Nasser Paydar
Communism Abolition of Wage Labour and Leninist Militant Reformism. The last part of this book
With the failure of the First International, with the imperialist expansion of capitalism to the farthest parts of the world, and most decisively and fundamentally with the failure of the October Workers’ Revolution, the anti-capitalist movement and the international working class for the abolition of wage labour were pushed to the sidelines. First of all, Social Democracy and the Second International, with an anti-Marx version of the capitalist mode of production and a more anti-Marx interpretation of the capitalist imperialist conditions, with a deeply bourgeois image of socialism and much more bourgeois than the socialist movement of the working class, subjected the issue of political power and the seizure of political power by the proletariat to the most anti-worker and anti-socialist expressions. did This is a problem that the readers of these lines are completely familiar with and to address any level of explanation or reference about them will have the verdict of ” Sell Ice to an Eskimo “.
Although the Bolshevism view of the process of seizing political power was apparently in conflict with the Social Democratic view, in its class depth it was also very far from the tradition of the First International. In the First International, as mentioned, it was the anti-capitalist movement of the proletariat that was supposed to finish the job with the bourgeoisie, but for the Bolsheviks, the overthrow of the ruling political regime was the main prerequisite for the approach of the working masses to the anti-capitalist struggle. Here, it was not the ongoing struggle with wage labour and the organization of the movement for the abolition of wage labour, but the elimination of the political regime that was an obstacle to political development and the “European growth of capitalism”!!! Which was recommended as a prerequisite for the readiness of the mass of workers selling labour power to the Workers’ Day movement!!! A common class theme linked Bolshevism with social democracy. In both tendencies, socialism was not the abolition of wage labour, nor was it Marxian socialism.
The real root of the way of looking at political power and the process of its conquest by the proletariat was also located right here. Social-democratic socialism represents the presence of everyone, but what happened later, in the first two or three years after the victory of the October Revolution, speaks volumes about Bolshevism. The occurrence of the revolution and the problems it entailed very quickly made it clear that the Bolsheviks’ expectations from the problem of organizing socialist society were not much more than state capitalism itself. It was precisely under the pressure of this view that Bolshevism, even in its most radical form and in the context of the most favourable political and social conditions, failed to project and pursue the relationship between the labour movement and the process of conquering political power from a Marxian perspective and in accordance with the requirements of the anti-capitalist movement of the working class. The establishment of state capitalism has no need to organize a movement against wage labour and for the abolition of wage labour by the proletariat. The mechanism for achieving this goal is, above all, the subordination of the labour movement to a political party with the prospect of replacing individual ownership of capital with state ownership of social capital under the name and symbol of communism and with science and mass to end class exploitation!!! Or even to end the existence of class society!!! In the framework of such a vision and political behaviour, it is not fundamentally the organized proletariat in the process of campaigning against wage labour that seizes political power, but rather the realization of this task depends on the existence of a party that plays the role of the representative of the working class and the leadership of the entire discontented masses of society and mobilizes all discontented people under the banner of overthrowing the political regime.
In the conditions of the great and historic October Revolution, the Russian labour movement, relying on its deep-rooted tradition of soviet organization, showed a remarkable readiness to establish a soviet organization of planning labour and social production and to establish a civil and political order corresponding to such a type of class rule. However, Bolshevism, for all the reasons mentioned above and, of course, under the pressure of all the atrocities and crimes of international capital, was unable to strengthen and consolidate this anti-wage orientation of the workers. The October Revolution failed, and the shattered state machine of the bourgeoisie was completely rebuilt by the Bolsheviks themselves, this time under the name of communism. Along with the nationwide organization of labour and capitalist production under the banner of socialism, the Soviet Communist Party also introduced and implemented a form of exercising the political power of capital as a workers’ government or the dictatorship of the proletariat. What took place in Russia in the 1900s until the October Uprising and the first years of determining the fate of the revolution in relation to the labour movement of society and by Bolshevism was neither a continuation of the work of the First International nor in the tradition of the anti-capitalist movement of the working class that came into being outside this framework. Here, there was no talk of the nationwide organization of the movement for the abolition of wage labour and its preparation for the seizure of political power or the replacement of the political and social order of capital with the soviets organization of labour and production planning and socialist civilization, but rather the slogan of the overthrow of the absolute government and the removal of the bourgeoisie from state rule, which overshadowed all the requirements, work program, policies and methods of organizing the anti-capitalist movement of the working masses.
