrilla tactics, 148, 187f, 192–94 as a long process, 142 reform and, 121 revolutionary agent, 41 revolutionary party, 46, 119, 126 see also working class; vanguard rights, 56n to one’s job, 89 right-wing constituencies, 162–64, 231f Robeson, Paul, 211–13, 220 Robinson, Earl, 212 Roosevelt, Franklin D. “Economic Bill of Rights,” 3 Rosselson, Leon, 219 Rovics, David, 219, 223 ruling class global scope of (US), 135, 150 organizational advantages of, 68 portrayed (Chile), 198 and resource wars, 32 Russia alleged influence in US politics, 234n backwardness in 1917, 45, 55 post-1991 hardships, 139 uniqueness of, 47f, 102 see also Soviet Union Russian Revolution, 59, 65, 102–06

 INDEX 

S Sanders, Bernie, 3, 4, 31, 137, 140, 153, 155, 162, 163, 168 Sanjinés, Jorge The Principal Enemy (film), 185–89 Sawant, Kshama, 30 Schweickart, David, 85–88 Science & Society, 149 Seale, Bobby, 173, 175f Seattle 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations, 153, 169 City Council, 30 Second International, 130 sectarianism, 168 security of capital, 26 decline at personal level, 221 personal vs. capitalist, 183 Seeger, Pete, 213f, 216, 219 sexism, 60f, 166 sexual orientation, 24, 32, 146, 231 Sierra Club, 166 slavery, 22, 177–79, 210 Smith, Adam, 13 “social democracy,” 3, 41, 140 Social Democrats (Germany), 76, 131 social media, 232f censorship on, 233 social security, 160 socialism, 2–4 in China, 18–20 in Cuba, 21f definition, 38n “democratic,” 3, 4 and democratic norms, 54 “first-epoch” (“real”), 15, 38, 39, 50, 88–93, 100 Harry S. Truman on, 3n “in one country,” 47, 58 necessity for, 39 popular interest in, 2, 24, 155

249

as a product of capitalism, 37, 47, 59, 87 regime-crimes, 40 rejection of, 38f “socialist pollution,” 39 in Soviet Union, 18 support for, in US, 229 as a vision, 59 Socialism and Democracy, 9 Socialist Party Chilean, 116, 201 US, 27 Soderbergh, Steven Che (film), 185, 193, 195 solidarity, 7, 23, 38, 51 anti-imperialist movements, 156 as condition for species-survival, 236 Cuban international, 121, 236 Latin American, with Cuba, 20 Venezuelan international, 123 “Solidarity Forever,” 205f, 214, 219 Soviet Union, 6, 14, 18, 226 collapse, 9, 39, 63, 84, 139, 156 consequences of collapse, 156 future prospects for socialism, 52 job security, 90 non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, 28 positive and negative aspects, 18 relation to Communist parties, 18 social engineering, 87 work relations, 18, 89f World War II alliance with US, 28 South Africa, 194 species questions, 73–82, 228 human species survival, 235 species-being (Marx), 75, 81 species-boundaries, 79 Springsteen, Bruce “Born in the USA,” 218 Stalin, J.V. consolidation in power, 47 industrialization under, 48 policy in Spain, 113

250 

INDEX

Stalinism as product of economic backwardness, 60 “state capitalism” (Lenin), 104 state power, 34, 112 democratic, 126f elections and, 114 violence (US), 148 Stockwell, John, 174 strikes general, 107 recent US, 222 sit-down, 4n, 7, 222 student movement, 28, 150 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 144 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), 8 suburbs, 4 surplus value, 89 surveillance, mass, 30, 157, 233 sustainability, 15 Swearingen, Wesley, 173 Sweden, 99, 118 Sweeney, John, 166 Sweezy, Paul M., 7, 37n T Taft-Hartley Act, 147, 151, 214 Talbot, David The Devil’s Chessboard, 155 Taylorism, 103f, 105 Tea Party movement, 161 Teamsters, International Brotherhood of, 165 Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), 152, 165 technology, 16, 110, 232 alternative energy sources, 25, 235n

