Nasser Paydar
Communism Abolition of Wage Labor and Leninist Militant Reformism
The way of looking at the problem of the class consciousness of the proletariat and the appropriate model of organizing workers in the class struggle are closely and completely intrinsically linked. The belief that socialism is the product of the thoughts of class scholars, or that Marx’s teachings are rooted in English political economy, German classical philosophy and French socialism, without any need for any interpretation or interpretation, directly gives the intellectual representatives of the non-working classes the right to consider themselves the guardian force, saviour and leader of the working-class movement. When the source of the proletariat’s consciousness is not its social and class existence!!! It is as clear as day that the intellectuals of other classes must determine and dictate to it the content of consciousness, the content of the struggle, the analysis of capitalism and the way to confront this system. The foundation of party building for the international workers’ movement of the last hundred years is based precisely on this theory. A theory that is truly in conflict with the nature of Marx’s teachings. As we have already clarified, Marx saw the source of communist consciousness in the proletariat itself and its class existence. It is very interesting that he emphasizes that elements of other classes can only feel the flames of communism in their own being through contemplation of the conditions of work and exploitation and the fate of life of this class. In Marx’s analysis, these working masses, as a class of capitalist society without any interest in the existence of the capitalist system, wave the banner of communism and the war against wage slavery on the basis of their internal contradiction with capital. In this analysis, others or elements and individuals of other classes, if they are to be communists, must be practically and in the entirety of their social existence involved with this process, the anti-capitalist movement of the workers. The theory of referring socialism to the brains of the intellectuals of the upper classes completely distorts the issue. Here, the workers are even exempted from involvement in determining the fate of their struggle against capitalism, because they are only worthy of trade union struggles and forming unions to sell their labour power. In this explanation, only representatives of the upper classes should decide on the path and customs of communism and the fate of the workers’ class struggle against capitalism!!
The pact of unity of the party-building sect above the heads of the workers with the syndicalist movement and the common and united hostility of both of them with the anti-capitalist movement and for the abolition of wage labour of the working class also lies precisely here.
It is obvious that the foundation of party-building for the working class throughout the years of the twentieth century was based precisely on this idea. The party of professional revolutionaries, the parties of the Comintern and their modern descendants were all born from this same political and intellectual womb. Here there is absolutely no discussion about whether these parties have gathered the workers around their words or not, the fundamental discussion is about the social and class vision that dominates these party-buildings. The Bolshevik Party has undoubtedly been one of the most working-class parties in history, but this party, as we have seen, could not be a vessel for the anti-capitalist struggle of the working class against wage slavery and could not give the Russian labour movement, relying on its anti-capitalist class existence, the training, preparation, authority and awareness to abolish the wage labour relationship. In the meantime, let us not forget one point. This type of party building, which was based on the denial of socialist and anti-capitalist organization of the working class, in its historical process, became further and further away from communism and the process of organizing the working masses against wage labour, and in this process, it reached such a level of disgrace that even 4 isolated people, alien to any labour movement in the world, allowed themselves to publish a meaningless piece of paper and announce the formation of the “Worker Communist Party”!!! And that is, a party to determine the fate of the international working class on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet camp!!! The history of the last 100 years of the world’s “left” is, to a large extent, the history of this type of party building. Parties consisting of representatives of other classes for the working class, parties that, regardless of whether the workers welcome them or not, have always been irrelevant to and alien to the anti-capitalist movement of the working class. Parties that, in the absence of workers’ welcome, have been a very tasteless farce, and in the event of workers’ welcome, have recorded a catastrophe in the history of the anti-wage labour movement of the working masses.
It may be said that after all, it is natural for elements of other classes to be able to delve into the life and working conditions and exploitation of the working masses of the world, and on this basis, their integration into communist consciousness and their approach to the movement for the abolition of wage labour is very normal. It can be said that this point is a matter of course, and in that case, why cannot or should not communist elements from other social classes be the pillars of the anti-capitalist organization of the labour movement? This is a very valid and correct question. No Chinese wall has separated people from other classes from the proletariat. These people can be among the communist intellectuals and pioneers, they can play the most active, radical and conscious role in the process of organizing the anti-capitalist movement of the working class, these people can do all these things and more with complete success and in the best possible way. There is no doubt about the truth of this issue. The important point here is that in this case, 1. The awareness of these people is not the emanations of their brains as intellectuals of the wealthy classes, but rather the result of exploration and contemplation of the social existence of the working class. In other words, the source of their consciousness is not the bourgeois mentality, but the existence of the proletariat and its struggle. 2. These people themselves are not intellectuals of the propertied classes, but rather activists of the labour movement and express their social and class existence here. 3. They do not maintain a commercial ideological sect under the name of a party for the workers, but as conscious elements from within the workers, they help organize the anti-capitalist movement of the working masses. 4. And finally, independent of all these ifs and buts, what has been done by the left at the global level over the past hundred years is not an objective reflection of the above assumptions, which, on the contrary, has been a vast effort by intellectual representatives of other classes to bury the anti-capitalist movement of the workers in history and to turn the working class masses into fuel for nationalist, democratic, and social-bourgeois movements.