With the defeat of the October Revolution, Russian society under the name of the communist camp!!! left behind the most flourishing and prosperous period of capitalist accumulation and transformed with lightning speed into one of the most advanced parts of the capitalist world. The nascent state capitalist camp carried out extensive and all-round activity with the aim of securing the greatest possible power to maintain its position against the other pole of world capital in the four corners of the modern world. The emergence of popular movements with the tendency of nationalist anti-imperialistic, which was an inevitable consequence of the imperialist conditions of capitalist production and the ever-increasing development of the general bases of industrial accumulation in remote regions of the world, opened up bright prospects for the successful advancement of this competition and struggle against the Soviet camp. Nationalist anti-imperialistic needed the help of the camp, and the latter needed the former as a platform for an offensive against the western pole of capitalism. These are points that have been discussed in detail elsewhere. The main point we are discussing here is simply the fate of the anti-capitalist struggle of the working masses of recent societies and how to view the process of the seizure of political power by the workers’ movement in these countries. The working class of these countries is usually going through the initial stages of its social formation and development. Stages that should have laid the foundation for the independent class and anti-capitalist orientation of its movement. It is precisely in this situation that the camp of the state pole of capital, with the same name and symbol of communism, imposes a ready-made version for transforming the labour movement of the countries into a means of settling the internal accounts of various sections of the bourgeoisie on the working class of these regions. According to this version, the vast masses of the working class are exempted from the anti-capitalist struggle. The proletariat as a class is removed from the position and place of an anti-wage labour force and an institution called the party is installed in its place. From this date on, the seizure of political power will not be the task of the proletariat and its anti-capitalist movement, but the work of the party and the indisputable right of the revolution!!! Emerging communists enter the arena of history and weave a new version of communism in history!!! The revolution, which, as Kautsky put it, had left the West for the East, was now reaching the East through Russia, and here it was determined to assign the proletariat, communism, the proletarian party, and everything else, the identity card of emigration, not without a homeland but without a class. Communism migrated from the life of the proletariat and from the depths of its ongoing struggles to the land of the people!! The people filled the place of the proletariat, and the anti-capitalist movement of the workers offered all its strongholds to the popular, revolutionary, national, and anti-imperialist libertarian movements. Abolition of wage labour was a strange and reclusive phenomenon that was not able to radiate any light in the epic radiation of the people’s revolution. In such a situation and in the light of so many great changes!!! The process of preparing and laying the foundation for the way to seize political power was also removed from the work program of the anti-capitalist movement of the working class and left to the floor of the anti-imperialist toilers or the revolutionary masses of the great masses!!! Parties of the spectrum of the Soviet camp and members of the Comintern in the place of the proletariat and as the embodiment of the anti-capitalist struggle of this class!!! They carried the task of organizing anti-imperialist popular movements. The proletariat was led to the dissolution of its class struggle in the length and breadth of the expectations of the popular socialist and nationalist movements, and its communism was transformed into a scaffolding for the replacement of the Western type of capitalism by the Russian type.