effects of, 44 expertise in, 117f non-neutrality of, 16 revolutionizing, 157 terrorism, 135f Thälmann, Ernst, 130 The Clash, 219f The Killers, 223 The Real News, 154 “third parties,” US, 3 Third World, 38, 61, 118 poverty, 39, 139 revolutions, 51, 58, 141, 156 Ticktin, Hillel, 85–87 Tikkun, 154 Tlaib, Rashida, 162 tokenism, 231, 233 torture, 30, 135 in US prisons, 179, 181f totalitarianism, 134f mislabeling, 51 totality, 66, 72 trade agreements, 157 trade union struggles, 45 relationship to class interests, 46 transition (from capitalism to socialism), 41 dialectics of, 49f market relations and, 87 womb metaphor, 43 Trilateral Commission, 29, 148, 161 Trotsky, L.D., 47, 131 Truman, Harry S., 3n, 146 Truman Doctrine, 213 Trump, Donald, 2, 31, 137n, 155, 163, 167, 169, 178, 221, 227, 229, 233, 234 Truthdig, 155 Truthout, 155

 INDEX 

U United Auto Workers, 207 United States (US), 2–10, 21–24, 27–33, 63–72, 131–37, 139–83, 205–23, 228–37, and passim United Steelworkers of America, 123 V Valenzuela, Ignacio, 197 vanguard, 34f, 89–93, 117 Venezuela, 22, 101, 234 Bolivarian Revolution, 120–23, 195 Caracazo, 120, 198 challenge to US hegemony, 135 Communal Councils, 33 oil workers, 198 progressive army officers, 33 protagonism, 122 Vietnam, 20, 44, 146, 167 liberation movement, 141 Martin Luther King on, 172 struggles in US over, 149, 152, 209, 216 US war in, 28, 148 US workers’ view of, 217 “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” 216 violence, endemic, 42, 232f right-wing, in Chile, 116 by the state (US), 148 voter suppression, 178, 181, 234 Voting Rights Act, 216 W wages, equalization of, 110 war, 208, 215 of capital against all challengers, 47 “on drugs,” 23, 29, 174, 180

251

nuclear, threat of, 7, 44, 48, 58, 234f perpetual, 23, 32 “on terror,” 30 Washington, Keith “Malik,” 182n waste, 76 disposal, 15 Webb, Gary, 174 welfare, assault on, 4, 162, 180 “welfare capitalism,” 3 Wells, Tom The War Within, 149 Weyrich, Paul, 178 whistleblowers, 30, 33, 149n, 171 Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), 30n white nationalism and capitalist interests, 233f roots of, 231 see also racism Wolff, Richard Economic Update, 155 women, 69, 75 in the labor movement, 153 more progressive voting, 164 violence against, 162 see also gender women’s movement, 28, 61, 150 Woodfox, Albert, 182n Woodstock festival, 209, 216 work relations, 18, 225 workers’ control, 86, 97–124 link with socialism, 116 under revolutionary conditions, 100 workers’ councils, 91, 122 working class, 3, 17 categories within, 217n class consciousness, 4, 46 culture, 210, 214 fragmentation, 5, 228, 230 as gravedigger of capitalism, 21–23, 32

252 

INDEX

working class (cont.) increasing diversity (US), 164 interests, 45 job security in Soviet Union, 90 migrant workers, 22 “moral economy” (Lebowitz), 89 and new social movements, 32 precarity, 22, 27, 157, 160 re-radicalization?, 221 as revolutionary agent, 41 World War II, 18, 48 strategy of capitalist powers, 48

X xenophobia, 22 Xi Jinping, 20 Y Yugoslavia, 99 Z Z Magazine, 154 Zinn, Howard People’s History of the US, 33, 155