The left parties of the twentieth century, regardless of the composition of their constituent elements, were parties that were created by representatives of non-working classes with non-working-class goals, expectations, and horizons. The emergence of these parties was not a crystallization of the struggle and uprising of the proletariat protesting against the existence of wage slavery, but a manifestation of the rise of representatives of sections of the bourgeoisie for people’s democracy, paving the way for capitalist development, nationalist anti-imperialist and determination of the right to national self-determination, and the like. These parties were not formed to organize the communist movement of workers and the struggle of the working masses against capitalism and for the abolition of wage labour; on the contrary, they were created to separate the workers from the context of this struggle and turn them into soldiers and Peshmerga forces of other movements. The very rigid and steadfast appeal of these parties to consciousness and the party, according to Lenin, also stemmed precisely from the depths of these specific class interests. Here too, “it was the social existence of people that shaped their consciousness.”
Against the theory of two organizations or the theory of the separation of the “party” and the “mass organizations of the working class”
It is time for the two-organizational twist of the labour movement to be subjected to radical criticism with a deep, class-based insight and from the confident and solid perspective of working-class communism. This theory has already dealt very crushing and irreparable blows to the class struggle of the proletariat and to the communist and internationalist movement of this class. The dark history of some liberal and anti-socialist criticisms of this theory should not be used as a pretext to disguise its bourgeois-socialist nature.
In this article, I will try to examine the various aspects of the issue, albeit briefly, but before that, it is necessary to depict the disastrous consequences of this type of view on organizing the labour movement in a very simple way in front of real communists and those who are seriously and honestly involved in the class struggle of the working masses. Let us look at today’s Iranian society, the phenomenon of the “left” and the labour movement. The number of circles that, under the names of party, organization, group, alliance, council, core and other names, consider themselves communist, involved in organizing the labour movement, standard-bearers of the socialist revolution, claiming various types of demarcation with the “left” of the mass and majority type and the like!! is definitely more than hundreds. Each of them is critical of the others, each of them declares itself the only bearer of communist truth and considers the existence of others harmful to the labour movement and finally, each group, circle and party is in contact with several workers despite its absolute lack of connection with the current process of the labour movement. The clear meaning of this situation is that at least a thousand or perhaps several thousand Iranian workers have become each other’s ideological opponents within the ideological alignment of these circles. This group, which once was an activist of its own class movement or at least could have played such a role, now, if not all of them, but in their dominant composition, lacks any kind of influence on the ongoing struggle of the working masses. They have replaced the task of being an intervener and playing a penetrating role in the class struggle with the mission of advancing the ideological and political affairs of the party and group. In this regard, their job is to recruit workers for their sect and use them as the blackness of the party army in competition with other groups and parties. This is a black and catastrophic scenario that is before us as one and only one of the results of the two-organization approach or approaches of the labour movement. Let us reflect for a moment and gaze at the dimensions of the disaster with a deep sense of class and human responsibility. The parties, organizations, groups and circles that have spoken with the greatest zeal and claim over a long historical period of time of continuous and devoted efforts to organize the working class have had the direct result of their work of disintegrating the labour movement, depriving it of its activists, and transforming the militant workers into completely ineffective human beings and the black legions of ideological sects. This situation must be put to an end. But this is not an easy task. What is a disaster from the perspective of honest and serious activists of the labour movement is certainly the same fundamental requirement of class struggle from the perspective of party and group leaders!!! This issue itself, how to recognize and analyses it, the reasons for the party members’ and, worse, some labour activists’ stubborn support or defence of this trend and approach, their resistance to any opposing theory and any communist criticism of this trend, all of which are serious issues of class struggle. Another important point in this area is that the defenders of the approach up to now, as soon as they are confronted with the above horrific picture, will immediately point their finger at the black octopus of dictatorship. By referring to the long years of domination by force and naked police repression, they reveal the decisive and fatal role of the two-formation approach in the emergence of this situation. The dictatorship has certainly played a fundamental role in the destruction and disruption of the class organization process of the labour movement, but the dual narrative of the party and mass organizations is fundamentally, and regardless of the existence or absence of the dictatorship, a bourgeois-socialist narrative.
In order to crush every germ of radical communist criticism against their completely bourgeois and anti-socialist view of the labour movement, the defenders of this theory will certainly seize upon another “harness” (The Strong Rope: The name of a religious newspaper in India and Iran in the 19th century) besides bringing up dictatorship. They will raise the club of takfir from all sides against the attackers of “Leninism”!! Life in the narrow nest of bourgeois oppositionist, devoid of any communist and labour burden, has for long periods created such a huge gap between the vested interests of the party masters and the interests and real discretions of the anti-wage labour movement of the working class that to fill it in favour of communism and the abolition of wage labour requires enduring all these takfirs. The famous argument of the cook Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar is very familiar to the Iranian worker.
His words were: “The servant is the Sultan, not the servant of the eggplant.” The defenders of the bourgeois party of the working class have also historically not been anxious about the fate of the class struggle of the working masses against the basis of wage labour but have been concerned with their own caricatured scholastic beliefs. Each part of the bourgeoisie strives in its own way to have a share in the power of capital. The masters of the existing sects and their immediate and distant predecessors have also historically and traditionally made hanging in the name of the worker and the slogan of “Leninism” their way of life to achieve the same goal. These are all the realities that exist. If the anti-wage labour movement of the working class and the communism of the abolition of wage labour of this class are to be victorious one day, all these realities must be grappled with in the depths of the current and turbulent struggle of the working masses. In this context, we must also understand the phenomenon of the two formations as deeply as possible, with all the discussions, justifications, arguments, and explanations that have existed and continue to exist around it and explore its various aspects from a communist and class perspective. This is the goal here, and for this purpose, we will go to the main circles of discussion.
