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Socialism: The Movement of the Majority!
Represent Our Resistance
By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialization of production; it, so to speak, drags capitalists, against their own will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialization… Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few… the bulk of the profits go to the ‘geniuses’ of financial manipulation… Monopoly, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small and weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations - all these have given rise to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compels is to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.
-Lenin, “Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism”
PBS’s Frontline presents a documentary titled War Briefing. An “expert” on the Afghanistan war states that the Taliban could be won over to “our side,” its sounds natural to the ear. Some few Taliban, good Taliban will remain in place as leaders to lord over villages of the poor and women with impunity. It will be a better life for the Afghanis - nestled into the hierarchical structure that best benefits corporations like Exxon-Mobile. And of course, Exxon-Mobile, providing a service for all, will have its route to oil.
The producers can assume its audience is caught up in the rhetoric of freedom” Only in America can I watch and listen to a “free,” “educational” broadcast in a “free” nation!
Won over “to our side.”
What is “our side”? What is on “our side”?
Exxon-Mobile rejected its shareholders’ request to invest in renewable energy until the top brass discovered how such investment would be “good for the company” - not the people - the company.
On “our side,” we can no longer speak of the United States as representing a republic. In 1950, writes Gore Vidal, the original constitution “was secretly replaced with the apparatus of the national security state.” In a national security state, money is funneled into “war-related matters” abroad, and, I would add, money is spending on developing a world-class prison industrial complex, complete with a high-tech surveillance apparatus. In a national security state, institutions encouraging free thinking are counterproductive, subversive.
So it isn’t surprising that political rhetoric on “our side” delivers to the people a definition of “freedom.” Freedom is something “we have” and others don’t have. A principal of the national security state holds up a card with a graphic display consisting of numbers and lines adding up to the message: we have; they don’t. Another principle flashes a photo of a naked, ashy, African or Latino boy. Freedom is and must be “brought to” other nations. OKAY!
Freedom is the strongest man, the most beautiful woman, the wealthiest entrepreneur or corporation - the people who matter on “our side.” Freedom is the right of billionaire capitalists to ask and to receive a bailout at the expense of the ruled. Freedom is corporate short cuts, regardless of who loses a limb or what worker is laid off.
Freedom on “our side” is being told that the Democratic Party is your party. That “re-distribution of wealth” is socialism! Communism! - the other side! But we have but one Party, and it’s the Party of the Capitalists. The melding of the government and the corporate world has yielded an increasingly dominate national security state - with a sprinkling of fundamental Christianity. Freedom is not freedom for workers to form labor unions free from government control! Freedom is not a single-payer health care plan! Worker-lead unions and single-payer health care isn’t profitable for anti-human capitalists.
Freedom is recognizing your deficiencies and seeking ways (legal or illegal - it’s all good for the national security state) to overcome your unnatural condition. That’s being wholeheartedly on “our side.”
Freedom is accepting the insanity of these anti-human rulers, unconditionally - unconstitutionally!
Because freedom is, you lose - no matter how hard you strive to be on “our side.” Freedom is ownership of all resources for the few.
Freedom is never the right to a quality life - for workers and the oppressed. It is never about the right to work at a meaningful job or have health care, decent housing and education. Freedom is not about equality among human beings. It’s shopping from a city dumpster!
Because freedom is fear of the masses!
Freedom is controlling what the people know and playing games with reality. The workers, the oppressed, the economically distressed, people of color, and women are asked to see themselves within the definition delivered to them. The ruled submit, body and mind, to a “natural” and “unchangeable” reality that services the interests of the rulers.
On “our side” produces the nullification of action against the rulers. It produces behavior from the workers, unemployed, economically distressed, people of color and women that is collaborative or cooperative. Most importantly, thought is not only stifled, it isn’t thought! All thinking and action in this society is done in relation to capitalism.
