Reviews and Views
Volume One
Nasser Paydar
It is said that a man went to a “liquor store” and asked for the equivalent of one Iranian rial in alcohol! The salesman looked at him and said that one rial is not worth any amount of alcohol. The customer insisted and finally, despite the shopkeeper’s stubborn refusal, agreed to take some cotton soaked in alcohol. The shopkeeper asked what problem this cotton would solve for him? The customer’s answer was that I just want my breath to smell of alcohol, I know all the customs and traditions of drunkenness and all the bad manners myself. How true is this story? I don’t know, but its application can be clearly seen in some of the common sayings and opinions of people from leftist groups. For example, Economist blasphemy lash is hitting labour activists in the face as far as the eye can see. What is most noticeable in these lashings is that the author of the article has no regard for the meaning of Economics, nor does he think about in what context and against which political or class approach it has been used before, nor does he have a proper understanding of the issue at stake, nor does he think at all whether the critics of Economics were accurate or not in their work, nor does he have any knowledge of the critics’ point of departure, type of outlook, and class platform. In the meantime, he has only found an excuse through which to speak ill of others as much as he wants and as his professional temperament requires.
A conflict arose within the Russian labour movement at the beginning of the 20th century. On one side of the story was the most right-wing tendency within social democracy. An approach that reduced the entire essence of the labour movement to the struggle for everyday economic demands. Arguments such as if the workers only understand issues that have tangible and direct economic consequences for them!!! The labour movement must concentrate all its forces on the axis of economic reforms!!! The political struggle of the working class must obey the requirements of imposing these same economic reforms on the state!!! Socialist activists, or rather the social democrats of that day, must put all their efforts into organizing the workers’ economic reform movement, and the like determined the entire skeleton and texture of this approach. In fact, what they were saying was exactly what today’s parties, groups, organizations and unions, plus their homogeneous syndicalist spectrum, are copying for the current workers’ movement. Historically, now, and at all times, they have not and do not believe in any other mission for this class and its movement than what the same “Rabochiya Delu” (The Workers’ Cause was a non-periodical political newspaper and an organ of the Union of Russian Social Democrats Abroad) recommended to the Russian working class.
Lenin began a struggle against this tendency to the core of reformism and right-wing tendencies, but Lenin’s criticism was unfortunately not a criticism of working-class communism on right-wing reformism within social democracy. I will talk about this a few lines below, but for now, out of necessity, I must explain another point as a prelude to that discussion. The fact is that the names of Marx, Engels, and Lenin have become a breadwinner, a looter, and a stock market stall for the majority of the Iranian left, and no less than the world’s left. There are many people who have never had the patience to read this or that of Lenin in their entire lives, but they spend dozens of pages in the dark under the influence of his ideas. Just as they have never in any way glanced at any of Marx’s works, but in their party and group drafts, they distort phrases here and there and make his teachings like quotations and quotations as a guarantee of their being Marxists. There are many people who, as a party duty and to earn their living as party members, must defend Lenin, just as in some other places in the world, some people maintain offices and offices under the name of being anti-Lenin, anti-Marx, and anti-communist. The task of the second group is clear, but the serious point to be made to the first group is that this work is against the basis of working-class communism and is a fundamentally bourgeois and reactionary act. The work of socialists is the answer to the problems of the anti-capitalist and socialist struggle of the current proletarian movement, and it is clear that in this transition, all past and present experiences, and in particular the teachings of Marx, must be used. However, character creation, prophet-making, and idolizing workers, instilling in them a tradition of imitation, faith, and blind beliefs, encouraging them to abandon the use of their creative power, resourcefulness, intervention, and the exercise of independent will, and replacing all of these with blind methods of discipleship and obedience, of being a scholar and imitator, and of being a leader and follower, of hanging all the expectations, utopias, and goals of one’s party and sect in the name of Marx with the aim of gaining the trust of the workers, and such issues, are nothing other than the function of the petrified ideology of the bourgeoisie.
