Individuals

Discussing the economic crisis, austerity, and his advocacy of worker cooperatives, Richard Wolff has been getting a boost of attention with recent appearances on Democracy Now!, NPR and with Bill Moyer. But does Wolff represent an anti-capitalist perspective that those who believe in revolutionary social change can get excited about? My take is that while his views represents an important shift in public discourse there are some major weaknesses and in what he presents and which I hope to explore briefly.

I’ll start by saying that I think it’s great that Wolff is getting a fair amount of public exposure and is very open and explicit in his criticism of capitalism as an economic system, rather than just its symptoms (corporations, money in politics, etc). Further, in discussing worker cooperatives he raises the issue of democracy in the workplace and calls into question core ideas of capitalism– namely why bosses manage and control workplaces and the potential that workers have the ability to do this themselves through a democratic and horizontal alternative to the top down control of capitalism. Much as when Nader entered the public imagination in the 2000 elections with his anti-corporate populism, Wolff’s discourse expands the floor for discussion and debate with his radical questions and makes easier the work of organizers on the radical left.

That said there are several contradictions and problems though that should be apparent right off the bat. I’m confused when he calls for alternatives to capitalism, challenging capitalism and then curing capitalism. This immediately strikes me as contradictory as I see these as important distinctions politically at least from my perspective.

I support the idea that workers should run the economy, but I think it needs to go way beyond what Wolff puts forward. A key problem with what he advocates is that worker cooperatives (or his invented term, Worker Self Directed Enterprises or WSDEs) is that they exist within the context of capitalism, ie the pressures of the market competition, and context of wage labor. Now I do think that worker cooperatives can provide a good example that alternative and democratic social relations within a workplace are possible. Worker cooperatives can also act as a resource to larger movements by providing resources and a source of employment- for instance many cooperatives in Latin American began when union militants were black listed from their industry for organizing or are created when workers seized the workplace after abandonment by the owner. But Wolff leaves unaddressed the classic criticisms of worker cooperatives, which aren’t just theoretical but based on real problems that cooperatives have encountered in practice.

First, is the idea that you can’t “out compete” capitalism. Corporations will always have larger capital to invest in research, technology, machinery and their willingness to cut costs through lower wages, less environmentally sounds practices, outsourcing, etc, will give them an advantage. Second, is that cooperatives are subject to market pressures to compete just the same as capitalist enterprises and this lends itself to pressures to create the same practices of corporations. For instances, in the same Mondragon cooperatives that Wolff upholds as models there have been labor strikes in the past, outsourcing and low wages in production sites opened developing countries, as well as a trend towards unelected management that is more like a typical capitalist corporation. Other entities such as the well known sex toy company, Good Vibrations, which became a cooperative in 1992 when the owner sold the company to the workers, eventually developed a structured four-tier hierarchy of decision making that began to take on the character of management.[1] In 2006 workers voted to become a shareholder corporation which was later bought by a larger corporation. Strangely, these not surprising pitfalls of workers cooperatives are missing from Wolff’s discussion.[2]

Third, is that many cooperatives face the same issues as small business owners face. Often worker cooperatives are in the service, food or other specialty industries with lower profit margins and because they are smaller and do not have the advantages of scale which larger companies do, workers are often are forced to work long hours at lower wages to stay afloat. I’ve heard this called by some “self-managed exploitation.” As well, many cooperatives such as these in part remain afloat because they produce niche products like radical books or vegan/specialty food products that don’t really compete with the major corporations that dominate their industry. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m really glad worker cooperatives like the radical/anarchist publisher AK Press exist, as they are a service to the movement and no one else will publish those books, but there is no possibility that they would or could compete with publishers like Routledge or with sellers like Amazon or Barnes & Nobles. In a 2012 interview with CounterPunch Noam Chomsky discusses these issues:

“Worker ownership within a state capitalist, semi-market system is better than private ownership but it has inherent problems. Markets have well-known inherent inefficiencies. They’re very destructive. … [what is needed is to] dismantle the system of production for profit rather than production for use. That means dismantling at least large parts of market systems. Take the most advanced case: Mondragon. It’s worker owned, it’s not worker managed, although the management does come from the workforce often, but it’s in a market system and they still exploit workers in South America, and they do things that are harmful to the society as a whole and they have no choice. If you’re in a system where you must make profit in order to survive. You are compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others.”

Lastly is the tendency of worker cooperatives to see their needs and interests as an entity apart from and/or above other workers. After all, as cooperatives exist within a market system, their interests are to compete with other companies and expand their market share. This is a key and important difference between workers cooperatives, where the means of producing goods and services are owned by a specific group of workers competing with other cooperatives and capitalist companies through a market system and the deeper and post-capitalist goal of a socialized economy whereby all the means of producing goods and services (or at least the vast majority) are seen as belonging to society as a whole and while directly operated and run by the workers at each entity would be federated and coordinated in a horizontal manner to produce products and services based on need.