Capitalism is a brutal and inhumane regime imposed on the world by western nations lead by the United States. Capitalism allows for the government and corporations to privatize public resources. How civilized is it for the chemical lobbyists to dictate to the EPA or FDA what will be while oil lobbyists argue for the right to pollute the air and water supply? How civilized is it to allow for the selling for profits of women and children? How civilized is it to train the young to kill or be killed or maimed to establish new headquarters for four oil companies in the Middle East? How civilized is it to continue glorifying liars and thieves and call that progress? Follow the money: There are no lobbyists for the poor!
Freedom as a product of capitalism can only move in one direction: The freedom to purchase your own electronic bracelet!
If you think the “won them over to our side” philosophy applies only to the Taliban, or to the Iraqis, or Chinese, think again. Show-us-the-money Secretary of Treasury Paulson asked and received funds to save the capitalists. The American people have served as laboratory rats in the big experiment: Sedate and manipulate with a narrative hailing the exceptional patriotism of the American people! To a large extent, the experiment has worked. When the constitution and freedom disappeared in the 1950s, the American public went right on, thankful that they were not poor, Black, Guatemalan, African, Indochinese, or Haitian. Halleluiah! Black liberation leaders are hunted down and killed or incarcerated and the American public is relieved. Those angry Blacks with guns are a frightening mass and a threat to the American civilization as we know it! Halleluiah, that’s over! It can be argued that with the success of this homegrown experiment, King George and his court assumed the Iraqi people would drop everything and, in the midst of falling bombs, worship at the feet of U.S. soldiers. They envisioned shouts of halleluiah, freedom at last by masses and masses of Iraqis. The collective halleluiahs of Americans and Iraqis would drown out the cries of burning children and courageous anti-war protesters.
We have now a society in the U.S. where the workers, James Cannon explains, have a right to vote every four years, if they don’t move around too much, but have no say about the control of the shop and the factory; where all the means of mass information and communication are monopolised (sic) by a few - they describe all that as the ideal democracy, for which the workers should gladly fight and die.
Get your guns; shake your store-bought hair; get your face lifted to the high heavens and tuck the stomach; undo the slant of your eyes; buy a three-piece Black suit and stocks and cut the hair; speak the most perfect English to outdo the Ebonics or Korean accent - and it will never matter; it has never mattered. What matters is that the American people capitulated, submitted, bowed in a permanent posture, before the flag, unconditionally. Even while unemployment is the highest since September 11, 2002 and while the ruled scuffle and scrounge up every penny in the children’s banks and under the sofa cushions, the capitalists appeared before Congress and anyone who would have them to shout - Fire! We need the money. They got it! The capitalists exercise “freedom” and call it democracy!
Hear echoes of George Orwell’s Winston: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”
Workers, the unemployed, the economically distressed, people of color and women are without freedom. Freedom for the once enslaved became acceptance into the capitalist system as another kind of slave. Here - “our side” has been an accumulation of cells in a prison under the control of capitalist rulers!
During the 2008 presidential election, debate about the rights of workers, the exploited, focused on a nightmare for believers in capitalism: We can’t have a “re-distribution of the wealth” in the U.S. The believers shouted to the American people: It would mean taking “well-earned money” from “hard working entrepreneurs.” Re-distribution will put an end to democracy!
As Cannon writes, this game of confusing and misrepresenting [socialism] has been facilitated for the capitalists and aided to a considerable extent by the social democrats and the labour bureaucracy, who are themselves privileged beneficiaries of the American system, and who give a socialist and labour coloring to the defence (sic) of American ‘democracy.’
The American people reject the evidence of its own eyes and ears: there’s a form of socialism - imperialist socialism!
“Socialism,” writes Cannon, was often called the society of the free and equal and democracy was defined as the rule of the people.” There “rule of the people” isn’t Stalin’s idea of “socialism” or the bogey-man-communist coming to take freedom, that is, money, from “hard-working” American people! No one can take what you don’t have! Socialism isn’t socialization for imperialists!