Lenin was definitely and independently of the will of this or that, a radical human being, protesting against the barbarity of capitalism, a very bold, idealistic, innovative and determined personality. His role in the history of the class struggle within Russian society, the process of the victory of the October Revolution, the radical struggle against the social-chauvinism of the leaders of the Second International and the social democratic parties of Western Europe in the first imperialist war, and his clear influence on the anti-imperialist approaches of the people’s movements of the twentieth century and the type of these influences are very, very obvious. In reality, none of these issues are in doubt, but this same Lenin also had serious slips and incorrect conclusions in analysing the situation, capacity and nature of the labour movement, in the workers’ explanation of socialism and the socialist economy, in various issues related to the socialist critique of capitalism and the socialist revolution of the proletariat. Lenin’s mistakes are mistakes that any labour activist in the world could have made in his specific situation and under the control of the historical data set of the day in Russia and the world. Errors in which the entire Russian working class was mired and into which the international working class fell a hundred times more than the Russian proletariat. The fundamental problem of the international labour movement or the history of the class struggle of the working masses of the world is absolutely not the problem of the mistakes of Lenin or any other person like him. The whole problem is related to the approach, role-playing and incident-making of classes, strata and currents in history who have found those mistakes the most suitable, most efficient and effective platform for rising to hang the anti-capitalist movement of the global working class on the noose of their own ideas, expectations and dreams and class and social goals. The appeal of the existing left parties in Iran and the world to Lenin and the defence of his mistakes is precisely and generally of this type. Unlike the business lords and mafias of today’s leftist parties, Lenin was among the most honest revolutionary people of his time. Nowhere in his political career is there any trace of sectarianism, shop-hopping, or stinking trade-offs visible. His mistakes are very serious mistakes of a passionate revolutionary in the history of the world labour movement, and for this reason, he has been very problematic for this movement. However, the main tragedy is not Lenin’s mistakes, but the existence of anti-socialist movements, currents, strata, and sects that have used these mistakes as capital for their class business for a whole century to dissolve the labour movement in capitalist horizons and to eradicate socialism by abolishing the wage labour of the proletariat. Lenin, with all his mistakes and merits, with all his weaknesses and strengths, and with all his right and wrong actions, belongs to the world workers’ movement. The international working class can learn a lot from the practice of the movement of which he was one of the most radical leaders. His role in the October Revolution and the role of the October Revolution in the fate of the anti-capitalist struggles of the workers of the world is all sufficiently instructive. Lenin belongs to the workers’ movement, these parties, sects and the wide spectrum of left and right reformism are attached to the workers’ movement, which have no connection with this movement, and the process of their extinction is a historical opportunity for the growth and strengthening of the socialism of the abolition of wage labour of the working class. With this in mind, I return to the main point of the discussion. I said that Lenin’s point of departure in criticizing right-wing reformism within social democracy and the Russian workers’ movement was much less proletarian socialism and much more the interests and objectives of the radical anti-regime of a democratic and populist movement.
In the process of this struggle, Lenin first of all goes to the nature and character of the labour movement. He evaluates this movement in its own institution and as a congenital form of a trade union and bourgeois movement. “… The history of all countries testifies that the working class can only achieve trade union consciousness with its own forces, that is, achieve the conviction that it must form a union and fight against the employers and force the government to issue laws that are necessary for the workers, etc….” This explanation contains several important points, including:
1. Being a worker and being a seller of labour power is not the basis for conflict with capitalism, but on the contrary, the basis for appeasement and coexistence with the capitalist system!!! In other words, the worker, within the framework of his being a worker or in the basis of his social and class existence, is not in conflict with the foundation of wage slavery but rather coexists and harmonizes with it!!! Let us not forget that the discussion is not about one worker. The discussion is about the entire working class and the entire international labour movement.
2. The capitalist system also has the capacity to bear the expectations, aspirations, and hopes of the working class in its existential foundations, in such a way that it can prevent the emergence of antagonism in its relations with the labour movement, or let’s say that workers, in the scope of being sellers of labour power and considering the objective conditions of their work, exploitation, and social life, can achieve their expectations and resolve their problems through the same trade unionist disputes.
3. Any kind of workers’ transcendence of the protective boundaries of capitalist existence is not in the social capacity of their real movement but requires the intervention of a force outside their class.
4. The external force required is not only not of the labour movement, nor is its speech a thoughtful expression of the existence and anti-capitalist practice of the working class. On the contrary, these speeches are all intellectual achievements, discoveries, and miracles of the intellectuals of the wealthy classes, a general thought that transcends the social existence of humans, the result of the evolution of scientific processes in history and includes a set of historical, scientific, and political views and perceptions.
5. A phenomenon called the working class, within the scope of class existence and in the current practice of its movement and class struggle, is not even capable of finding awareness, recognition, and scientific secrets and mysteries of advancing the anti-capitalist struggle but must definitely learn all this from the intellectual representatives of other classes.