A look at history
Explaining the assumptions of the material understanding of history, Marx says: “Human beings can be distinguished from animals on the basis of consciousness, religion, or whatever else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their own means of subsistence.” There are also many theories and versions about the content of the struggle and how the working class is organized, but the truth is that the workers themselves have historically and realistically begun their movement against capitalism and have organized themselves without resorting to any kind of separation between economics and politics. The obvious explanation is that for a long time the workers have not been able to express their social life as a class or an independent class movement against the owners of capital and the entire capitalist system, but it is very important that the real indicator of the course of their struggle, even during this period, has been the approach of anti-capitalist exploitation and against the injustices, injustices, and crimes resulting from the relationship of buying and selling labour power. The history of the labour movement from the moment of emergence to the last quarter of the 19th century is indeed like this, and the materialistic, practical and revolutionary examination of this process definitely contains very instructive lessons for the communists and the radical activists of the proletarian class struggle in the current conditions of the capitalist world.
England is the first country where the relationship between labour and capital has become the dominant mode of production, but the traces of the emergence of this mode of production should be found on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and specifically in today’s Italy. Naturally, the process of conflict between labour and capital takes root here and is born here. The beginning of the second half of the 14th century witnessed the vast effort of the textile manufactories of several Italian cities to form an alliance among themselves and fight against the capitalists. These struggles were suppressed in the very first days of the organization and alignment by the force of the feudal rulers of the day and one of its important leaders was executed. However, the workers’ movement continued its twists and turns and culminated in a powerful uprising in 1378 AD. The leader of the uprising was a worker named “Ciampi revolt” and the workers’ demands in the uprising were as follows.
1. Increase in wages
2. Enjoyment of political rights
3. Workers’ political power
Hearing the third paragraph of these demands does not create the illusion for any conscious worker that his Italian chained fellow in the black wilderness of feudal rule was demanding the establishment of socialism that would eliminate wage labour!!! But the list of demands mentioned explains an important truth of the proletariat’s class struggle very well. That even for the 14th century textile factory worker, the connection between the demand for higher wages, political rights, gaining power, and the necessity of replacing the conditions of work and exploitation and the form of life of his day with a kind of social relations free from exploitation and class oppression was a tangible thing. This may be met with objection from some. They will say that the formulation of the aforementioned demands and slogans requires knowledge and a level of awareness that the seller of labour working deep in the factories of the Nemur region of that era certainly lacked. These people argue that the above expectations and their coherent design were the result of the intervention of reformist elites who, starting from philanthropy, tried to improve the lives of people and reduce social corruption. The argument of these people hides fragments of truth within itself, but its foundation is weak, contradictory, and metaphysical. The debate is not about which specific people and in which specific geographical location the idea of workers’ political power or the abolition of private property was proposed.
The basis of the discussion is the reflection on the unity between the economic and social conditions of each specific historical period and the process of development and evolution of human thoughts. The discussion is that the emergence of the wage labour relation also brings with it the struggle of the seller of labour power against wage labour and, inevitably, the anti-ideological struggle against the system of wage slavery, just as it also creates and develops the thoughts, policies and solutions corresponding to the need to develop, dominate and impose this mode of production on the working masses. There is no doubt that each of these two opposing processes goes through its own stages of growth and maturity and that the different stages of branching out and deepening are objectified precisely in organic unity with the material origin and the interactions of the ongoing struggle of the antagonistic classes resulting from this mode of production. It is not that the theory of workers’ political power is a creation of the Florentine worker’s mind. On the contrary, the whole debate revolves around the fact that this formulation is not the result of any particular enlightenment, discovery, or genius of any mind. Mindfulness has no meaning in separation from reality and the process of material development. Thinking about workers’ political power, regardless of who has conceived it, is a solution and a proposal that derives its philosophy of existence and objectivity from the existence of the relationship of buying and selling labour power. It is a response to the contradictions that emerge from the depths of a social relationship that is contradictory in its foundation. This response can be utopian, it can reveal corners of a real perspective, it may or may not be radical. Another important point here is that the demands and expectations mentioned are not extracted from the text of a philosophical treatise or a book of intellectual revelations belonging to this or that philosopher. On the contrary, the continuous clauses of the charter are a childish and nascent labour movement that has remained in the history of the struggles of the world’s workers and has been passed down from previous generations to later generations. In a word, the Florentine worker’s plan of the above three demands, during the period of the embryogenesis of the relationship of buying and selling labour power, is a clear cry for the truth that, contrary to the popular belief of the party masters, workers are also in the human race. Even at the low level of class recognition, they also suffer the pain of being exploited by capital in their brains. In response to the pain, they cry out and take the path of struggle, the lack of political rights to confront the owners of capital and the apparatus of repression bothers them greatly, they prepare methods of exercising collective power against the owners of capital and the state that supports them, and they think of organizing. In line with this process, the necessity of changing the existing objectivity also more or less occupies the intelligence and senses of the inner conscious people of their movement. Where they actually go depends on certain factors. If their movement is hijacked by the 20th century communist parties, social democracy, national left and syndicalists, they will fall into the current situation. But if they devise and practice their own anti-capitalist and socialist struggle process with the help of their own activists and progressives and people like Marx, they will win. What we are hearing here from the first generation of the world’s mass of labour sellers six centuries ago, at the dawn of the dawn of labour protests, in the depths of a feudal society and in the darkness of a world filled with feudal exploitation and oppression, is by no means an exception. On the contrary, the story of life and the story of the struggle of all humans who step into the field of history little by little, have nothing in the world except labour power, selling this power is their only way of livelihood, by doing this they make the chains of slavery of capital tighter and tighter on their hands and feet, to reduce the pressure of their exploitation and to reduce the deadly pressure of this slavery, they are forced to fight and in the process of ups and downs of this campaign they have nothing else to lose except the same steel chains of wage slavery. We saw this on the Mediterranean coast, let’s go to other parts of the world.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, England and France witnessed the rise of a significant population of wage slaves in the arena of ongoing struggles within these societies. Workers in the textile factories of Lyons stopped production for five months without interruption. Major strikes occurred in most factories in Paris. Arms factories in London were closed under a wave of strikes and workers’ struggles. Paper mills in England endured major strikes. It was during this same period that we witnessed angry workers’ revolts and uprisings in protest of the political injustices of the day and in direct campaign against the political power that protected the employers and owners of capital. The widespread uprising of the workers of “Middlesex” in England in 1617 led to a kind of civil war between the government of the day and the working class. The revolt of the workers in the Newcastle factories led to the widespread arming of the sellers of labour in these units and progressed towards a full-scale armed uprising of the workers against the government of the day in England. Workers stormed prisons to free their fellow prisoners, and by occupying the government’s death dungeons, they freed their comrades. Similar uprisings occurred in other British cities, including Lancashire.