The theory of political power or the process of its conquest by the working class, which has until now engulfed all the pillars of the political life of the various left groups, is a solution and a theory that was woven together in the aforementioned political and historical space. The background of the development and design of this theory, as we explained above, goes back to the years before the October Revolution. A certain class theory and narrative that, from the end of the First International to the present day, represents the vast dominance of the perspectives and solutions of non-working and non-communist movements over the working-class movement and communism. The main starting point and reference point of this theory is to emphasize the nature of communism as a movement for the working class, to forget the anti-wage labour movement of the proletariat and to transform the labour movement into a reserve army of nationalist movements or bourgeois socialism and ultimately a force for establishing democratic state capitalism. In this view, what is pivotal and decisive is to incite a supra-class war against the political regime and what is of no importance is the anti-wage labour movement and the abolition of wage labour of the proletariat. This solution and horizon-building is very explicit and specific, not from the core of the working conditions and struggle and the class orientation of the labour movement, but from the depths of the ideals and expectations of a section of the bourgeoisie. The problem of this section of the bourgeoisie in the societies we discussed was essentially to eliminate the rival faction from the seat of political power and to implement the capitalist productive, political, civil, and social order according to a specific version that suited the interests of its own class spectrum. The leadership of popular movements?!, the standard-bearer of the right to self-determination or self-government of nationalities, republicanism, the resolution of sexual, ethnic and class discrimination within the framework of the supremacy of the relationship of buying and selling labour power, and the realization of all this under the name of communism and the leadership of the proletariat, determined the political agenda and the subject of the struggles of this section of the bourgeoisie. The leftist parties or groups representing this spectrum of the bourgeoisie, whether in the form of Pro-Russia or even in the guise of various and diverse critics of the Soviet camp, always and everywhere went from the trenches of fighting the political regime to the labour movement. The result of all their guidelines and charters for the working class has been that first of all, by obtaining the right to strike and forming a government of the day, the bourgeoisie for fair sale!!! Their labour force should fight and secondly, with the support of their “Communist Party”, overthrow the ruling political regime and thereby pave the way for the anti-capitalist struggle and the establishment of “socialism”!!!
The discussion of political sovereignty within the nationalist left, whether it be the parties of the soviet camp spectrum or the critics of the Soviet Socialist Republic, was a discussion of establishing a state that would realize the necessary preconditions for the industrial growth and prosperity of society, the further and greater development of wage labour relations, the aspirations of ethnic autonomy, and some political and social reforms permitted under the control of the laws of capitalist accumulation. All the forms of sovereignty that have been proposed, propagated, and implemented by the various and disparate forces of this spectrum have all corresponded to securing the political sovereignty necessary for the bourgeoisie to advance these goals. “People’s Republic”, “People’s Democratic Republic”, “National Democratic Republic”, “Revolutionary Republic”, “Sovereignty of the Working People”, “Soviet Republic of the Workers and Toilers”, “Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasants”, “Revolutionary Republic of the Workers and Peasants” and many other names and titles have all designated the governmental vessel and political order of these capitalist developments. In all these numerous forms of government, the term proletariat and worker or workers is a code name for the participation of left nationalism and the parties of this tendency as the representatives of the working class in the political power of capital. Parties that are completely irrelevant to the anti-capitalist movement of the working masses and whose existential philosophy and basis for their emergence has been a response to the need for industrial, political and civil development of capitalist society.
The plan, model and ideal of the nationalist left for political power and the process of its conquest have faced many manipulations and embellishments under the pressure of the economic and political developments of the last few decades in the four corners of the capitalist world. The complete and total domination of the capitalist mode of production and the establishment of the absolute rule of the bourgeoisie in all small and large societies of the world, the rise to power of leftist nationalism in some societies, the complete exposure of the savage capitalist nature of the leftist nationalist parties, and the participation of many of them in all forms in imposing all the evils and crimes of capitalism on the working masses of the countries, or other incidents of this kind, have imposed the necessity of achieving some refinements on the remaining radical sections of the leftist and nationalist populist socialists.
