“But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favour of free trade.”
In other words, as Marxists we advocate a programme based upon developing the working-class as an independent, class conscious force able to act to transform the environment in which it exists, and thereby to change the material conditions which shape its ideas. In the words of the Communist Manifesto,
“The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.”
But, it is precisely because in advocating our programme for socialism, for an adequate solution for workers problems, that we have to also start from where we are, including the existing bourgeois class consciousness of the workers, which itself derives from their existing material conditions, that we have to make compromises, rather than adopt a sectarian, purist position. We have to use the tools that existing bourgeois society provides, to change the material conditions, and thereby change the ideas that dominate the workers, by increasingly building the working class as an independent social force in revolutionary opposition to the bourgeoisie.
Marx describes this difference with the ultra left sectarians in Political Indifferentism. He begins by mocking the purists.
““The working class must not constitute itself a political party; it must not, under any pretext, engage in political action, for to combat the state is to recognize the state: and this is contrary to eternal principles. Workers must not go on strike; for to struggle to increase one's wages or to prevent their decrease is like recognizing wages: and this is contrary to the eternal principles of the emancipation of the working class!
“If in the political struggle against the bourgeois state the workers succeed only in extracting concessions, then they are guilty of compromise; and this is contrary to eternal principles. All peaceful movements, such as those in which English and American workers have the bad habit of engaging, are therefore to be despised. Workers must not struggle to establish a legal limit to the working day, because this is to compromise with the masters, who can then only exploit them for ten or twelve hours, instead of fourteen or sixteen. They must not even exert themselves in order legally to prohibit the employment in factories of children under the age of ten, because by such means they do not bring to an end the exploitation of children over ten: they thus commit a new compromise, which stains the purity of the eternal principles.
“Workers should even less desire that, as happens in the United States of America, the state whose budget is swollen by what is taken from the working class should be obliged to give primary education to the workers' children; for primary education is not complete education. It is better that working men and working women should not be able to read or write or do sums than that they should receive education from a teacher in a school run by the state. It is far better that ignorance and a working day of sixteen hours should debase the working classes than that eternal principles should be violated.””
Having set out in these terms, just how ridiculous such an approach would be, and yet such an approach had been advocated essentially by the Proudhonists, Marx comments,
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| The wages struggle continues to keep workers in the position of being like hamsters on a wheel. We have to keep repeating the same struggles over and over again, without moving any further forward. For that reason Marx said we should not devote too much of our time to such struggles, as opposed to developing our own more adequate, alternative solutions that make use of the tools that Capitalism provides, for example using credit to extend worker owned and controlled co-operatives throughout the economy. But, that doesn't mean we can avoid wage struggles either. Unless we get off our knees to fight for decent wages, we will never be in a position to fight to defend and extend workers owned property either. |
“It cannot be denied that if the apostles of political indifferentism were to express themselves with such clarity, the working class would make short shrift of them and would resent being insulted by these doctrinaire bourgeois and displaced gentlemen, who are so stupid or so naive as to attempt to deny to the working class any real means of struggle. For all arms with which to fight must be drawn from society as it is and the fatal conditions of this struggle have the misfortune of not being easily adapted to the idealistic fantasies which these doctors in social science have exalted as divinities, under the names of Freedom, Autonomy, Anarchy. However the working-class movement is today so powerful that these philanthropic sectarians dare not repeat for the economic struggle those great truths which they used incessantly to proclaim on the subject of the political struggle. They are simply too cowardly to apply them any longer to strikes, combinations, single-craft unions, laws on the labour of women and children, on the limitation of the working day etc., etc.”
But, we see a similar sectarian approach by many who call themselves Marxists today. The EU, for example, is not the kind of European Workers State we would advocate, and yet it does represent an advance over the division into competing nation states that led to two world wars in the last century. Marxists would not advocate the establishment of the current EU, but why would we not defend/support it against a reversion to what amounts to a more reactionary previous situation?
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| Marxists do not advocate Keynesian fiscal intervention, but we are not politically indifferent between Keynesian fiscal intervention and Hayeckian austerity. |
Marxists do not advocate Keynesian fiscal intervention in the economy as a means of resolving the current problems. We point out that no such capitalist solutions can ultimately resolve the problems of Capitalism in the workers interests. But, that does not mean we are “Politically Indifferent” over a policy of Keynesian intervention, which acts to stimulate economic activity under current conditions, and which is linked to the continuation of services important for workers, as opposed to the policies of austerity being pursued by right-wing populist parties, like that of the Liberal-Tories in Britain. To the extent, for example, that Obama pursues policies of Keynesian stimulus in the US, we support those policies against attacks by the Austerians.
We have to use what is at our disposal as a means of attempting to move beyond it. Nick Clegg's adoption of Marx and the First International's position on the organisation of schools is to be welcomed, though he undoubtedly does not know that he has adopted Marx's position. It is a step towards moving beyond the control of education by the capitalist state, to the control of education by workers themselves. The Labour Movement needs to develop means of doing the same thing in respect of all aspects of state capitalist provision. We need to begin to develop the working-class as an independent, class conscious force that operates on the basis as Marx puts it of “self-government” separate from the capitalist state.
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