This contradiction of whether Wolff poses an actual alternative to capitalism can be seen in a piece by Wolff called ‘A New Strategy for Labor and the Left’ where he says:

“Labor’s and the left’s implicit strategy for the micro level of the enterprise thus reduced to improving the terms of the employer-employee relation for the workers. There was no strategy to eliminate that relation in favor of something better. It was the modern equivalent of struggles during the time of slavery that aimed for better food, clothing, housing, etc. for slaves rather than demanding the end of slavery.”

This is a great analogy but the problem is that a strategy of advocating worker cooperatives is akin to allowing small groups of slaves on a small number of plantations to self-manage themselves. It makes life better for some, but it doesn’t end the system of exploitation. Early labor radicals in the US often in fact drew an explicit analogy between slavery and capitalism with the term “wage slavery.” What they meant by this is that workers under capitalism are not ‘slaves’ to a particular boss, but through the system of wages they are compelled to work for bosses as a class in order to survive. This is why anti-capitalist labor radical such as the founders of the IWW believe that an end to capitalism required a struggle to organize workers eventually leading to workers to taking control of their workplaces and what they called the “abolition of the wage system.” This is I feel that while worker cooperatives can have some uses, I don’t feel Wolff offers perspective or strategy that can be call anti-capitalist in a meaningful sense.

[1] There are no public sources I could find on the four tier hierarchy that emerged at Good Vibrations, but my knowledge of this comes through my organizing experience with the IWW when a worker contacted the union wanting to organize.

[2] It has come to my attention that Wolff addresses some of these issues in his weekly radio podcast, though these are not addressed in any of his recent radio or television appearances.

by J.Rogue and Abbey Volcano We need to understand the body not as bound to the private or to the self—the western idea of the autonomous individual—but as being linked integrally to material expressions of community and public space. In this sense there is no neat divide between the corporeal and the social; there is instead what has been called a “social flesh.”

Wendy Harcourt and Arturo Escobar(1)

The Birth of Intersectionality

In response to various U.S. feminisms and feminist organizing efforts the Combahee River Collective(3), an organization of black lesbian socialist-feminists(2), wrote a statement that became the midwife of intersectionality. Intersectionality sprang from black feminist politics near the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s and is often understood as a response to mainstream feminism’s construction around the erroneous idea of a “universal woman” or “sisterhood.”(4) At the heart of intersectionality lies the desire to highlight the myriad ways that categories and social locations such as race, gender, and class intersect, interact, and overlap to produce systemic social inequalities; given this reality, talk of a universal women’s experience was obviously based on false premises (and typically mirrored the most privileged categories of women— i.e. white, non-disabled, “middle class,” heterosexual, and so on).

Initially conceived around the triad of “race/class/gender,” intersectionality was later expanded by Patricia Hill Collins to include social locations such as nation, ability, sexuality, age, and ethnicity(5). Rather than being conceptualized as an additive model, intersectionality offers us a lens through which to view race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. as mutually-constituting processes (that is, these categories do not exist independently from one another; rather, they mutually reinforce one another) and social relations that materially play out in people’s everyday lives in complex ways. Rather than distinct categories, intersectionality theorizes social positions as overlapping, complex, interacting, intersecting, and often contradictory configurations.

Toward an Anarchist Critique of Liberal Intersectionality

Intersectionality has been, and often still is, centered on identity. Although the theory suggests that hierarchies and systems of oppression are interlocking, mutually constituting, and sometimes even contradictory, intersectionality has often been used in a way that levels structural hierarchies and oppressions. For instance, “race, class, and gender” are often viewed as oppressions that are experienced in a variety of ways/degrees by everyone—that is, no one is free of the forced assignations of identity. This concept can be useful, especially when it comes to struggle, but the three “categories” are often treated solely as identities, and as though they are similar because they are “oppressions.” For instance, it is put forward that we all have a race, a gender, and a class. Since everyone experiences these identities differently, many theorists writing on intersectionality have referred to something called “classism” to complement racism and sexism. This can lead to the gravely confused notion that class oppression needs to be rectified by rich people treating poor people “nicer” while still maintaining class society. This analysis treats class differences as though they are simply cultural differences. In turn, this leads toward the limited strategy of “respecting diversity” rather than addressing the root of the problem. This argument precludes a class struggle analysis which views capitalism and class society as institutions and enemies of freedom. We don’t wish to “get along” under capitalism by abolishing snobbery and class elitism. Rather, we wish to overthrow capitalism and end class society all together. We do recognize that there are some relevant points raised by the folks who are talking about classism—we do not mean to gloss over the stratification of income within the working class. Organizing within the extremely diverse working class of the United States requires that we acknowledge and have consciousness of that diversity. However, we feel it is inaccurate to conflate this with holding systemic power over others – much of the so-called middle class may have relative financial advantage over their more poorly-waged peers, but that is not the same as exploiting or being in a position of power over them. This sociologically-based class analysis further confuses people by mistakenly leading them to believe their “identity” as a member of the “middle class” (a term which has so many definitions as to make it irrelevant) puts them in league with the ruling class/oppressors, contributing to the lack of class consciousness in the United States. Capitalism is a system of exploitation where the vast majority work for a living while very few own (i.e.: rob) for a living. The term classism does not explain exploitation, which makes it a flawed concept. We want an end to class society, not a society where classes “respect” each other. It is impossible to eradicate exploitation while class society still exists. To end exploitation we must also end class society (and all other institutionalized hierarchies). This critical issue is frequently overlooked by theorists who use intersectionality to call for an end to “classism.” Rather, as anarchists, we call for an end to all exploitation and oppression and this includes an end to class society. Liberal interpretations of intersectionality miss the uniqueness of class by viewing it as an identity and treating it as though it is the same as racism or sexism by tacking an “ism” onto the end. Eradicating capitalism means an end to class society; it means class war. Likewise, race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, age—the gamut of hierarchically-arranged social relations— are in their own ways unique. As anarchists, we might point those unique qualities out rather than leveling all of these social relations into a single framework.