The true socialist movement is the movement of the majority! It represents change that is indeed radical! Revolutionary!
And you would think that after the last forty years Black Americans would once again speak openly about freedom and the “rule of the people.” Rev. Martin Luther King wondered why Black Americans had not joined the Communist Party en-mass.
This month, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, delegates to the first West Africa conference of African Socialist International are talking about what we are afraid to debate. The delegates of the conference, according to Lansana Fofana, called for “reparations to be paid to Africans for 400 years of slavery.”
“Asking for reparations is no favor demanded from the West,” said Ismail Rashid, Sierra Leonean professor of African History at New York’s Vassar College. “It is our right because through slavery, the West stole our labor, dignity and resources. It is repayment for our labor, our looted human resources.”
Please don’t think as programmed: We gave you a “Black” president. We have a BLACK president!
As Carlito Rovira reminds us in African American Reparations and the Struggle for Socialism, “African chattel slavery arose in the 15th century based on the expansion of capitalism.”
The wealth accumulated from slave labor strengthened capitalist industries and commerce. Textile industries, agriculture and shipbuilding prospered as a result of cheaper goods and raw materials obtained by enslaved African labor. The more Black slavery expanded, the more it became an impetus for capitalist economic development - not only in the United States, where slavery was strongest but throughout the world.
In the United States, Rovira writes, the class struggle has always relied on racism. “Reparations for the oppressed [Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Black Americans, Latino/a Americans - workers] automatically imply the expropriation of the capitalist class.”
The movement of the majority is the concern of socialists and revolutionaries engaged in anti-capitalist struggles!
Any concept of freedom must start from the reality of the ruled, the people denied freedom.
What did Winston say of the Proles:
…[I]f only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength…They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies…[I]f they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning… And yet…!
And yet…!
“Our side” has been historically oppositional, among the majority striving for freedom and the rule by the people! The movement of socialists and revolutionaries is the movement of the majority! Say it again, until you see it and understand.
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has been a writer, for over thirty years of commentary, resistance criticism and cultural theory, and short stories with a Marxist sensibility to the impact of cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, resistance narratives. With entrenched dedication to justice and equality, she has served as a coordinator of student and community resistance projects that encourage the Black Feminist idea of an equalitarian community and facilitator of student-teacher communities behind the walls of academia for the last twenty years. Dr. Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American Literatures, with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class narratives) from Loyola University, Chicago. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.
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6 comments:
The whole concept of "our side" highlights some sort of identity dilemma. The eternal question: who am I, who are you? This is important to keep in mind when discussing the role of the state repression and the idea of social constructs. Ultimately I would like to offer up the capitalist state as the mystical "invisible hand" that eliminates individual freedom to choose an identity. It creates "sides" through social and material mechanisms to create and sustain divisions between all people (citizens and non-citizens). Please read Wolff's interpretation of Althusser's ISA/RSA concept to further understand
http://dogma.free.fr/txt/RW_IdeologicalApparatuses.htm
I first offer the idea of economics as central to every person's identity dilemma. Think of economics as rationalization of choice, a means of measurement for both what we choose and why we choose it. In a "free market" we are each given infinite options and allowed the FREEDOM to choose as we see fit. The article points to face lifts and eye operations, or erasing native accents in favor of "proper English." What compels individuals to make these choices in a free market? If one were to appeal to psychology or sociology, what conclusion would those sciences make about people who volunteer to carve up their bodies or conform to social norms? Some may argue that such changes stem from discreet individual disturbances, such as masochism or esteem issues.
Lets extrapolate such an appeal to science to debunk it. What about homo-, bi-, or otherwise pan-sexual individuals? These sciences formerly classified non-heterosexual behavior as a demented state of psychosis, an ailment. Obviously this is still debated, but the pan-sexual community itself certainly does not subscribe to this line of thought, that they are "ill" or individually disturbed. Who better to know than the people themselves, right?