The 14th to 18th centuries witnessed the clear fact that the working masses in Italy, France, England, Holland, Spain, Germany, America and elsewhere everywhere were engaged in a broad movement against capitalist exploitation, political disenfranchisement and the struggle against the dominant political power in society. The workers in these countries were trying to organize themselves. In the course of these struggles, they were constantly confronted with the ruling political regime. They seriously challenged the regimes. They established their own secret, semi-secret and open organizations. So far, everything is normal.
This is a process that has been going on in a large part of the world since that day, both before and especially after the dominance of the capitalist system. The main point in this transition is something else. The workers of all these societies, within the context of these same movements, with the mixed economic and political demands of the day, are demanding in various ways more fundamental and decisive changes in the dominant social relations. In Italy, they are expecting fundamental changes in the structure of political power, the effective participation of workers in economic planning, and the fair distribution of all subsistence, welfare, and social needs. In Germany, egalitarian labour movements are demanding the abolition of private property, the elimination of classes, the end of political rule over people, the fair distribution of all incomes, and the participation of citizens in the process of work and production. During this same period, the movement called “Thuringia” in the city of “Mühlhausen” in Germany is proposing the idea of establishing a revolutionary government under the name of “Eternal Council” and at the same time formulating its demands as follows.
1. Socialization of all wealth
2. Obligation of everyone to participate in the work and production process
3. Abolition of any sovereignty and political power beyond the masses of the population
From Italy and Germany in the 17th century, we move to England during the same period. Here, too, along with the broad wave of struggles that we have already mentioned, we witness the rise of the miners’ movement. At the forefront of this movement’s demands is the abolition of private property. The establishment of communist cooperatives, the participation of all in the production process, and an equal share of the fruits of labour by citizens form the list of subsequent demands. The English working class plays the role of the most radical and militant among the forces opposing the absolute monarchy, and despite its small population at this time, it is the real driving force of the social struggle to overthrow the ruling royal tyranny.
The historical period we are discussing is accompanied by the occurrence of a major event known as the “Great Revolution” in France. It is in the first years after the beginning of this revolution that the French working class, through its active participation in the context of the popular movement, assumes the role of the driving force behind the radicalization of demands, expectations, and strategies for exercising power in this movement. Contrary to the widespread “left” outcry over the “revolutionism” of the bourgeoisie at that time, all the different sections of the French bourgeoisie, even if they seem to be a bit more “progressive” compared to their class counterparts in other countries, none of them are willing to pursue any radical political and social demands without the rebellious force of the proletariat’s pressure. Everywhere, it is the working class that makes its burning class radicalism a powerful lever for pushing the bourgeoisie towards the proposal of certain political rights and freedoms. The electoral law stemming from the “Great Revolution” and approved in 1790 or the miracle of the democratic conquests of the bourgeoisie in history!! It completely deprived about 84 percent of the French population of political rights, even the formal and caricature right to vote. The internal factions of the bourgeoisie, from the Jacobins to the Girondins, and from the radical representatives of industrial capital!!! to the spokesmen of other layers of capital, were all devout and faithful endorsers of the law, and among them it is only the proletariat that smashes its manifesto of protest in the face of the Constituent Assembly of the day. The workers of the Saint-Antoine district of Paris and other areas of the city, along with workers from several factories, have issued a manifesto declaring that the process of current developments in France must yield to their demands. What the leftist narrative of the 20th century has interpreted as the achievements of bourgeois revolutions!!! is in fact the result of the violent pressure of the working masses on the bourgeoisie in the arena of joint struggle against the old historical systems. The war between the emerging French working class, capitalist exploitation and the owner of capital begins precisely at this time. The bourgeoisie still lacks political power and has a long way to go before it even becomes the economic ruling class. Let us leave aside this, it desperately needs the proletariat in the daily struggle against the monarchy, the financial aristocracy and the social forces opposing it. However, it does not stop at any limits, not only in the horrific intensification of the exploitation of the workers, but also in the deprivation of any simple human and political rights from this class. The anti-worker law known as “Le Chapelle” is passed by the representatives of the bourgeoisie against any anti-capitalist class movement of the working masses, and the proletariat, while at the same time using its class power to push the bourgeoisie towards a conflict with medieval relations, also fights the crimes of this class against itself. The events of 1792 onwards, the August uprising of that year, the killing of a large number of workers in this uprising, the Jacobins coming to power through the pressure of the labour movement, the crimes of Jacobinism against the working class, the execution of proletarian leaders by the Jacobin government, the numerous laws passed by this section of the bourgeoisie to lower the living standards of the workers and deprive them of all political freedoms and rights, the emergence of the “Babeuf” movement (François-Noël Babeuf) as a direct reaction of the French proletariat to the crimes of the Jacobin bourgeoisie, and this movement’s insistence on the abolition of private property, all of which are very clear and vivid evidence of the same reality as mentioned above.