By viewing class as “just another identity” that should be considered in the attempt to understand others’ (and one’s own) “identities,” traditional conceptions of intersectionality do a dis- service to liberatory processes and struggle. While intersectionality illustrates the ways in which relations of domination interact with and prop up each other, this does not mean that these systems are identical or can be conflated. They are unique and function differently. These systems also reproduce one another. White supremacy is sexualized and gendered, heteronormativity is racialized and classed. Oppressive and exploitative institutions and structures are tightly woven together and hold one another up. Highlighting their intersections—their seams—gives us useful angles from which to tear them down and construct more liberatory, more desirable, and more sustainable relations with which to begin fashioning our futures.

An Anarchist Intersectionality of Our Own

Despite having noted this particularly common mistake by theorists and activists writing under the label of intersectionality, the theory does have a lot to offer that shouldn’t be ignored. For instance, intersectionality rejects the idea of a central or primary oppression. Rather, as previously noted, all oppressions overlap and often mutually constitute each other. Interpreted on the structural and institutional levels, this means that the struggle against capitalism must also be the struggle against heterosexism, patriarchy, white supremacy, etc. Too often intersectionality is used solely as a tool to understand how these oppressions overlap in the everyday lives of people to produce an identity that is unique to them in degree and composition. What is more useful to us as anarchists is using intersectionality to understand how the daily lives of people can be used to talk about the ways in which structures and institutions intersect and interact. This project can inform our analyses, strategies, and struggles against all forms of domination. That is, anarchists might use lived reality to draw connections to institutional processes that create, reproduce, and maintain social relations of domination. Unfortunately, a liberal interpretation of intersectionality precludes this kind of institutional analysis, so while we might borrow from intersectionality, we also need to critique it from a distinctly anarchist perspective.

 It is worth noting that there really is no universally-accepted interpretation of intersectionality. Like feminism, it requires a modifier in order to be truly descriptive, which is why we’ll use the term “anarchist intersectionality” to describe our perspective in this essay. We believe that an anti-state and anti-capitalist perspective (as well as a revolutionary stance regarding white supremacy and heteropatriarchy) is the logical conclusion of intersectionality. However, there are many who draw from intersectionality, yet take a more liberal approach. Again, this can be seen in the criticisms of “classism” rather than capitalism and class society, and the frequent absence of an analysis of the state(6). Additionally, there is also at times a tendency to focus almost solely on individual experiences rather than systems and institutions. While all these points of struggle are relevant, it is also true that people raised in the United States, socialized in a deeply self-centered culture, have a tendency to focus on the oppression and repression of individuals, oftentimes to the detriment of a broader, more systemic perspective. Our interest lies with how institutions function and how institutions are reproduced through our daily lives and patterns of social relations. How can we trace our “individual experiences” back to the systems that (re)produce them (and vice versa)? How can we trace the ways that these systems (re)produce one another? How can we smash them and create new social relations that foster freedom?

With an institutional and systemic analysis of intersectionality, anarchists are afforded the possibility of highlighting the social flesh mentioned in the opening quote. And if we are to give a full account of this social flesh—the ways that hierarchies and inequalities are woven into our social fabric—we’d be remiss if we failed to highlight a glaring omission in nearly everything ever written in intersectional theories: the state. We don’t exist in a society of political equals, but in a complex system of domination where some are governed and controlled and ruled in institutional processes that anarchists describe as the state. Gustav Landauer, who discussed this hierarchical arrangement of humanity where some rule over others in a political body above and beyond the control of the people, saw the state as a social relationship(7). We are not just bodies that exist in assigned identities such as race, class, gender, ability, and the rest of the usual laundry list. We are also political subjects in a society ruled by politicians, judges, police, and bureaucrats of all manner. An intersectional analysis that accounts for the social flesh might be extended by anarchists, then, for insurrectionary ends, as our misery is embedded within institutions like capitalism and the state that produce, and are (re)produced, by the web of identities used to arrange humanity into neat groupings of oppressors and oppressed.

