In forming such a united working-class, capital fulfils a progressive role, despite the horrors it brings with it, as a consequence of the subordination of labour.
“This subordination is progressive compared with the former— despite all the horrors of the oppression of labour, of gradual extinction, brutalisation, and the crippling of the bodies of women and children, etc.—because it AWAKENS THE MIND OF THE WORKER, converts dumb and incoherent discontent into conscious protest, converts scattered, petty, senseless revolt into an organised class struggle for the emancipation of all working folk, a struggle which derives its strength from the very conditions of existence of this large-scale capitalism, and therefore can undoubtedly count upon CERTAIN SUCCESS.” (p 236)
And, this same argument applies to the united struggle of a unified EU working-class, as opposed to the pettiness and small-minded squabbles and concerns of those that promoted Brexit, which acts to divide workers in Britain from their comrades in Europe, acts to increase xenophobia and divisions even within the working-class in Britain, and which sows illusions, similar to that promoted by Narodism, that British workers are somehow exceptional have some unique, national path to future success, and have more in common with British capital than they do with EU workers.
Lenin says,
“In reply to the accusation of ignoring the mass of the peasantry, Social-Democrats would be quite justified in quoting the words of Karl Marx:
“Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers which adorned the chain, not that man should wear his fetters denuded of fanciful embellishment, but that he should throw off the chain and reach for the living flower.”” (p 236)
Today, Marxists would reply to the criticism that we want to leave workers subject to the capitalist exploitation of the EU capitalist club, rather than pursue the objective of “taking back control”, in Britain, in similar words. Taking back control, or national sovereignty is such an imaginary flower that only adorns the chains of national bourgeois oppression of the working-class. It is an even more onerous oppression, for the reasons cited above, that an isolated British capitalism represents a less developed, less mature form of capital than does EU capital. Marxists do not oppose Brexit because we want to retain the exploitation of labour by EU capital, but because Brexit would not end such exploitation, it simply makes it more onerous. The means to end the exploitation is not a retreat to some less developed, national form of capital, but a class struggle by EU workers to gain ownership and control of the means of production across the continent.
The idea that Britain, outside the EU, offers workers something better is a fantasy. It is immediately presenting them with something far worse, as a right-wing Tory government seeks to utilise it to further undermine workers', citizens', consumer and human rights, along with environmental protections. The idea that some future Labour government could create progressive social-democracy in one country is even more dangerous and absurd, whilst any suggestion that there could be Socialism In One Country, the building of Little Icara amongst a sea of imperialism, is not only a dangerous delusion, but has been shown to be so, and fatal for the working-class, on numerous occasions.
“The Russian Social-Democrats are plucking from our countryside the imaginary flowers that adorn it, are combating idealisations and fantasies, and are performing the destructive work for which they are so mortally detested by the “friends of the people,” not in order that the mass of the peasantry shall remain in their present state of oppression, gradual extinction and enslavement, but in order that the proletariat may understand what sort of chains everywhere fetter the working people, that they may understand how these chains are forged, and be able to rise against them, to throw them off and reach out for the real flower.” (p 236)
And, today, when Marxists undertake this same task, in opposing Brexit, they face a similar criticism from today's equivalent of the Narodniks. The Stalinists and their fellow travellers, who, time and again, have led the working-class into disaster, with their support for a popular front with the petty-bourgeoisie, and with petty-bourgeois nationalists, in their opposition to monopoly and imperialism, and who, with their reactionary theory of Socialism In One Country, are doing it again. It might have been thought that experience in the disaster of Stalinism in Eastern Europe, in Cuba, China, Vietnam and so on, would have been enough for the labour movement to inoculate itself against this disease, but it continues to infect the workers movement.
And, the Stalinists and their fellow travellers have another thing in common with the Narodniks, because, long ago, they abandoned any semblance of revolutionary politics and became rank reformists, accommodating to liberalism, by advancing the interests of the petty bourgeoisie.
“People who themselves base their hopes for the emancipation of the working people on the “government” and on “society,” that is, on the organs of that very bourgeoisie which has everywhere fettered the working people!” (p 237)
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