Think of Marx's base-superstructure concept: the superstructure is a conglomerate of social forces that compel a particular outcome subordinate to its base. Socialists frequently appeal to this rationale to explain the influential variables guiding identity crisis or change. Why would someone go through the misery of getting a conk? The superstructure forces, such as media, family, literature, fashion, entertainment convey a particular message. Why? That is their role, to deliver a particular line of thought. Why is this their role? THE BASE.
This mysterious base can be thought of more easily as the institutional framework that guides societal functions. It's the government. It's the economy. It's (currently) capitalism. It's the foundational norm upon which day-to-day operations are based.
It is this way that the base becomes the "invisible hand" of identity formation, because the base directly influences the substance and message of its superstructure. All the media messages we encounter day to day (for instance) serve to ensure the base is promoted, and works to establish the base as unchangeable, "right," good, the way it is and will always be.
One way this is done is the age-old "divide and conquer" method. Here is where social construction of race becomes relevant. The base, through its superstructure, needs to be maintained. In particular, Capitalism - because it is an unfair and imperfect system - needs to insure it stays as the base. If it does not take efforts to sustain itself it will easily be overcome, because it is an objectionable system beneficial to some but not all. Divisions are then constructed through race, class, sex/uality, religion, etc. Now we return to the idea of "our side." Of these divisions, some are decidedly more PRIVILEGED than others, in order for conflict to emerge between sides. This privilege disparity preoccupies members of society and conflict becomes over this privilege. Identity crisis, or whose side you are one, is thus an extremely powerful mechanism for division and distraction. Privilege further eliminates freedom of choice, because certain identities are privileged over others, so whose "side" are individuals more likely to pursue? Returning to economics, privilege can be seen as value. Economics shows us people tend towards value in their choices. But if that value is socially constructed and set up to perpetuate an underlying system, then the market is no longer "free" and "freedom" begins to have limitations and qualifiers.
The socialist stance goes further than the issue of "sides" and overcoming these obstacles to creating a more harmonious society. It is not enough to open up a free market for the superstructure. Lets think about the differences between Hegel and Marx's theory on establishing change. Change happens when the status quo is challenged in some way. If you have a glass of water and you drop it, you now have a different combination of results (shattered glass, wet carpet, maybe bloody foot from stepping on glass, etc.) This is a really simple illustration of the "dialectic." The glass of water is a "thesis" or existing norm/doctrine. Dropping it is a change-inducing action (or thought), and is a "antithesis." The result is the "synthesis." (T+A=S). It's really just a mechanism to explain change.
What Hegel did is apply this mode to encourage changes to the "thesis" of society to produce a new result. However, in sum he limited his suggestion for this change to the realm of superstructure. If all TV entertainers are white, create a movement to allow black entertainers on TV. The result was letting black and white entertainers on TV!
Marx turned this dialectic on its head because he identified the change to be needed for the BASE, or the system. This is really the line Socialists tow. Yeah, there were black people on TV, but the dance floor for American Bandstand was still divided so white kids couldn't dance with black kids. (And forget about any other minorities being anywhere near a television camera!!) To move away from the excessive analogies, our base (capitalism) must be challenged in order for societal ills to truly be eliminated.
Returning to the economics theme, socialists are invested not in making the "free market" truly free, but changing the game of economics entirely. That way, "who am I" becomes an easier question to answer and individuals become truly empowered with the freedom to choose how to answer the question.
Allison raises a good point on the question of economics, and this is why I think a socialist has to take a solid class stance. Without drawing a clear line on what is "class terrain", we just degenerate to silly emotional appeals or vague references to "multitudes" like Negri did.
Also, is important to understand that elements that promote the ideology of the social order do not constitute a in its entirety a machiavellian conspiracy. the ruling class ends up liking the smell of their feces too.