As anarchists, we have found that intersectionality is useful to the degree that it can inform our struggles. Intersectionality has been helpful for understanding the ways that oppressions overlap and play out in people’s everyday lives. However, when interpreted through liberal frameworks, typical intersectional analyses often assume myriad oppressions to function identically, which can preclude a class analysis, an analysis of the state, and analyses of our ruling institutions. Our assessment is that everyday experiences of oppressions and exploitation are important and useful for struggle if we utilize intersectionality in a way that can encompass the different methods through which white supremacy, heteronormativity, patriarchy, class society, etc. function in people’s lives, rather than simply listing them as though they all operate in similar fashions. Truth is, the histories of heteronormativity, of white supremacy, of class society need to be understood for their similarities and differences. Moreover, they need to be understood for how they’ve each functioned to (re)shape one another, and vice versa. This level of analysis lends itself to a more holistic view of how our ruling institutions function and how that informs the everyday lives of people. It would be an oversight to not utilize intersectionality in this way.

From Abstraction to Organizing: Reproductive Freedom and Anarchist Intersectionality

The ways in which capitalism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy—and disciplinary society more generally—have required control over bodies has been greatly detailed elsewhere(8), but we would like to offer a bit of that history in order to help build an argument that organizing for reproductive freedom would benefit from an anarchist intersectional analysis. Reproductive freedom, which we use as an explicitly anti-state, anti-capitalist interpretation of reproductive justice, argues that a simple “pro-choice” position is not sufficient for a revolutionary approach to reproductive “rights.” Tracing how race, class, sexuality, nationality, and ability intersect and shape a woman’s access to reproductive health requires a deeper understanding of systems of oppression, which Andrea Smith outlines in her book Conquest(9). Looking at the history of colonialism in the Americas helps us understand the complexities of reproductive freedom in the current context. The state as an institution has always had a vested interest in maintaining control over social reproduction and in particular, the ways in which colonized peoples did and did not reproduce. Given the history of forced sterilization of Native Americans, as well as African- Americans, Latinos, and even poor white women(10), we can see that simple access to abortion does not address the complete issue of reproductive freedom(11). In order to have a comprehensive, revolutionary movement, we need to address all aspects of the issue: being able to have and support children, access to health care, housing, education, and transportation, adoption, non-traditional families, and so on. In order for a movement to be truly revolutionary it must be inclusive; the pro-choice movement has frequently neglected to address the needs of those at the margins. Does Roe v. Wade cover the complexities of the lives of women and mothers in prison? What about the experiences of people who are undocumented? Trans* folks have long been fighting for healthcare that is inclusive(12). Simply defending the right to legal abortion does not bring together all those affected by heteropatriarchy. Similarly, legal “choice” where abortions are expensive procedures does nothing to help poor women and highlights the need to smash capitalism in order to access positive freedoms. Reproductive justice advocates have argued for an intersectional approach to these issues, and an anarchist feminist analysis of reproductive freedom could benefit by utilizing an anarchist intersectional analysis.

An anarchist intersectional analysis of reproductive freedom shows us that when a community begins to struggle together, they require an understanding of the ways that relations of ruling operate together in order to have a holistic sense of what they are fighting for. If we can figure out the ways that oppressive and exploitative social relations work together—and form the tapestry that is daily life—we are better equipped to tear them apart. For instance, to analyze the ways that women of color have been particularly and historically targeted for forced sterilizations requires an understanding of how heteropatriarchy, capitalism, the state, and white supremacy have worked together to create a situation where women of color are targeted bodily through social programs such as welfare, medical experiments, and eugenics. How has racism and white supremacy functioned to support heteropatriarchy? How has sexuality been racialized in ways that have facilitated colonizers to remain without guilt about rape, genocide, and slavery, both historically and contemporarily? How has white supremacy been gendered with images such as the Mammy and the Jezebel(13)? How has the welfare state been racialized and gendered with an agenda for killing the black body(14)? Systemic oppressions such as white supremacy cannot be understood without an analysis of how those systems are gendered, sexualized, classed, etc. Similarly, this kind of analysis can be extended to understanding how heteropatriarchy, heteronormativity, capitalism, the state—all human relations of domination function. This is the weight behind an anarchist intersectional analysis. An anarchist intersectional analysis, at least the way we are utilizing the standpoint, does not centralize any structure or

institution over another, except by context. Rather, these structures and institutions operate to (re)produce one another. They are one another. Understood in this way, a central or primary oppressive or exploitative structure simply makes no sense. Rather, these social relations cannot be picked apart and one declared “central” and the others “peripheral.” And they are intersectional. After all, what good is an insurrection if some of us are left behind?

