All the hegemony you can eat

The way things have been if I don’t see another buttressing quote from either Lenin, Luxemburg or Tony Cliff for a long while I will be happy. So, in that spirit, let’s talk about Lenin!

One thing I have been adamant about for some time is that the revolutionary party was not Lenin’s key innovation. Firstly, even if he intended to found “The Bolsheviks” he did not intend his party to be a new party. He was trying to found a Russian SPD. Many Communist Parties were not made brand news but founded out of Socialist Party majorities. Despite instants of political hardship (not least of which was Hitler’s invasion of Europe) from the mid-twenties onward the CP was a realistic means for a political career. Lenin intended for the Third International to be revolutionary parties, but being in this case is only the same as doing.

Lenin’s real innovation was his discussion of nationalities. The 20^th century was in many ways the story of revolutionary nationalism. Lenin was so perceptive he was couple of decades ahead of everybody else, including the actual movements. This is important though, what we are talking about here is Lenin the ‘autonomist’, the man who pointed to an expanded revolutionary subject. His particular concern was linking the workers movement in the Russian heartland with the national movements in the outlying countries of the Tsar’s empire. But there are broader applications.

Firstly we are discussing the matter of hegemony. How do movements against aspects of capitalism become movements against capitalism itself? We’re talking not just movements against occupation or imperialism but for civil rights, women’s liberation, LGBT liberation and so on.

But, more importantly, we’re talking about how we build a working class movement in the first place. Wage labour and subsequent exploitation is based on the separation of workers from the means of production. This is an excellent founding fact but too abstract as a basis for day to day politics. People’s living and working conditions are defined by much more than this, by gender, nationality, sexuality, race and so on. We look both for weaknesses in the current capitalist set up but also potential strengths on the part of the working class. An example, in Lenin’s time whole villages would send their sons off to work in particular factories. There was often a pre-existing sense of solidarity, imported from the countryside. This added to the concentrating effect of Russia’s huge factories, made the turn of the century Russian working class a force to be reckoned with.

It’s this kind of confluence that we should be looking for today.

A week away from finking...

For very, very personal reasons (happy ones)... but here's something to put down; not a match for something like this, but what is...?

Rosa Luxemburg's argument with Eduard Bernstein, known as Reform or Revolution, is rightly celebrated. There are two obstacles to even roughly applying her arguments today, one is contemporary to her time, one to ours.

The first one is well rehearsed. Luxemburg's argument was with the figurehead of the revisionist movement within the SPD at the end of the 19th century. It was an intra-party argument. Rosa Luxemburg won, in argument. The trouble is arguments are won in practice, to the extent that honest champions of one set of ideas can end up bringing another set to life. The ideology of the SPD was revolutionary, the day to day practice of the SPD was strictly legal.

Her revolutionary career is negative proof of the old argument, you need a revolutionary organisation (however you might see it) to test and win revolutionary ideas.

But the second difficulty, our difficulty is this, who are the reformists? If there was one lesson the last decade has taught us all it is the modern system of government is impervious to the people's will. The next time a Labour left tries to assert how realistic and serious they are, compared to your (simultaneously) utopian and dangerous designs, it's worth parrying them with this. Who honestly still thinks you can change the world for the better through parliament (let alone bring about something like socialism)? Social democrats are the true believers. In this age revolutionaries are the realists, social democrats are utopian.

But, back to the first point, reformism does not arise out of a collective mind, but a social body. Reformism is not a bourgeois minority sport but the formalised version of the general mixture of impressions working class people gain in ordinary life. It is part of life. Who is trying to practice it these days?

Autonomists are often suggested to be the new reformists. One striking connection is the famous aphorism of Bernstein's, “the movement is everything, the final goal nothing”. A modern (and rather sectarian, if I may say so) version is “we are the demands”.

Another connection I believe is the rejection of violent confrontation. This can just be a tactical question. If you are outnumbered and outmatched by an opponent it would be wise to duck battle. This was of course the origin of the SPD's tactics, building a party in a semi-absolutist state. But if this is worked up into a strategic point trouble begins. The problem is obvious; you may reject violence but will violence reject you?

Lets not go too far, neither autonomists nor socialists think the system can be used to bring about communal democracy. Both favour encouraging ordinary people into direct activity, rather than passively engaging them through voting and lobbying etc. Many autonomists would regard themselves as revolutionaries, and who's going to stop them from doing so?

It's worth adding though, there's a difference between revolutionary activity and revolution. Autonomists often see socialists as waiting for a revolution for their cue to spring into action. Any who cares to notice knows this is hardly the case. There is also a link between modern autonomism and the sixties counter-culture, through the slogan “turn on, tune in, drop out”; drop out being the key element, you have to abandon bourgeois society in order to fight it. The sectarian streak in autonomism tends to see autonomist activity as revolution and everything else as missing the mark; “we are the demands”.

So autonomism is not reformism, but is related. There is call for a fraternal, reasoned critique of autonomist ideas, as distinct from traditional points made in the dialogue with reformists. A start may be that autonomism has a strong ethical dimension but no political economy (what it has is borrowed from neo-liberal theory).

But seriously, folks...

Autonomists disagree with Marxists, generally speaking, in that they don't see socialism (or whatever you'd call an egalitarian democracy) as immanent within capitalism. Hence the need, one assumes, to create autonomous space outside of capitalism. If that is the case then autonomists cannot help but agree with Tory MP Louise Mensch's contention; you cannot criticise capitalism from within it.

But, if you do agree, you're missing one of the most basic philosophical points assumed (assumed but not often understood). It is generally given that to critique something you have to know it. The surest form of knowledge comes from a combination of theory and practice, hence Engels's conclusion that the working class, which both thinks and does, is the inheritor of German classical philosophy.

You cannot criticise capitalism, practically, theoretically or practically/theoretically without being within it. So enjoy your coffee.

More vicious, sectarian carping

In attempting to conquer space from capitalism we must give regard to the enemy defending it. The ruling class, in the form of the state has the benefit of prior organisation. An anti-capitalist movement must be equal to this organisation otherwise it will not be effective, unless of course you intend your movement to be merely platonic.

Which begs the question, has there been a serious attempt to put together serious political economy for autonomism, beyond constructing neologisms like precariat? Don't autonomists adopt neo-liberal paradigms (such as the end of the working class, horizontal organisation, power is everywhere and nowhere, grandnarratives are oppressive etc) and simply invert them?

There are two pitfalls to a purely moral opposition to capital. One is voluntarisn, the dangerous kind that can lead to totalitarianism (or would lead, if it were not completely Utopian at this point). The other is platonic, gesture politics, the kind where a demonstration stops to work out the fine details of democratic decision making while the police are swiftly kettling it.

In order to achieve any worthwhile goal you need a tested and trusted political tradition. You can't make one up as you go, least of all pretend you don't need one. Your demonstration has to be about left or right (approximate as those political coordinates may be) or it's about nothing.

It's a shame that some people don't see any viable political tradition that can express their political will, but it's pointless crying over such things. They can't be made to see it. But there are others, often first to the megaphone, who actively seek to keep things primitive and inchoate. As far as I can see we may lose the world, but at least those people get to keep their beautiful souls.