Before continuing the discussion and reviewing the process of the struggle of the European working class in the nineteenth century, it is necessary to delve a little deeper into the various events mentioned above and the real nature of the class struggle of the workers in the mentioned period. Our simple and brief summary of the first generations of sellers of labour power in the Italian factories is generally valid in relation to the labour movements of the 14th to 18th centuries. The organic intertwining of political and economic struggle, the inseparability of the struggle against the political regime with the struggle for the realization of subsistence demands and political rights, is evident and characteristic everywhere, in all these centuries, among the working masses of the European continent. The existence of these common indicators in the labour struggles of this period is accompanied by another important characteristic. Nowhere is there any talk of the establishment of different organizations based on the separation of economic and political struggle. Organization is considered to imply a broad alliance and the exercise of increasingly collective power against the employers, the state, and the prevailing economic, political, and social conditions.
In tracing the roots of what characterizes the labour movement of these centuries, several important components are usually pointed out. It is said that the working class was still in its infancy and development. It was a class “in itself” and not “for itself”, and despite the hostile struggle against the employers and the state and capitalist exploitation, it did not yet have any independent and distinct front from the bourgeoisie. If it spoke of the abolition of private property, it was deeply utopian and only put forward a kind of imaginary and idealistic narrative of socialism. More precisely, it had no awareness and knowledge of socialism, the abolition of wage labour. The list of these components could be continued. The capitalist system was still at the lower stage of its global development. The subsequent gigantic industrial revolutions had not taken place, the level of social productivity of labour was low, all of this forced the bourgeoisie to exert more terrible pressure on the lives of workers and trample on their social rights than in later periods, which contributed to the flare-up of workers’ revolts, the civil structure of capitalist society was not very developed, and the bourgeoisie was not yet able to take advantage of this opportunity to confront the workers’ movement. The capitalist state did not have the complete and complex structure of later periods and had very little capacity to diversify its role as the representative of all classes, and…
In my opinion, there is no doubt about the accuracy of the above components regarding the reality of the labor movement of the aforementioned centuries, the position of the bourgeoisie in relation to the working class, and the impact of this position on the daily course of the workers’ struggles. All of these components are real. The fundamental problem is not the difference in their existence or absence, or their effectiveness or ineffectiveness, but in the type of evaluation and explanation that is made of the role of these components. We need to discuss this further. First of all, the imaginative and idealistic nature of the abolition of private property for workers in this era is an undeniable reality, but the fundamental question is what is the organic relationship of this ideal with the conditions of work and life, the type of horizon-finding, and the nature of the class conflicts of the working masses in these specific historical conditions? This socialism is imaginary, but why do the working masses of these centuries welcome this ideal and horizon? In addition, it is also important to consider what the process of workers’ transition from this phase of socialist idealism to the phase of pursuing their real class socialism will be like? Other questions are also at the heart of this search process. How will the nature and content of his true class socialism be explained, given the nature of its class contradictions and conflicts, and what will be the role of the proletariat in designing, explaining, and characterizing this socialism?
No man who adheres to practical and revolutionary materialism can deny that the approach of the worker of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of Europe to ideal socialism, in any case, extracted its platform of departure from the very fabric of the conditions of work, exploitation and disenfranchisement of his day. This is clear evidence of the fact that even in the wilderness of backwardness, the workers linked their simple class reaction to capitalist exploitation and the atrocities of wage slavery into a kind of socialism. This socialism and this idea of the abolition of private property were fanciful and certainly did not lead anywhere in the framework of the beliefs of the time, but they formed the ongoing process of thought of the pioneers of the workers’ struggle, and they deduced this thought and this belief not from the world of theology and the world of the “ideal” or the absolute idea, but from the context of the rebellious contradictions between their lives and the relations of wage labour. The essence of this socialism is the struggle against capitalist exploitation, but the fundamental problem is that its initiators and proponents are still in the first step or steps of thinking about the horizon of the liberation of their class, because their class struggle is still moving at a low level. In response to this, some will say that the egalitarianism and the idea of human equality in these movements cannot be a phenomenon that is detached from the conditions of work and livelihood and the contradictions of the workers’ lives. They will argue that the ideal of seeking justice and seeking equality are categories related to all historical eras of human life and that the working masses of Europe in the aforementioned centuries, considering their inferior position, considered clinging to the aforementioned utopian ideals and expectations as a way to console themselves and talked about it!!