From the new edition of Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader from AK Press

Notes

Notes

1. Harcourt, Wendy, and Arturo Escobar. 2002. “Women and the politics of place.” Development 45 (1): 7-14.
2. “Refusing to Wait: Anarchism and Intersectionality.” http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Deric_Shannon_and_J._Rogue__Refusing_to_ Wait__Anarchism_and_Intersectionality.html
   (last accessed 5/10/2012).
3. Combahee River Collective Statement. 1977. In Anzalduza, Gloria, and Cherrie Moraga (Eds). 1981. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Watertown, Mass: Persephone Press. Available at http://circuitous.org/scraps/combahee.html (last accessed 5/10/2012).
4. For example: Crenshaw, Kimberlé W. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, 43 (6): 1241–1299.
5. See: Purkayastha, Bandana. 2012. “Intersectionality in a Transnational World.” Gender & Society 26: 55-66.
6. “Refusing to Wait: Anarchism and Intersectionality.”
7. Landauer, Gustav. 2010. Revolution and Other Writings, translated by Gabriel Kuhn. Oakland: PM Press.
8. For more analysis on how race, gender and sexuality shaped capitalism and colonialism in the U.S., see: Smith, Andrea. 2005. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
9. Smith, Andrea. 2005. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
10. For example: http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/07/ 8640744-victims-speak-out-about-north-carolina-sterilization-pro- gram-which-targeted-women-young-girls-and-blacks?lite
    (last accessed 5/30/2012).
11. For a good book that shows examples and the history of reproductive justice, see: Silliman, Jael M. 2004. Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice. Cambridge, Mass: South End Press.
12. Trans* is taken generally to mean: Transgender, Transsexual, genderqueer, Non-Binary, Genderfluid, Genderfuck, Intersex, Third gender, Transvestite, Cross-dresser, Bi-gender, Trans man, Trans woman, Agender.
13. Hill Collins, Patricia. 1991. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.
14. Roberts, Dorothy E. 1999. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Vintage.

Understanding the political legacy of Lenin

This review/summation piece is being released in conjunction with a piece by Scott Nappolas,  “Democratic Centralism in Practice and Idea: A Critical Evaluation” that also examines the baggage and experiences of Leninism.

From Theory to Practice, Taking a Critical Look at Leninism

A Look At Leninism by Ron Taber. 104 pp. New York , New York : Aspect Foundation, 1988

Where can those looking for a critical understanding of Lenin turn? How can we better understand how the Russian Revolution begin as the first modern anti-capitalist revolution from below with workers taking over and running their workplaces, peasants seizing the land, and the creation of democratic soviets (worker committees)? And then in less than a decade its devolution into the brutal dictatorship of Stalin? Is there a continuity between the ideas of Lenin and his particular brand of Marxism that reshaped the Marxist movement in the 1920’s and the number of revolutionary parties that would later achieve state power and claim the Bolshevik party and Lenin as their model and inspiration?

Little known and barely circulated now over two decades since publication in 1988, A Look At Lenin by Ron Taber is perhaps the only systematic and thorough critique of Leninism as examined through the writings and work of Lenin and the Bolshevik party. For this reason it has been a favorite of mine since I picked it up as a teenage reader of the late Love and Rage magazine. When I came across the book I was someone struggling with and questioning my relationship with anarchism at the time and looking in other directions such as the Leninist tradition. While Taber’s piece did not answer many of the larger political questions I was grappling with at the time (no matter where I’m at politically I don’t think that itch will ever go away), it did help me think deeper about Leninism as a tradition as well as with understanding better the problems I saw in many Leninist inspired political organizations that I was beginning to come into contact with at the time.

What is most useful about the piece is, in the words of one review, it “attempts to draw explicit links from Lenin’s theory to Bolshevik practice.” Taber is well suited to take up this task as a past leader of the Revolutionary Socialist League or RSL (1973-1989) which emerged out of the Trotskyist milieu of the 1960′s.  Over time Taber and other members of the RSL steadily became more critical of Leninism and the Trotskyist tradition and by the time of RSL’s dissolution on 1989 a number of members had moved over to anarchism and went on to participate in the founding of what became the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation active throughout the 1990’s. The short booklet was first published as a series of articles in RSL’s publication The Torch and after being published in as a book went on to be distributed by Love and Rage members.

What follows is a summation of the key points of each chapter with a healthy dose of direct quotes. All quotes from Lenin or other source writings by Bolsheviks appear with indentation.

“What Kind of Revolution?”

The opening chapter “What Kind of Revolution?” delves into a discussion of the character of the revolution that the Bolsheviks intended to carry out. Less interesting than the rest of the book, Taber develops his argument that “It was only in early 1917, after the February Revolution had overthrown the Tsar, that the Bolsheviks adopted the point of view that the revolution they sought to carry out would be a socialist one. … throughout the entire formative period of Bolshevism as a political tendency/movement/party, it advocated and sought to implement not a socialist revolution, but a bourgeois one.” (11)

“Party, Class and Socialist Consciousness”

Moving onto Lenin’s conception of the relationship between political organization, the larger working class movement and revolutionary consciousness, the second chapter “Party, Class and Socialist Consciousness” draws largely from Lenin’s most influential piece What Is To Be Done?