6. Even with the assumption of accepting the position of the elements of the upper classes as the discoverers of socialism and socialist theories!!! Again, the role of these is not an intra-class and intra-movement role in the class struggle of the working masses and an organic effect on the process of this struggle or the promotion of the anti-capitalist movement of the working class to a more conscious and conscious stage, but the injection of consciousness into the labour movement.
7. And finally, socialism is not an anti-capitalist class movement, but a school and a collection of knowledge along with all other sciences and knowledge. Knowledge that apparently all other classes, or at least those who know them, are able to understand better than the workers.
All these points are unfortunately hidden in Lenin’s formulation, and he even insists on emphasizing them. For example, he insists that: “We said that social-democratic consciousness could not exist in the workers in principle”, “… the teaching of socialism has developed from those historical, philosophical and economic theories that have been studied by the learned representatives of the propertied classes and the intelligentsia”, or “Class political consciousness can be brought to the worker only from the outside, that is, from outside the economic struggle and from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers”. An important point here is that Lenin nowhere refers to Marx in presenting the above views. Marx has the most comprehensive, clearest, and most radical explanations in this regard. The issue of consciousness, its relationship to the social existence of humans, the material foundation of thought and the material foundations of class cognition, the internal unity of the object and the mind, the relationship between the mode of production, classes, class struggle, and the consciousness of social classes, the revolutionary materialist narrative of history, the process of work, and the material foundations of the dominant ideology, the critique of the rising and revolutionary class in different historical periods and its crystallization in the form of the conscious existence of this class, the examination of the issue during the life of capitalism, the role of the proletariat, the content and objectivity of the socialist consciousness of the working class, and the critique of idealist and imperialist views and narratives. All of these issues are discussed very explicitly, vividly, clearly, and vividly, especially in Marx’s early works and even in his later writings. Lenin’s point of reference in presenting his views on the workers’ movement and the diversity of its class consciousness is unfortunately not Marx’s view of the subject. One reason, and of course the only reason, for his disregard for Marx’s statements in these areas could be that this part of Marx’s works was not available until then, and Lenin and his generation had not seen or read the aforementioned texts, for example, The German Ideology. In any case, he sometimes formulates his views and perceptions in relation to the above issues not on the basis of Marx’s view and narrative of revolutionary materialism, but essentially on the theories of Karl Kautsky, and he insists on adhering to his words. Points such as “Socialism and class struggle are not the product of each other…” “Socialist knowledge can only emerge on the basis of deep scientific knowledge… and the bearers of knowledge are not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intellectuals…” and the like are directly quoted from Karl Kautsky. It could perhaps be said that the basis of Lenin’s words in “What Is to Be Done” regarding the explanation of the labour movement and the class consciousness of the proletariat is the same theoretical discussions of the leaders of the Second International, and in particular Kautsky himself. But the important issue in this regard is that, despite Lenin’s comprehensive reliance on the essence of Kautsky’s theories in his critique of the phenomenon known as Economism or Right Reformism within Russian Social Democracy, he does not extract the political and practical conclusions of Kautsky’s ilk from this critique. Lenin’s discussion of the partisanship of the proletariat, revolution, political power, and the task of social democracy is completely different from what the social democratic parties of Western Europe formulated.
The reason for this is somewhat clear. In the maze of all these criticisms and analyses, Lenin seeks the answer to the needs of the day for a “democratic revolution” in Russian society. A revolution that, according to his own repeated description, is supposed to overthrow the tsarist autocracy and establish democracy in society. It will ensure the growth and development of the European type of capitalism (?!) in Russia!! Its benefits will accrue above all to the bourgeoisie and, of course, will also have benefits for the working class. In a word, a revolution that responds to the common interests and horizons of the Russian bourgeoisie and the proletariat!!! Lenin’s criticism of Economism draws all its grounds and yeast from the requirements of this revolution, and that is precisely why, despite all the war and struggle he waged against the Economists regarding the importance of socialist consciousness for the workers’ movement, he finally summarizes the top and bottom of this consciousness in the following phrases:
“It is not enough to explain that the workers are subjected to political oppression. We must preach about each specific manifestation of this oppression, and since this oppression affects so many different classes of society, since this oppression manifests itself in so many different spheres of life and activity, whether in professional, personal, family, religious, scientific, etc., then is it not clear that if we do not take upon ourselves the comprehensive organization of the work of the absolute government politically, we have not fulfilled our task, which is to expand and develop the class consciousness of the workers.” (Emphasis mine)
We see that all the excitement about the importance of class consciousness and socialist knowledge of the working class is anchored on the shore of the comprehensive exposure of the autocracy, that is, the tsarist machine of oppression and repression, which is exactly what democracy needs in Russian society. The explanation of the common interests of classes in the face of the tsarist dictatorship occupies a very important place in the scaffolding of this consciousness, so much so that Lenin repeatedly considers ignoring this issue as a clear contradiction of understanding the class consciousness of the proletariat. Marx’s revolutionary materialism is completely forgotten in this discussion. The anti-capitalist struggle gives way completely to the anti-regime struggle, and the question of how the mere comprehensive exposure of the autocracy, carrying this out among all classes of the population, the explanation of the common interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the anti-tsarist revolution, and such questions, can be a critique of the proletariat’s weapon in the campaign to abolish the relationship of buying and selling labour power, remains unanswered in all respects. The same unfortunate lack of response that the October Revolution ultimately paid for in the worst way. In other words, this lack of response paid off very badly in the days after the October Revolution. The proletariat that had viewed its class struggle in this way and was digging its way of struggle in this way was bound to suffer the same fate that it suffered.