This argument is wrong and is alien to revolutionary materialism. Egalitarian ideals have existed historically, but in each period these ideals have definitely reflected the expectations, horizons and goals of the specific social class or classes of that period. Babeuf ‘s imaginary socialism and the Babeuf movement cannot be compared with the dreams of the communal life of the Iranian Mazdak. The former reflects the expectations of the working masses of the 18th century at the same initial level of struggle, consciousness and class maturity, but the latter, in general, echoes the dreams of the rebellious pauperism of the decadent Sasanian slavery. These two types of socialism or two forms of egalitarian idealism belong to two different phases of the historical development of societies and to two profoundly different social classes within these two different historical phases. Their economic, political and social content is just as contradictory and distinct. To examine the issue more closely, the best way is to refer to the horizons and ideals that were proposed by the labour movements mentioned and reflected in the political and social literature of the same periods. Winstanley, the leader of the movement known as the “Diggers” in England, in his book called “The Law of Liberty”, speaks of the establishment of a society in which private property is completely abolished, all individuals work equally on the basis of a collective planning, and all workers, within the framework of the same collective planning, distribute what they have produced equally among themselves and consume it. Here we are faced with a discussion of organizing a society in which working and producing people play a fundamental role in planning all its economic, political, civil and social spheres, and the fulfilment of this role is tied to the component of the complete abolition of private property. For the English worker of the 18th century, this is naturally a utopia because the real preconditions for the establishment of a society based on the abolition of private property and the abolition of wage labour have not yet been met. But at the same time, it is a utopia whose social and economic content is formed by his reaction against capitalist exploitation and the state that supports the capitalists.
The pre-19th century European labour movement’s reception of utopian socialist visions of the type of Babbage, Winstanley, Fourier, Owen, Gill and others is a natural phenomenon of the struggles of the working class against capitalism in this specific historical period, and what can be deduced from the text of the connection between this level of the rise of the labour movement and this type of narrative of socialism is that the class struggle of the working masses in the later phases of its development will definitely criticize the aforementioned idealistic and imaginary socialism in all its forms, in response to the vital requirements of this development and growth, it will knock on the door of recognizing the socialism of the abolition of wage labour. This is absolutely not meant to imply that all workers will do this!! Such an idea is pure metaphysics, it is a discussion about a social class, a discussion about the process of comprehensive development of the class struggle of the working masses in history and in the twists and turns of its historical evolution. We are talking about an anti-capitalist and anti-wage labour movement that could not remain confined within the narrow shell of the imaginary socialism of the 18th century. At a higher level of class ascension and flourishing and in a more advanced phase of developing awareness and finding solutions, it is natural that this movement should make new important issues its agenda. The anatomy of the labour process of capital, the real extent of exploitation in this process, the critique of the political economy of the bourgeoisie, the organic and internal connection between the relationship of buying and selling labour power and the dominant civil and social structure, the process of alienating the mass of labour sellers from the labour process and the fate of production and the product of labour in the capitalist mode of production, the dominance of the Cairo of capital in the forms of its social embodiment in the form of law and legal and civil structure over the lives of workers, the role of the state as an institution imposing the productive, political and social order of capital on the working class, and the like, all of these were issues that were lining up one after another in a hurry to find their appropriate place within this agenda. Let us not forget that the occurrence of this process and the interactions within it were absolutely not an arbitrary and destined phenomenon. No determinism anywhere governs any corner of the course of historical events. We are talking only about the material dialectics of class struggle, and that the labour movement of the period under discussion was actually carrying in its womb the powerful and growing embryo of socialism abolishing wage labour and preparing it for birth. The ever-increasing growth of capitalist relations, the ever-widening appearance of wage slaves of capital in various societies, the vast and exciting rise of the proletariat, the turbulent waves of this class’s struggle against the capitalist system, the flow of growth of human knowledge and sciences as a mixed and inseparable part of the material process of historical evolution, and other similar issues, all cry out that the proletariat, as the vanguard class of the historical developments of the existing world, can and must make awareness of the above numerous issues a conscious being and a powerful weapon in its class struggle against wage labour. In other words, it can make the materialist and revolutionary dissection of the dominant social relations of the era a weapon for playing its role in history. In this regard, the proletariat can give birth to its pioneers, activists, intellectuals and intellectuals from the depths of its ongoing struggle process and from the pregnant womb of this movement. The issue must be seen in this way, and Marx and the entire teachings of Marx must be explored at a certain moment in this process. The socialism of the abolition of wage labour springs from the depths of this process and has nothing to do with the ideas of the upper classes. It is the working class and its class struggle that, in the initial stages and at the lower levels of its life, was hung up on utopian socialist perspectives and found its daily practice in coherence with the imaginary socialism of the Winstanley and Babeuf type, but this same proletariat in the nineteenth century stepped out of the old scaffolding of its eighteenth-century predecessors, took up the banner of the socialism of the abolition of wage labour and made the content of this socialism and its conscious class criticism of the relationship between the production of surplus value and the existence of capitalism the content of the manifesto of its struggles. The occurrence of this event was within the capacity of the proletariat and based on the needs of the day of its anti-capitalist struggle in the nineteenth century. There is no doubt that Marx, as a worthy thinker and internalist of this historical struggle process, plays the role of a very sympathetic midwife for the healthy and strong birth of this child.
Thus, the communism of the abolition of wage labour is a very clear, practical, organic, and class perspective that the labour movement of the nineteenth century replaces the imaginary utopian socialism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Here, absolutely no ideological and ideological school has been invented. The humble explorers of the bourgeoisie have not discovered from the depths of their genius-producing layers of thought the prescription for the establishment of a hospital for the problem of the exploitation of workers, and the scholars of the propertied classes have not transferred the charter of the emancipation of the wage slaves of capital from the unseen to the world of intuition. The same class that was everywhere engaged in the serious work of fighting the capitalist system during the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries is also fighting against capitalism much more broadly, more unitedly, and more vehemently in the nineteenth century. In the first period, this movement was the maximum ability and reach of the thought of its predecessors, the imaginary socialism of the likes of Babov, but in the second period it makes the teachings of Marx and the communism of the abolition of wage labour the beacon of its struggle. The whole importance and greatness of Marx’s teachings lie in the fact that they belong to this movement and play a very important role in the picture of the class, social and historical alternative of this movement to the capitalist system. Left reformism and the masters of the parties of this spectrum are trying very vainly to take him hostage from the passionate bastion of the anti-capitalist struggle and for the abolition of wage labour of the workers and to force his liberation into the all-round subjugation and surrender of the communist proletariat to the solutions of establishing state capitalism and perpetuating the system of wage slavery in other forms.