Taber underlines the importance of What Is To Be Done? as having “represented a major ideological assumption of Bolshevism, underpinning the Bolsheviks conception of the nature of the party, its relationship to the working class … [and] remained central despite the various changes in Lenin’s/the Bolsheviks’ ideas” (29)

Taber pulls this key quote from the piece by Lenin:

“We have said that there could not yet be Social-Democratic consciousness among workers. It could only be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. (Trade unionism does not exclude “politics” altogether, as some imagine. Trade unions have always conducted some political [but not Social-Democratic] agitation and struggle.) The theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals.”(29)

Taber draws the following points from this: “If the workers are able, by themselves, to come only to trade union consciousness, and socialist consciousness must be brought to them from ‘without,’ by revolutionary intellectual/the revolutionary party, then:

1. The source, repository and guarantee of socialist consciousness are socialist intellectuals/the revolutionary party, not the working class.

2. What ultimately matters, in terms of a socialist revolution, is that state power is seized by the revolutionary party; the bottom line of what constitutes socialism/the dictatorship of the proletariat is that the state is ruled by a revolutionary party.

3. In any conflict between the revolutionary party and the working class, the revolutionary party is right, and the party has the right, even duty, to rule “in the name,” “in the interests of,” the working class.” (32)

The chapter is then closed with two quotes showing the logical extension of these ideas, the below is from Leon Trotsky:

“The party [is] entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashe[s] with the passing moods of the workers’ democracy… It is necessary to create among us the awareness of the revolutionary, historical birthright of the party. The party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship, regardless of temporary wavering in the spontaneous moods of the masses, regardless of the temporary vacillations even in the working class.” (36)

“The ‘Ethos’ of Bolshevism”

Here Taber puts forward his criticism of the ethos or what we might today call the internal culture of the Bolshevik Party in three aspects: the cult of the “hards”, the adoration of centralism especially in regards to the economy, and the willingness to use brutal and harsh methods.

According to Taber the ethos of the Bolsheviks was defined by what he calls “the cult of the ‘hards’” (37) in which they contrasted themselves the tough, strong, skillful, who acted with “iron discipline”, were more proletarian, more politically radical and had a greater willingness to use violent tactics in comparison to the “softness” of the Mensheviks in working in underground and repressive conditions, who were also seen as less radical, and more prone to political vacillation. He notes that the Bolsheviks referred to themselves as “the hards” and their signature dress was black leather jackets and coats.

As well the title of Lenin’s key work What Is To Be Done? was taken from a book of the same name by Russian populist N.G. Chernyshevsky, which Taber describes as “virtually the bible of the young, mostly middle-class and upper-class radicals of the 1860′s who ‘went to the people’ (the peasants) to bring them enlightenment and radical ideas. … [The key figure Rakhmetov] believes only in the cause and is totally devoted to the ‘people.’ Not least, he prepares himself for the coming struggle (implicitly, a vast upheaval) by sleeping on a bed of nails [and eating raw meat -AW] and otherwise toughening his body and mind. The connection between Rakhmetov’s style and that of the Bolsheviks was no accident.” (39)

The danger that Taber identifies with this culture revolves around power, as “had ‘hardness’ remained a question of individual style or attitude … a cult of ‘hardness’ might not amount to much. What makes a cult of ‘hardness’ in political organization potentially dangerous is the possibility that it becomes part of a state ideology.” (40) A major weakness of this section of the chapter though is, unlike the rest of the book, we are left to take Tabor on his word as it is presented completely without sources or references.

Next Taber takes up the relationship to the principle of centralism and economic planning which he asserts the Bolsheviks “revered” beyond the immediate needs of operating clandestinely. ”The Bolsheviks saw the capitalist factory, run on a centralized basis, as a progressive institution, technically speaking. Lenin, for example, constantly held up the highly centralized and hierarchical German postal system and German industry as a whole as an example for the Russians to adopt. This, after the October Revolution Lenin defined the creation of a highly centralized economic apparatus as a major goal of the Soviet state.

The organization of accounting, the control of large enterprises, the transformation of the state economic mechanism into a single huge machine, into an economic organism that will work in such a way as to enable hundreds of millions of people to be guided by a single plan- such was the enormous organizational problem that rested on our shoulders. [Political Report of the Central Committee to the Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the RCP(B), delivered March 7, 1918. Collected Works, Vol. 27 pp. 90-91] (41)

But beyond the need for centralized economic planning Tabor emphasizes Lenin and the Bolsheviks belief in not just the necessity based on circumstances but as a matter of principle  the need for hierarchical and bureaucratic management of the economy as steps toward socialism. “Thus, as soon as they were able, the Bolsheviks subordinated the factory committees to other institutions (the trade unions) and ultimately effectively did away with them altogether. They were replaced by ‘one-man management.’ While this has often been explained as motivated by necessity (the onset of the Civil War, the drastic decline of the economy, etc.) and this is true to a degree, it was also totally consistent with the Bolsheviks’ pre-existent ideas and leanings, particularly their idolization of centralism.” (43) This lengthy quote serves as a key evidence to his point:

…it must be said that 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, which directs the joint labours of hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of people. The technical, economic and historic necessity of this is obvious, and all those who have thought about socialism have always regarded it as one of the conditions of socialism. But how can strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the will of one.

