SWEEZY 

Paul Sweezy provides an eloquent summary of Marx's fundamental perspective identifying the working class as an agency of social change.

"Marx's theory of the revolutionary agency of the proletariat has nothing to do with an emotional attachment to, or blind faith in, the working class as such. He believed that objective forces, generated by the capitalist system, were inexorably moulding a revolutionary class, i.e. one which would have both the ability and the will to overthrow the existing order. The ability stemmed from its numerical strength and its indispensable role in the capitalist production process, the will from its being deprived not only of material possessions but of its essential and ultimately irrepressible humanity". (1)

After reminding us, correctly I think, of Marx's original conception of the, class located, potentiality for social change of the proletariat, Sweezy uses these very criteria to propose a fundamental revision of Marx's perspective of the working class in the advanced industrial countries being the major agency of social change. Rather, Sweezy argues, the "objective forces generated by the capitalist system" have made revolution more likely in the underdeveloped countries, as it has become less likely in the imperialist zone. (2)

It is asserted that whilst the workers in the imperialist countries derive some material benefits from imperialist exploitation, nonetheless significant in its social integrative aspects for its minimal extent in comparison to the substantial privileges extracted by the ruling class, the working and peasant masses in the dominated countries endure increasing hardship as the effort to gain and maintain the bare essentials of life encounters increasing difficulties.

It is instructive to examine the premises Sweezy is operating on. (Historically we recall that when this piece was produced, the 'New Left', sections upon whom Sweezy's work was influential, was in full cry with its theories of the "new vanguard"). It is a theory based on differentials between productive forces on the international scale and, in addition, a fairly strict correlation is established between material deprivation and potential revolutionary class activity. The levels of productive forces and struggle are viewed as intimately related.

LENIN

Lenin's theory of the "labour aristocracy" suggests that, as a consequence of imperialism,

"1) a section of the British proletariat becomes bourgeois; 2) a section of the proletariat permits itself to be led by men bought by, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie". (3)

The R.C.G. give this argument a specific format.

"In Britain this aristocracy finds political expression in the Labour Party and the official trade union movement: these are the forces of the past in British society. The forces of the future are the youth, the unemployed, the low paid, the millions on the poverty line - in short all those who have no interest in British imperialism". (4)

This may appear unexceptional, until it is noted that the forces said to be revolutionary entirely omits any section of the organised working class, who are conflated with the L.P. and the "official" trade union movement. This rejects the, simplistic, characterisation of T.U. leaders as a privileged layer of the working class, relatively autonomous from working class interests, by linking membership and leadership. In Trotskyism, it is the breaking of this linkage which allows all industrial defeats to be viewed as leadership "betrayals". The working class is permanently revolutionary and only prevented from revolution by the "Stalinist bureaucracy". Things are not this simple. (5)

R.C.G.

The R.C.G. then anplify an analysis such as Sweezy's by identifying the most oppressed and/or exploited members of society as agencies for social change. Whilst noting that revolutionary activity for the R.C.G. is that by national liberation movements such as the I.R.A. in Ireland and the A.N.C. in South Africa, nevertheless, such events as the Brixton and Toxteth uprisings in England are regarded as investing the theory with empirical credibility. (6)

A "connection" is established between the most oppressed sections of the population in the imperialist world and those in the imperialised sector. Because the deprivation in the imperialised sector is more extreme and generalised, this assumes paramount importance in locating an agency of revolution. It is obvious that divergent social layers within society necessarily negotiate their daily experience of that society on different trajectories. If this is a truism, it is a vital one to appreciate.

MANDEL

Mandel notes,

"... It is only in the revolution itself that the majority of the oppressed can liberate themselves from the ideology of the ruling class. For this control is exerted not only, or even primarily, through purely ideological manipulation and the mass assimilation of ruling class ideological production, but above all through the actual day-to-day workings of the existing economy and society and their effect on the consciousness of the oppressed . . . " (7)

From this statement one can draw the conclusion that specifically oppressed and/or exploited social layers gain privileged insight into the hidden social relations of capitalism precisely because their everyday experience of the system exposes the contradictions in a much sharper manner. This is a possibility only. It is important not to mechanically assume that a specific class positional location within the economic framework will inevitably mean that the most oppressed layers develop oppositional revolutionary class consciousness.

The problem here, is that those classified as potential revolutionary agents are precisely those whose engagement in the production process is negligible or non-existent (8), as opposed to those of the organised industrial proletariat participating in major social production who, however, are the "forces of the past" (9): hence the necessity to attribute the major revolutionary impetus to struggles in the imperialised sector which can be supported by the "periphery" of the imperialist countries. This is a bleak scenario for radicals in the imperialist zones but it is a correct one. Recognition of the difficulties of the political situation is the first step in dealing with it. The self-deception of sections of the Trotskyist left fools no one but them. Perhaps not even themselves.

IDEOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES

Mandel's passage is useful in resisting any tendency to intersect with a "conspiracy theory" of ideological production in which the dominated classes - acting merely as object - passively "consume" ruling class ideology. To replace such a conception, we can favour a more dynamic appraisal which acknowledges that, by definition, the dominated classes occupy a positional location within the economic structures which means that they will tend to inhabit ideational frameworks which are broadly in alignment with those of the dominant classes, but not directly drawn from them. In this case, an object- subject status is assigned to the dominated classes in the realisation that ruling class ideology is mediated through the dominated classes and is not simply "injected" into them as it were. Indeed, if this were not so, the possibility of oppositional class consciousness developing would be negligible. Whilst maintaining a class analysis, then, one can also maintain a certain ability for individual and group praxis to develop within the dominated classes, and also an understanding that intra-class positional location may play a significant role in defining how ideas about the nature of society are formulated.

LABOUR ARISTOCRACY

The "labour aristocracy" scenario explicitly takes account of the existence of imperialism, and indeed recognises that important interconnections are at large between the productive forces, that there is the international differentiation between the levels of these, and that connotations exist here in projecting the manner in which class struggle may occur.

It is still not a fully formulated conception. A potentially relatively sophisticated conception of how social change may occur is, at times, theoretically reduced to little more than an international technological determinist model. Some of the U.S. Maoist groupings have gone along this road. Hopefully the empirical verification necessary to strengthen the model can be executed.

MAJOR ISSUES

Three major issues are extant.

It is important that serious attention is given to the subjective factor of revolutionary leadership and the political programme of national liberation movements: not all struggles engaged in by groupings in the imperialised sector can be assumed to be objectively anti-imperialist. The notion of 'imperialist super-profits' needs to be investigated rather than taken as an article of faith. Is the concept relevant when it is always the bourgeoisie's aim to maximise profits? If the bourgeoisie retains the vast majority of the profits extracted from the imperialised sector of the world economy< whatever we call them, then the idea that the working class is somehow 'bought off' falls down. If the working class are being 'bribed' then the vast majority of them remain blissfully unaware of this: which leads to the question of political consequences. Much of the 'bribery' thesis appears to be rigid mechanical materialism where the privileged workers will automatically support imperialism. The history of people such as Engels and Parvus indicates that the connections between economic circumstances is more complex than this.

In the imperialist camp, spontaneous outbursts of anger by oppressed sections against the stultifying nature of capitalism, as it is experienced by these sections, should certainly be supported. However, they should not simply be lauded as particular events with little thought given as to their contribution to a generalised, therefore effective, assault upon the capitalist system. (Some Anarchists are a prime example of this.) If the question of leadership is minimised, then there exists a danger of simply tail-ending actually existing struggles.

It is extremely clear then, that how one perceives the explanatory primacy of the productive forces, and in what context, is not only a fascinating theoretical debate, but, when projections are extended from such debate, they can have a serious impact on the requirements of political practice.

REFERENCES

1. SWEEZY, Paul Marx and the Proletariat, Page 2.

2. Ibid, Page 2.

3. lENIN, V.I., Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Pages 129/130. (CW22, 187-304).

4. REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST GROUP, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism, Number 37, March 1984, Page 2.

5. The Trotskyist account leaves class consciousness out of the picture. The utter bankruptcy of relying on the relatively privileged sections of the working class as a potential force for change was starkly shown in the recent purchase by Hanson Trust of shares in I.C.I. Certainly the disgusting spectacle of I.C.I. workers marching to support I.C.I. management was organised by the T.G.W.U. However, the support was there from the workforce for this activity. The action itself relied on the low level of consciousness amongst the workers'. In turn the absence of consciousness will affect trade union work and leadership. There is no notion of any such dialectical relationship in Trotskyist discourse. The concentration on T.U. leadership allows mainstream British Trotskyism to simply ignore the impact of imperialism on the British working class. Only a tiny minority of T.U. bureaucrats benefit and the working class remains 'pure'.

6. F.R.F.I., op cit.

7. MANDEL, Ernest, The Leninist Theory of Organisation, Page 3.

8. The "low paid" out of the most oppressed categories are those most intersecting with social production. Even here however, such people are likely to be employed in small unorganised firms, on a temporary or part-time basis and so on. In short, they employ little "clout" at the point of production.

9. The R.C.G. explain the division in the ranks of the miners during the 1984/85 British miners strike as based on material differentiations between the high productivity Nottinghamshire seams (therefore highly paid) and the strikers. See F.R.F.I. Issues Number 38, April 1984 and continuous to Issue Number 47, March 1985.

Ted Talbot, 1991.