The manifesto, the project and the theory of political power or the relationship between the labour movement and the process of seizing political power that the mass of existing left groups and parties still carry on their silent doorsteps are the legacy of the same old socialist ideals and solutions that have been manipulated and embellished by the pressure of internal contradictions and the playing of their scandalous trumpets. Everyone talks about the fact that the main problem of the proletariat is seizing political power, without saying what will become of the task of the current anti-wage labour movement of the working class? Everyone says that the proletariat must seize political power without saying that this must be done by its anti-capitalist movement. They say that the conquest of political power is a prerequisite for the struggle against wage labour, without saying how the proletariat, outside the sphere of direct struggle against wage labour, can replace the state power of the bourgeoisie with the political power of its own class or the council organization of labour and production and socialist civilization. Everyone says that the working class will resume the transition to socialism with the overthrow of the ruling political regime, but no one says how the proletariat, lacking anti-wage labour organization, will be able to accomplish this task. None of these questions have any validity or relevance for the left outside the front of the working-class anti-wage labour struggle. The entire basis of the left’s argument regarding the demand for a supra-class overthrow or postponing the relevance of the anti-wage labour struggle and for the abolition of wage labour by the working class until the overthrow of the ruling political regime occurs, rests on the existence of a rabid and naked dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. From the perspective of the existing left’s class considerations, without broad political democracy, without a social space that guarantees freedom of party and union activities, the labour movement is not capable of opening a front of direct class struggle against capitalism!!! In this view, the proletariat’s path to socialism passes through the existence of the party and the collapse of the political regime of the day. A profound and catastrophic contradiction weighs heavily on all pillars of leftist reasoning and theorizing, including:
1. The working masses have historically fought against capitalist exploitation or against the oppression and crimes of the bourgeoisie under the flash of bayonets and the roar of tanks of the most brutal dictatorships. The brutality, bloodbaths, imprisonment and torture of the states have never and nowhere stopped them from fighting against the exploitation and barbarity of capital. Why and for what reason are they unable to direct their class movement against the basis of wage slavery? Why can they fight in the role of the Peshmerga force of nationalist and popular movements to solve the national question, but cannot they fight to remove the centres of work and production from the control of the capitalist ownership of the private or state owners of these centres? Why can they, as military servants and vassals of this or that section of the bourgeoisie, be responsible for the dismissal and installation of governments, but cannot they fight to replace the bourgeois state with the soviets of labour and production and socialist civilization? Why are they able to organize the biggest strikes to ensure their immortal strength? But they cannot enter the campaign against the basis of converting the product of their labour into capital? Why are they able to use the creeping ladder of the party beyond themselves to become political power? But they cannot themselves, as a class, take control of the planning of work, production, and social order? Why are all the uprisings, wars, struggles, and transformations made by the workers, but it is impossible and unreasonable for them to enter the realm of direct war against wage labour and against the wage slave of capital??!! Why must they resort to the bloodiest struggles and be shelled thousands of times to gain the right to form themselves from the bourgeoisie, but they cannot make this same struggle, war, struggle, and killing a guarantee of forming their anti-capitalist movement? The real answer to all the above questions is that the left sees and accepts any kind of struggle, uprising, movement, transformation, and miracle in the hands of the working masses, provided that the goal of all wars and movements is the establishment of democracy, national rights, and the political development of capitalism. Conversely, it does not see or accept any change, transformation, or exercise of power in the capacity of the working class whenever its approach is to organize an anti-capitalist struggle and to abolish wage labour.
