Workers Power I’m writing this note (with the input and influence of comrades) by request, to briefly explain why we in Workers Power don’t assert a presence within or seek involvement with the Left. This applies not just to the liberal so-called Left, with its focus on identity politics and reformism, but even to those who consider themselves “revolutionary” and having a “working class political line.”
There are common patterns among the Left that are ineffective, yet have been repeated over and over again. These patterns seem to occur spontaneously when the petite bourgeoisie (by which I mean very basically “middle class” service providers – neither capitalists, nor production workers) is a large or growing class. We want to identify these patterns so we don’t unwittingly keep repeating them. This doesn’t mean that we’ve figured out how to be effective, only that we’re trying a different approach.
Coming from a petit bourgeois background myself, I’ve gotten stuck in many of these patterns for most of my own political life. They’ve been largely invisible to me because they’re so normalized. I’ve begun to see them only by having them repeatedly pointed out to me and being challenged about them. So I’m not trying to condemn or call out or get involved in any arguments with Leftists about all this – that would again be getting caught in the vortex. This piece is simply to describe the results of some conversations among members of Workers Power, for those who are thinking about getting involved with us. And if others start to identify and question these patterns in their own work too, great.
A few of our observations and conclusions:
The large portion of the Left (comprised mostly of the petite bourgeoisie and working people involved in circulation rather than production) tends to think and speak of “worker” as an identity, a label, a category of individuals. Instead, we focus on it as a class forged within a specific role in production. We think it’s important to understand economic roles in production and circulation, and to develop political positions focused on the core of capitalist production, which is the theft of value from workers (exploitation).
We are convinced that capitalism can only be ended through the self-emancipation of the global working class. A new economy (based not on profit but on human need) can only develop as workers collectively destroy wage slavery and capital accumulation, and replace these with different practices. This statement sounds like what many on the Left say they believe, but their practice usually doesn’t match their words. Instead, over and over again historically and across the world, they organize a Left of non-workers who (when possible) mobilize workers and ride their backs to power, only to solidify their own position as a new ruling bureaucracy legislating change from above. It doesn’t matter how perfectly “revolutionary” their political line might be, how sincere they are, or how beneficial the social programs they initiate are – this approach can never end capitalism, but at best can only change its form.
Many on the Left seem to believe that they can push a “revolutionary line” from their own non-worker standpoint, without the initiative, involvement and leadership of actual workers. They argue that having the “correct revolutionary line” is the only thing that matters, and that they are able to assert this line better than workers. In short, they take over the struggle and run it from their own class perspective.
This is partly out of the understandable urge to “do something,” but it also often involves arrogance, impatience, and laziness about doing the difficult work actually required. We must also acknowledge the probability that many in the petit bourgeois Left are deeply ambivalent about workers running society (and their own organizations), because then they’ll lose their position of relative privilege. They tend to feel threatened by the capacity and competence of workers, and refuse to recognize it as ever superior to their own. Their attitude is often patronizing, dismissive and contemptuous. When they talk with workers at all, they pretend to listen, then lecture and explain concepts to them using alienating jargon.
This is rooted in the petit bourgeois ego, a psychological structure shaped by their role in the marketplace as service providers. Their economic survival strategy is to compete among themselves to be noticed, to appear indispensable, to be individually branded as the best for the job. These necessities of presentation, adopted to carve out and protect their careers, turn into habits of being which are reflected in everything they do, including political activity. Petit bourgeois Leftists feel that they need to appear original (leading to empty intellectualism), entertaining (fanning celebrity worship), and distinct from others (fostering sectarianism). They need to prove they’re important and useful (to make their jobs secure). They need to cheerlead, inflate victories and minimize setbacks (marketing as a way of life), and to display virtue and militancy in order to mitigate feelings of shame that arise from living off the stolen labor power of others.
A Left led by the petite bourgeoisie can only replicate and constantly regenerate capitalism. We don’t want to go down that same old road. And we don’t want to just pay lip service to working class leadership, or fake it, or settle for something else in the meantime, as so many on the Left seem to do. No. We believe in working class leadership of the anti-capitalist struggle, are committed to it, and strive to act accordingly. No substitutes. History has proven the capacity of workers to lead their own struggles and transform themselves in the process. Nothing other than self-emancipation can result in overcoming capitalism and all class divisions.
At the same time, we do realize that being a worker doesn’t automatically equip someone with the understanding and ability to lead struggles for working class power – exactly because of constant covering up and denial of class divisions by capitalist ideologues, who have convinced many workers (particularly in imperialist cores) that their identity is “middle class” and that their interests align with capitalists and their representatives. Those on the Left who use this obstacle as an excuse to believe that workers can’t lead their own struggles are essentially doing the same thing. When they try to take a historical short cut by substituting themselves for workers in the working class struggle (inevitably diverting it), they are helping the capitalist class to invisibilize and undermine workers. (On the other hand, the petit bourgeois Left also can’t just sit back and dump the responsibility of all the anti-capitalist heavy lifting on workers, either. There are certainly important roles in the revolutionary process for non-workers of all classes – when under working class leadership. But that’s for another discussion).
We’re not saying that Workers Power has an approach that is any more “successful” in terms of building a visible and viable working class movement. We’re small, and taking a hard road. We’re each pressed for time, trapped in survival activities, struggling with our individual weaknesses, and feeling our way as a group. One thing we are sure of is that we don’t want to squander our limited time and energy on activity that may make us feel good temporarily, but isn’t going to bring us any closer to where we want to go.
So we focus on opening up conversations with workers and listening. Really listening. Listening with full attention, respect, and trust. Listening without preconceived formulas and plans. Where the global working class leads, we will go together, and take our stand there. From that place, a road to emancipation may be opened.
(Stephanie, 6/14/17)