Given ideal class-consciousness and discipline on the part of those participating in the common work, this subordination would be something like the mild leadership of a conductor of an orchestra. It may assume the sharp forms of a dictatorship if ideal discipline and class consciousness are lacking. But be that as it may, unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the of processes organised on the pattern of large-scale industry. ["The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government" written in March-April 1918. Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 268-269] (41-42)

Finally, Taber presents his arguments on the Bolsheviks belief in the use of harsh methods in the process of building socialism which he summarizes as: ”1) that the Bolsheviks were overly inclined to advocate coercive/brutal methods, in general; 2) that they seemed unaware that this might undermine the very goal they claimed to be fighting for; and, 3) that, at least implicitly, these coercive measures would logically wind up being directed against members, even large sectors, of the working class, whose vanguard the Bolsheviks claimed to be.” (47)

Three examples are given which “were written or spoken in April and May 1918 … after the October Revolution but before the onset of the Civil Way (which was really to get underway in June, 1918).” (47)  The final example being a speech by Lenin given at the Moscow Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies on April 23, 1918:

This country, which the course of history has advanced to the foremost position in the arena of the world revolution, a country devastated and bled white, is in an extremely grave situation and we shall be crushed is we do not counter ruin, disorganisation and despair with the iron dictatorship of the class conscious workers. We shall be merciless both to our enemies and to all waverers and harmful elements in our midst [emphasis added] who dare to bring disorganization into our difficult creative work of building a new life for the working people [Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 233.]

Pulling these three threads together of the ‘cult of hardness’, the principle of centralization and willingness to use brutal methods Taber comes to his conclusion: “the main point I have been trying to establish is that there were many aspects of the style and culture of the Bolshevik Party that pointed in the direction of state capitalism. These were tendencies that implied the establishment of a dictatorship of a self-proclaimed socialist elite over the workers and peasants ‘in the interests of’ those classes and ‘in the name of’ socialism and communism. … it is not clear to me that, even had there been successful workers’ revolutions in Western Europe, the Bolsheviks would have reestablished real proletarian democracy, including legalizing other left tendencies. Nor is it obvious that, given their infatuation with with centralization and ‘scientific’ planning, they would have tried to set up real workers’ control of the factories and the economy as a whole.” (50-51)

While the revolution in Germany is still slow in ‘coming forth,’ our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to space no effort, in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to hasten this copying even more than Peter [Tsar Peter the Great - RT] hastened the copying of Western Culture by barbarian Russia, and we must not hesitate to use barbarous methods in fighting the barbarism.  ["Left-wing" Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality, April 1918]

“State and Revolution”

Written during the Russian Revolution itself in the summer of 1917, The State and Revolution is often cited as being Lenin’s most important as well as libertarian work where he puts forward a vision of a communist society, direct worker control and the ultimate goal of the withering away of the state. In this chapter Taber challenges these ideas and perceptions of The State and Revolution around the points that Lenin’s vision of the state withering away relies on first building up the state along hierarchical and bureaucratic lines with a limited vision of workers’ control.

First Taber begins with a key paradox of The State and Revolution, which is the claimed goal of a stateless society and the key task following a revolution of building a new state. “The revolutionaries who claim that they are against  the state, and for eliminating the state, … see as their central task after a revolution to build up a state that is more solid, more centralized and more all-embracing than the old state.” (56)

“Until the higher phase of communism arrive, the socialists demand the strictest control by society and by the state over the measure of labour and the measure of consumption” [emphasis original]

How the transition from the newly built centralized state to the withering away of the state is not outlined in Lenin’s vision though. Rather the elimination of the state is simply presented as part of the ‘historical process’ which Taber sees as rooted in the Hegelian notion of history as “since the theory declares that the ‘logic’ of this essence, purpose and historical direction is that the state will eventually be eliminated, ‘negated,’ ‘transcended’ via a ‘dialectical’ (apparently contradictory) process, this is what will inevitably happen.” (57) But as the history of actual states where communist parties came to power shows, this is anything but the case.

“Direct workers’ control over the factories and worker’ democracy are, to Lenin, stepping stones, part of a transitional stage, towards a very abstract ‘higher democracy,’ what is in fact a very centralized, hierarchical,  bureaucratic, regimented ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ … During a revolution, the new, cooperative social relations have to begin appearing among the workers and oppressed classes right away. The workers have to learn now to related to each other in this new way. They learn this through reorganizing their work situations, and through directly governing society at all levels. … This dimension of the socialist revolution seems to be totally lost on Lenin. The socialist revolution, in his conception, is largely a change in form. Bust much of the content of the old society – bourgeois technology, bourgeois managerial techniques, hierarchical structures, factory discipline and, I would suggest, bourgeois social relations- remains.” (64)

“Lenin’s Theory of Knowledge” Part I and Part II

The final two chapters “take up Lenin’s conception of human knowledge and truth” (67) nearly entirely through the text Materialism and Empirio-criticism written in 1909 where Lenin engages a polemical argument against “two Bolsheviks who were attracted to the ideas of Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius, Henri Poincare and other scientists, mathematicians and philosophers who were the precursors of a school of philosophy called logical positivism.” (70) The details of the debates and Lenin’s criticisms are best left reading Taber’s own presentation, and therefore I’ll simply present the key take away point