2. Throughout the twentieth century, there have been numerous revolutionary movements with components and indicators emphasized by existing left groups, which have sometimes achieved victory within the framework of the criteria and expectations of these groups, but in all of these movements, the proletariat has been the losing force in all respects. The working class of China, Vietnam, Cuba, all of Eastern Europe, and most importantly, the labour movement of Russia, are among these. Despite all their fundamental differences and distinctions, the proletariat of these countries has shared several fundamental components. First, in all of these countries, instead of concentrating its class forces on organizing an anti-wage labour movement, it has been the leader or vanguard of an anti-regime and pro-democratic war outside the circle of direct struggle with the existence of capitalism. Secondly, in all these cases, the theory of the leadership of the proletariat over the revolutionary and democratic movement has become the ideological license to archive the file of the living and present organization of the anti-wage labour struggles of the working class. Thirdly, the party has assumed the role of leading the anti-capitalist movement of the working masses and has made its existence, not in words but in practice, essentially and truly, an alternative to the organization of the anti-wage labour movement of the working-class masses. Fourthly, the workers have played a very fundamental role within the revolutionary movement and in the course of events leading to the revolution. Fifthly, in all these countries, they have fought under the banner of communism, in the company of the communist party, and under the name and tradition of overthrowing the regime to pave the way for socialism. The proletariat of these countries has been in different positions in terms of the arrangement of forces. The degree of capitalist development of the countries in the conditions of the revolution has been very different, but the labour movement in all these regions has had the common features mentioned above, and ultimately in all these cases, revolutions, wars and conflicts have been defeated. These are realities that no conscious worker can ignore, no activist of the labour movement can, in the absence of a deep historical, political and class investigation of them and without extracting the fateful lessons based on class criticism of what has happened in this transition, give the masses of their followers a guarantee to avoid the catastrophic repetition of all those great mistakes.
Left groups have traditionally raised metaphysical and supra-class issues such as the “revisionism” of the communist parties!!! They block the entry of any kind of critique of class praxis from these historical events. Many of them, by changing their titles, for example, replacing people’s democracy with soviet democracy, or soviet republic with socialist republic, and the like, are drawing a line under the very harsh reality of their current inheritance of the same bourgeois socialist character and tradition. What has been the fundamental Achilles’ heel and the foundation of the catastrophic defeat of the labour movement in all these countries and revolutions has not been the ideological instability of the parties, nor the lack of the name of communism and workers, nor the form and chosen title of the alternative government, but rather the reality of the social and class content and theme of the ongoing movement within societies and the position of the labour movement at the heart of events. The fundamental reason for all these failures has been the withdrawal of the working masses from the specific context of organizing the anti-capitalist movement, the reluctance of the working class to express its broad class presence against capital in all spheres of social life, and finally the dissolution of the labour movement into an anti-regime and pro-democracy movement devoid of socialist and class significance.
Outside the sphere of the ongoing and direct struggle against wage labour, the left, despite all the apparent manipulations of its previous positions, for example, replacing people’s democracy with soviet democracy, despite the fuss about abandoning the rule of the working people and talking about workers’ soviet government or dozens of other such changes and transformations, in the most identity-based political and class criteria of its activities, is still the same, homogeneous and institutionalized as its socialist and socialist-bourgeois predecessors. Here, it is not the exigencies of life and class struggle of the working masses, but the legacy of the ideals and expectations of the old people’s movements that determine the existential philosophy of silence and the content of social practice. The working masses, within this intellectual and ideological landscape, are not the true movers of communism, but the servants and servants of the ascension of the “party” to the throne of political power. Communism is not a native and internal product of the labour movement, but the brainchild of non-worker figures and thinkers, and consequently, here the existence of a party beyond the workers and the seizure of political power is everything, and the movement for the abolition of wage labour by the proletariat is nothing. The outcome of the work and the destination of the path of struggle are also very, very clear here. Beyond justifications, explanations, and indictments, anchoring on the shore of capitalist life, now with another arrangement and embellishment of the political order and civil image, is the urgent and inevitable end of the road. The immediate goal of the proletariat is the overthrow of the bourgeois state, but the proletariat must shoot towards this goal from the trenches of the struggle against wage labour and for the abolition of wage labour. The bourgeois state machine must be smashed by the anti-capitalist movement of the working masses. The proletariat is not allowed under any circumstances to abandon its anti-wage labour movement and to exchange the all-round effort to organize this movement for the dry and empty emotions of supra-class overthrow.