Lenin’s struggle with right-wing reformism within Social Democracy, precisely under the pressure of its democratic point of departure and the class distance of this point from the revolutionary socialism of the abolition of wage labour, imposes on the entire process of his discourse a mass of complex contradictions. The economic struggle of the workers against the capitalists is downplayed and despised to the point of being regarded as essentially a kind of wish and expectation of the tsarist government. “Economic concessions are the cheapest and most economical thing for the government, because by this means the government hopes to win the confidence of the working masses, and that is why we Social Democrats must in no way, absolutely in no way, entertain the idea that economic reforms are more precious to us and that we consider them especially important.”
This statement is not necessarily false, and at certain moments of the development period or even the complete dominance of capitalism in a society, it may be completely true, even though it was not the case in today’s Russian society, and all the events of the day scream that it was not the case, but the basic question is:
1. Why should the economic struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie be summed up in determining the price of labour? Why should the economic and political struggle of the working class be separated? Why shouldn’t all of these be judged by whether or not they are anti-capitalist? These questions are especially important in the sense that in criticizing the right and reformist narrative of economics, Lenin departs from the same place as the economists themselves depart. To put it more precisely, the conflict between the working class and the bourgeoisie and the capitalist system in the field of economy is the same from the point of view of both sides of the conflict. Both sides summarize it in the struggle between the high and low prices of labour power. Their difference, as far as this particular issue is concerned, is that the economists consider this work important and make it synonymous with the entire class struggle of the proletariat, but Lenin does not give it such a place and, on the contrary, considers the exposure of the absolute government to be much more important. The economic struggle of the workers, in the eyes of proletarian communism, is a very wide and important arena of the class struggle against the entire capitalist system. No Chinese wall separates the struggle for improving working and living conditions and imposing the highest living conditions and social welfare from the soviet and class organization of the working masses for the complete disruption of the labour process of capital, the confiscation of factories and workplaces by the workers, the planning of work and production by them, the struggle for social freedoms and rights or the struggle against the political regime. Here the battlefield of the working class and the capitalist system is completely open and more open than in many places. Equating the economic struggle with merely the struggle over the price of labour and the right to form a union or strike is not the view of the abolitionist socialism towards this realm of struggle, but rather the view of the same economists and right-wing syndicalist reformism.
2. Knowing that the above view of the economic struggle of the working class is incorrect, the next question is why should the importance of this struggle be downgraded? After all, why should it be pretended that there is no ground or occasion in this realm for advancing the process of class consciousness of the workers? Isn’t it that the anatomy of civil society must be traced in political economy and the description of capitalist society must be traced in the process of production of surplus value and the capitalist labour process? Isn’t the recognition of the worker from the dimensions of exploitation that he experiences, his acquaintance with the fate of the labour process and the social product of his labour, and the extension of this dissection to his more and more conscious struggle the manifestation of the deepest level of class consciousness of the proletariat? Ignoring the importance of this issue itself is evidence of the economistic narrative of the economic struggle of the working class on the one hand and, more importantly, the contempt for the entire anti-capitalist struggle of this class on the other.