We return to the list of questions we raised earlier. The focus of the discussion was that in the 15th to 18th centuries, elements such as the organic intertwining of economic and political struggle, the idealism of abolishing private property, the inseparability of anti-regime with the current protests of the day, and finally the attempt to establish a kind of organization that would be a common container for all these struggles and to pursue all these goals, can be seen everywhere as clear indicators of the labour movement. The working masses are fundamentally fighting against capitalism, this fight is in one place against the low level of the price of labour, in another place against the anti-labour laws passed by the bourgeoisie or against the state defending capitalist exploitation. The working masses sometimes rush to a bloody and united uprising against the owners of capital and the political power that supports or represents it, they do not have a clear horizon of abolishing wage labour ahead, but no worker anywhere has made any commitment to any power that his struggle will not be anti-capitalist. On the contrary, everywhere, due to the situation of work and its exploitation and lack of rights, it is in conflict with the relationship of buying and selling labour power, the reduction of any degree of exploitation or the attainment of any level of political and social rights is tied to pressure on the chest of capital. It carries out the war against capital in various forms and in different fields, the struggle with the capitalist, sometimes with the machinery and means of production, with the rights and laws and contracts arising from the relationship of production of surplus value, with the government and military apparatuses supporting the capitalists and capital. It fights against capitalism without even having prepared and formulated this struggle in advance in a manifesto.
Here is a very important question. Why should this movement, with its characteristics, approach, horizon-finding, and process of deepening consciousness and anti-capitalism, suddenly be taken to pieces?!! Why should it be evaluated as a movement lacking the capacity to fight the capitalist system?!! Why should its communism of abolishing wage labour be suddenly introduced as the product of the thought and reasoning of the intellectuals of the upper classes, instead of being considered the manifestation of its activists’ conscious ascension to the highest phase of materialist cognition?!! Why should its political and economic struggle be separated?!! Why should its daily movement against capital be completely separated from its continuous class struggle to eliminate wage labour?!!! Why should it be referred to the organization hanging from the noose of the permanence of capitalism for the economic struggle?!! Why should its anti-capitalist organization be separated and surgically removed from its nationwide organization against the basis of capital?!! Where did these, these anti-revolutionary materialist precepts, anti-the basis of Marx’s teachings, anti-the objective reality of the process of the proletariat’s struggle centuries ago in history, and anti-any real anti-capitalist movement come from?? Where did it spread from? By what forces was it imposed on the labour movement, and by which social classes and forces is it protected today? The currents that inject these decrees into the brains of workers like the worst opium have their roots in the watershed of the horizons and expectations of which social classes? In this article I will try to answer these questions. The search for this answer is the main thread of our discussion in this article, but before doing so, we must once again return to the process of struggle of the working masses in history and in the continuation of the above periods, to the nineteenth century.
The labour movement of this century is also right in line with the struggles of the working masses in previous centuries. In this period, we are again witnessing the fusion of economic demands and political freedoms and rights, the struggle against regimes with the struggle to impose daily subsistence and welfare demands, and finally, the increasing intertwining of the current struggle of the workers with their nationwide and class movement to destroy the capitalist system. What gives the labour movement a distinctive feature in this century is the much greater deepening and explosion of all these determinations and indicators compared to the past. The broad internationalist approach and the wandering of the hopeful and powerful Specter of communism abolishing wage labour in the living space of people are also complementary to these characteristics. The higher level of consciousness, the radical criticism of various forms of utopian and utopian socialism, the deeper understanding of capital as a social relation, the attempt of the continental proletariat to organize a general war against the existence of capitalism, and everything that is a sign of the growth and class maturity of the struggle against wage slavery, manifests itself very strikingly in the labour movement of this period.
In England, this century begins with the Luddite movement. A movement that is definitely anti-capitalist but is unable to analyse and understand capital as a social relation. It attacks capital but sees only its embodied form in the form of means of production and machinery. It pours all its class anger and rage on capital, but its recognition and understanding of capital is very rudimentary and incomplete. Here again the question arises whether the opposition to capitalism really depends on having a comprehensive Marxian understanding of the relation of production of surplus value and capital in general as a social relation?! Those who have answered and are answering this question in the affirmative, that is, the entire broad spectrum of left reformism, the masters of the parties of this spectrum, the opportunist syndicalists attached to the left, must prove that anti-capitalism is not an objective and class category, but merely an ideological and school of thought!!!! The workers united in the Luddite movement fought against capitalist exploitation, against unemployment resulting from the internal conflicts and contradictions of the relationship of buying and selling labour power, against poverty, oppression, and lack of rights arising from this mode of production, and finally against the political regime defending this barbaric, inhumane situation. Naturally, they did not have proper familiarity with the socialist alternative to this objectivity and relationships, and they could not have had it at that particular historical moment. Anti-capitalism does not mean sufficient knowledge of the anatomy of the relationship of buying and selling labour power. How many people may be capable of this anatomy, but they are not anti-capitalists, but rather mercenaries of global capital. Opposition to wage slavery means a real, movement-based, class-based rebellion against exploitation and against all the hardships and sufferings resulting from the existence of the surplus value production relationship, and precisely for this reason the Luddite movement was a truly anti-capitalist phenomenon. This movement had several important characteristics. Organization and widespread unity among workers in different units were one of these indicators. Having a distinct line from other class oppositions, being political, and directly fighting the ruling machine of violence around the axis of class conflicts with the owners of capital and the relationship of buying and selling labour power were other characteristics that determined its characteristics.