I like this reflection, Allison, especially its grounding in Althusser's theory of Ideological State Apparatus. Your analysis also recalls Gramsci's theory of hegemony. All the things you mention above are naturalized through a hegemonic culture of consumption, largely taken as "common sense" reality. It also explains why, at least in the U.S. context, taking a firm stance on class terrain, as Amir advocates, has been extremely difficult. The American (white) working class has been inculcated in capitalist values and norms that it accepts as its own. Thus, we find exploited members of the American working class fighting fervently to protect the very economic system responsible for reproducing the conditions of its own oppression and exploitation ("Joe tha Plummer" comes to my mind). The challenge for socialists in the U.S., in my view, is to de-naturalize hegemonic "common sense" in the minds of the working and un-working classes. With the current crisis of global capitalism and catastrophic conditions for the average American worker, now is the time for U.S. socialists to raise class consciousness and offer an viable socialist alternative to the present crumbling system that enslaves them.
izemThe global working class has always accepted the ideology of the ruling class because the ruling ideas are the ones of the ruling class. Thus, advocating the destruction of present civilization, with tradition weighting on the common folk as a nightmarish deadweight of past generations, has always been an obstacle. This was a problem in 1917, where there was a worldwide proletarian wave, and this is the problem today.
We are fighting an uphill battle because we have to use language, the product of civilization and class society. Perhaps, the language of the complete man, wont be a language of words.
The black working class, as all the working classes in the world, are also victims of bourgeois ideology. Perhaps they are not right wingers, but the left wing does not mean is not capitalist, and there are different factions of the ruling class. In fact, to understand the ruling class is to understand it is not a monolithic entity, and hence why it is capable of bringing humanity to extinction, for they are capable of waging catastrophic wars-
However, if we do not take a scientific and materialistic understanding of class, we end up falling on the trap of bourgeois discourse - mistifying everything to the point that class does not matter, and what matters is culture and the "people". This is the democratic lie, and like Bordiga, I will argue against it.em
"The black working class, as all the working classes in the world, are also victims of bourgeois ideology."
Well, I don't remember the author of this article arguing that black people were some sort of revolutionary vanguard. But I think you're right, of course. All those who labor within the workplace are subjected to bourgeois ideology by virtue of their location within the workplace. I tend to agree with Larry Bookchin, who came to the conclusion that -- at least within an American context -- the revolutionary potential of the workclass is undermined by capitalist ideology promulgated within the workplace.
In otherwords, the workplace is not an ideological-free zone. Those that control the means of production also control the means of ideological and cultural production.
Workers are taught to be passive, subservient to bosses; inculcated in the idea that work itself (not wages, not shared ownership in the means of production, not democracy) is the greatest reward, next to Godliness; and a bunch of other crap to make workers active participants in their own exploitation.
And while black workers are not in and of themselves outside of this sphere of ideological influence, black workers throughout history have always been self-conscious of itself -- as a race -- as an exploited working class. This consciousness was generated, of course, with first slavery, then absolute racial totalitariansim in the form of Jim Crow apartheid in the South and de facto segregation in the North, and more recently what Manning Marable calls the "New Racial Domain" of structural racism. In each historical development -- through overt racial terrorism, violence, and political subjugation -- the blacks retained a working class consciousness by virtue of their struggle against U.S. racial capitalism (where "white-ness" is a valuable commodity, socially, politically, and economically). Put simply, blacks' fight against institutionalized racial oppression was, at its root, a struggle to be respected as workers, with full rights as workers, including the right to a fair wage, a discrimination free workplace, and the right to organize and strike, if necessary.
The white working class has not always demonstrated this working class consciousness -- in fact, have proactively worked against it, uniting with racial capitalism to exclude blacks from the workplace. American history is replete with horrendous episodes of white workers lynching, torturing, and murdering their black working class brethren (see "Rosewood" or reference the Tulsa 1922 destruction of "Black Wall Street"). And just this year, one of the residual findings of the 2008 election is that large swaths of working class whites throughout the nations are open bigots.
So you're right, a new language is needed, one that provides a unifying lexicon for all workers, across color lines.
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