3. Most importantly of all, why should the danger of right-wing reformism within the labour movement be fundamentally downplayed by overvaluing the economic struggle and undervaluing the struggle against the political regime?!! The problem of the proletariat with this reactionary right approach is not at all that it diminishes the political struggle against the regime. The much more important and fundamental danger is that, like termites, it gnaws at the roots of the anti-capitalist movement of the working class and weakens it. Besides, does the mere giving of the price to the struggle against the dictatorship and for the achievement of political freedoms imply a socialist attack by the proletariat on the capitalist system?!! The explanation is clear that this is not the case and instilling such an idea in the minds of the workers not only does not increase their socialist knowledge, but on the contrary, it further intensifies their illusions about any subversive movement.
The answer to all the above questions can be sought at the very point of Lenin’s departure for the critique of economism. The requirements for the victory of the democratic revolution and the hanging of proletarian socialism in the face of this revolution and its prospects fully explain the reason for Lenin’s approach to this type of criticism. It is under the pressure of this atmosphere that everything is seen in reverse. The spontaneous movement of the working class is recognized as a completely trade union and bourgeois movement. Instead of being, as Marx said, a movement to change existing objectivity, socialism is interpreted as a set of precepts and ideas resulting from various processes of the development of science in history. Socialist consciousness, instead of being the manifestation of the proletariat’s thoughtful and conscious critique of the entire capitalist society and its real economic foundations, is reduced to a comprehensive exposure of the political regime. The economic struggle of the workers, in general and independently of any content and theme, is despised and considered to be the preserve of the capitalists. Criticism of right-wing reformism, despite all its intensity and rhetoric, remains limited to the level of indifference of this approach to anti-regime, and in parallel, the very political struggle against the ruling dictatorship is elevated to the level of socialist struggle of the working class.
Lenin’s book What Is to Be Done and his detailed discussion of Economism are unfortunately mixed with all these problems and contradictions, this is a problem that has existed and is a mistake that was made in a period of history by Bolshevism and, including, Lenin himself, in the Russian labour movement. It is clear that this type of attitude, analysis and horizon-building had a very serious impact on the fate of the Russian labour movement, the October Revolution, the failure of this revolution and, in this regard, the world labour movement. But the discussion here is absolutely not about criticizing Lenin and examining his mistakes. I said before that the real problem is something else. The root of the problem is that not only the “left” is completely irrelevant to the Iranian labour movement, but even some labour activists who inherit the characteristics of this left, a hundred years after that date, very easily and with all the usual ideological and partisan enthusiasm, very firmly stamp any anti-capitalist approach to the elimination of wage labour with the stamp of economism. Sometimes, when they see the real anti-capitalist movement of the workers seriously weighing on their chests, they suddenly, out of extreme anger, in the style of the writers of the Qajar era, add a list of other titles and epithets such as anarchist, anarcho-syndicalism, and a multitude of other isms and its. A worker or non-worker complains that his cooperative shop has failed. He is very rebellious and shouts that all the misfortunes are due to the Economists. It is interesting to know, for example, what this critic, whether a worker or non-worker, considers the characteristics of Economism? He considers belonging to one of the left political sects to be equivalent to having class consciousness!! And the lack of this sectarian affiliation to be antagonism to class consciousness!! And therefore Economism! Just as he calls sectarian membership communism!! and the lack of this membership anarchism!! Anyone who calls the cooperative council a unity of tendencies is an anarchist!! And since he also sees insulting tendencies as opposition to sects, he completes his description of his characteristics with the word Economist!! Some workers have said that a labour organization should emerge on the basis of the class struggle of the workers, and he, who believes that the workers are not involved in any struggle or protest at all, calls this Economism!!! And right there he calls their opposition to creating a scattered sect unrelated to the workers the same as anarchism!!! The story of this friend’s analysis of Economism and his reference to real examples of Economism!!! is very long. These are only given here as examples. The problem is not Lenin’s mistake and his non-socialist criticism of the right-wing syndicalist reformism within Russian social democracy in the early 20th century. The problem of the 21st century worker activist’s influence on the left, the heir to the popular movements of those times, is his excessive persistence in opposing any anti-wage labour speech. The more real problem is that this type of worker or non-worker activist has neither properly considered Economism, nor has he considered the subject of Lenin’s criticism, nor has he allowed himself to think about the correctness or incorrectness of that criticism, they have only made it a habit to say that everyone who is not a sect member is an Economist!! This is also a type of conscious worker activist. What happened in the early 20th century was a tragedy, but what we see here and at the beginning of the 21st century is far more comedic than any comedy.
December 1, 2007