After the Luddite movement, the wave of labour strikes became increasingly rebellious, workers’ efforts to organize intensified, and finally, in the 1840s, the European continent witnessed the formation of the Chartist movement. Here, the contradictory alignment of the proletariat with sections of the bourgeoisie for some economic and political reforms continued for a while, but this alignment everywhere felt the pressure of the anti-capitalist radicalism of the working masses. The Chartist movement, with the slogan “Political power is our means, and social happiness is our goal” at the 1840 congress, practically expressed itself as an anti-capitalist labour movement with a clear vision of replacing the wage slavery system with a society without exploitation and private property. The “Star of the North” magazine, the organ of the movement, focused its promotional and awareness-raising activities on explaining the dimensions of worker exploitation and the misery and human suffering caused by capitalist relations.
The Lyon workers’ uprising also occurred at the beginning of this decade. Here we are faced with a full-fledged workers’ movement that has launched a general armed war based on rebellion against capitalist exploitation and the atrocities, evils and injustices resulting from this specific form of exploitation. On one side of the field are the repressive forces supporting the bourgeoisie and on the other side is the proletariat, who are pointing their firearms at each other. The horizon of the struggle here is also very dusty. The Lyon worker has not definitely thought out the way and method of overthrowing the ruling social system and replacing it with his own socialism, but he fights with iron determination against wage labour. Any idea that this struggle is bourgeois is a highly metaphysical idea. This struggle against wage labour is advancing, although the armed worker in the field of struggle did not have the power to destroy the enemy, and this powerlessness is demonstrated in many aspects, including the low level of his political and class knowledge. The Lyon workers’ uprising was not accompanied by any political slogans, but politics should not be sought in slogans and writings on placards, but in the practical alignment of the class confrontation and the real, class content of this alignment. The war against the suffering caused by capitalist exploitation cannot be considered a non-political struggle, even without any political slogans. The workers’ struggle against the crimes arising from the depths of the relationship of buying and selling labour power, even if it is without horizons and without alternatives and without deep class insight, is ultimately a struggle against capitalism. It is this struggle that must become horizons, alternative, with radical class insight and insight, and become a powerful, universal, conscious, united, organized and ready movement for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the abolition of wage labour.
The uprising of the Lyon workers did not take long to be elevated to the more radical class role of the Parisian proletariat in the February Revolution of 1848. In this uprising, the workers went so far as to press the barrels of their rifles against the chests of the representatives of the parliament of Louis Philippe’s government and shout, “Enough of representation, we are the rulers.” It was during this uprising that “Raspail” (Vincent Raspail) was sent by the workers to the city hall, where he read his message as follows: “In the name of the proletariat of Paris, the provisional government is ordered to proclaim a republic. If this order is not carried out within two hours, Raspail will return with 20,000 men….” Regarding the role of the working masses of Paris in this revolution, Marx explains that “… naturally, each class interpreted the republic based on its expectations and tastes, and the proletariat, which had brought down the republic by force of arms, put its stamp on it and declared it a social republic…”
The French labour movement became more radical and aggressive step by step during these years. If the February Revolution had advanced the alignment of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the level of political disputes and the determination of the form of the state, this alignment was deepened even further in the June Revolution. The latter revolution, according to Marx, really divided France into two hostile camps. It made neutrality in the war between the two camps practically meaningless. It shattered unity of opinion on concepts such as the republic. The opposing class forces that had stood together in February under the pressure of the illusion and ignorance of the workers, here really separated from each other and took up positions against each other on the basis of a deeper understanding of their disputes. In all the above movements, as in the eighteenth century, the intertwining of economic and political struggle, the fusion of the war against the political regime and the struggle for the realization of subsistence demands with the fundamental desire to change the status quo, is clearly evident. In the same vein, the workers’ efforts to organize themselves nowhere face the separation of economics from politics, the separation of everyday struggle from the struggle for a more fundamental change in the status quo, or the drawing of a line between the war with the regime and the struggle for the realization of subsistence demands. The same applies to the German labour movement and other European societies during the first half of this century.
An important and central point in the labour movement of these years is again the pressure of idealizations corresponding to various forms of imaginary and bourgeois socialism. Slogans such as “guaranteeing work for all citizens”, the demand for the establishment of an institution in the government called the Ministry of Labor, the demand for the formation of national workshops, the abolition of exploitation and private property with a bourgeois and idealistic narrative, the demand for the right of workers to participate in the composition of the army and the national guard, or other similar demands, everywhere demonstrate the relatively significant effects of forms of utopian socialism. Well-known representatives and spokesmen of this type of socialism are present everywhere in the labour movement of the above countries and play a serious and decisive role in determining policies and approaches. In the February Revolution of 1948, Blanquism aligned a huge number of workers within the framework of its own visions and expectations, and the role of the followers of Étienne Cabet, Proudhon, Saint-Simon, and other imaginary socialists was no less important.