Taber leads with his conclusions: “I am convinced that Lenin and the Bolshevik Party as a whole believed: 1) that there is an absolute truth (I mean by this that reality is determined and predictable); 2) that absolute knowledge, that is, perfect knowledge of the truth, is possible; 3) that such truth and knowledge exist in respect to human society and history; 4) that Marxism is the knowledge of this truth and 5) that within Russia, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were the only real Marxists.” (67)

These two quotes best support and illustrate Taber’s argument:

Materialism in general recognizes objectively real being (matter) as independent of the consciousness, sensation, experience, etc., of humanity. Historical materialism recognizes social being as independent of the social consciousness of humanity. In other cases consciousness is only the reflection of being, at best an approximately true (adequate, perfectly exact) reflection of it. From this Marxist philosophy, which is cast from a single piece of steel, you cannot eliminate one basic premise, one essential part, without departing from objective truth, without falling prey to a bourgeois0reactionary falsehood. [Collected Works, Vol 14, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1986, p. 326]

If what our practice confirms is the sole, ultimate and objective truth, then from this must follow the recognition that the only path to this truth is the path of science, which holds the materialist point of view. [ibid, 141] … The correspondence of this theory to practice cannot be altered by any future circumstances, for the same simple reason that makes it an eternal truth that Napoleon died on May 5, 1821. But inasmuch as the criterion of practice, i.e., the course of development of all capitalist countries in the last few decades, proves only the objective truth of Marx’s whole social and economic theory in general, and not merely one or the other of its parts, formulations, etc., it is clear that to talk here of the “dogmatism” of the Marxists is to make an unpardonable concession to bourgeois economics. The sole conclusion to be drawn from the opinion held by Marxists that Marx’s theory is an objective truth is that by following the path of Marxian theory we shall draw closer and closer to objective truth (without ever exhausting it); but by following an other path we shall arrive at nothing by confusion and lies. [ibid, 143]

An important argument underpinning the book is that the ideas, internal culture and practices of Lenin and the Bolsheviks were the antecedents if not basis of the later political direction of the Soviet Union. Here Taber states his case in crystal clear terms: “…Lenin allowed his philosophical preconceptions to prevent him from even considering, let alone accepting an idea that would become a fundamental tenet of this century’s physics. … [W]hen a party with Lenin’s conception of philosophy and science comes to power, it is highly likely that someone in that party will, sooner or later, try to tell scientists what to do and how to think.” (86-87)

Conclusion

The wrap up of the piece gives a solid summary pulling all the thread of Taber’s criticism: “While I believe that Leninism is not entirely, 100% authoritarian, that is, that there are some truly liberatory and democratic impulses, I believe these impulses are far outweighed by those that point toward and imply state capitalism. Moreover, these latter are so strong that they distort the democratic impulses themselves, rather than merely overshadowing them. For examples, the advocacy of a classless society in The State and Revolution is turned into its opposite by Lenin’s conception of how to achieve it, e.g., through building a strong centralized state modeled after the German postal system.” (92)

“I believe that of the various tendencies within Leninism that point toward state capitalism, the most important are three:

First is the fact that although Leninism advocates the establishment of a stateless society, it not only proposes to use the state to achieve this goal, it sees the use of the state as the main way to accomplish this. Not least, although this state is said to be a proletarian state, a dictatorship of the proletariat, it is to be structured, with relatively minor exceptions, along hierarchical and bureaucratic, that is, capitalistic, principles. Given this, is it any winder that the outcome of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was not classless, stateless societies, but monstrous, class divided, state-dominated, social systems?

The second state capitalist tendency within Leninism that I believe to be decisive is its advocacy of coercive , ruthless methods. While some kind of armed force/coercion is inevitable is almost any revolution, Lenin almost revels in it: the need to be ‘ruthless towards our enemies,’ ‘not to shrink from the most ruthless measures,’ to ‘shoot and shoot and shoot some more.’ Since morality lies within, is immanent in, history, that is, morality find its fruition in the outcome of history (as Marx, following Hegel, argues), there is no need to act morally, there is no morality, in the sphere of politics. But outside of Marian/Hegelian (or any other comparable) metaphysics, how can moral neutralism lead to a more moral society? It can’t and hasn’t.

The third fundamental state capitalist tendency in Leninism, and tying all three together, is Lenin’s belief in determinism and absolute knowledge. Physical and social/historical reality is absolute knowledge. Physical  and social/historical reality is absolutely determined, Marxism represents true knowledge of this reality (it ever increasingly approaches this reality), the Bolshevik faction/party hold the only correct interpretation of Marxism-these are fundamental tenets of Bolshevik thinking. And they point directly to the establishment of a dictatorship of the party over the proletariat in the name of the proletariat itself.” (pg 93-94)