The Proletariat Turns 21 in Twenty-Eleven

Dear comrades,

For the few of you that follow this blog, I do apologize for my few and far between posts over the past three or four months. My life is going through a lot of hurdles during these tough times though I am thankful that I have my health and a roof over my head.

With that said, as difficult as this year has been for me, it has been tremendously more difficult for many more people in this country and around the world. This pain and disillusion has manifested itself with the self immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi and the Arab Spring which spread around the world in the form of revolutions throughout the Middle East and North Africa and as Occupy in the rest of the world.

For two incredible and inspiring recaps of 2011, I direct you to The blog by prominent Marxist John Molyneux and by the editorial staff of the influential Socialist Worker.

PLEASE read the above linked articles for both recaps of this revolutionary year, as well for a call to arms to remind us all that the time is now to fight for change and to overthrow the existing world order.

After reading these articles, I thought back to two other things I had read this year. One was the recent article in the International Socialist Journal (ISJ) about the fact that for the first time in human history most human beings are now workers. The other thing I had read was a recap of Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution which lead me to write a blog post here on that same topic applied to the contemporary situation in the US.

So what am I getting at? Why am I making you read all of those linked articles? Because as far as I can tell, the working class has finally turned 21. Meaning: capitalism has not only spread itself all over the world, as it had begun to do with the conquest of the Americas and the pillaging of Africa, but “globalization” has also lead to the industrialization of the whole world and, by extension, the proletarianization of the great majority of living people.

If most people today are now proles, then most people today are now potential participants in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the working class, for the working class, as a class.

The bourgeoisie of the US and Europe went into globalization over-drive from the 1970s through to the present in an attempt to undermine the revolutionary potential of their own proletarians. But as they introduced capitalist social relations aroudnd the world, and especially industrial capitalism, the inadvertently ended up surrounding themselves with even more grave-diggers than before.

Whats more, in the process of doing so, the bourgeoisie revolutionized the means of production to such a point that their very own achivements could be even more readily used against them. Not only is the proletariat now more than ever “the universal class” but the universal class is also armed with smart phones and social-networking sites that enable it to coordinate rebellion on an unprecedented scale.

As if that was not enough, the new technology and spread of the proletariat also makes the potential for a socialist economy (i.e. a democratically planned economy based on workplace democracy) all the more obvious. Conversely it makes the anarchic capitalist system of unplanned production for competition and profit all the more absurd.

If the working class was being born in 1848, and learning to walk in 1871, then it learned to run in 1917, and is finally reaching its adulthood in 2011.

Just as capitalism is reaching new levels of potentially irreconcilable ecological destruction and nuclear war, the working class is reaching its maturity and finding out it is an international class with the international power to run the world.

Whereas before the bourgeoisie could run around the world and put off revolution by trying to cripple the domestic workers by hyper-exploiting foreign workers, they have now run out of places to strangle.

The bourgeoisie has surrounded itself with land mines and it is up to the revolutionary sections of the proletariat to guide the explosive power of our class.

HOW TO BECOME A MARXIST: 30 – Cops and Communists

In a previous post I went into the issue of “Soldiers and Socialists” and tried to explain the relationship of soldiers to the working class, how socialists should relate to them, and the potential for soldiers to side with the workers movement as socialists themselves.

A lot of people in the current Occupy Wall Street movement see this example of potential unity between soldiers and protesters and they apply it to the cops as well. At first glance, this comparison seems to make sense since both soldiers and cops are basically the same in the general sense. Both of them are human beings that are paid and armed by the bourgeois state to carry out violence on the working class. So from this perspective, both should also be potential allies of a proletarian movement (i.e. of a movement of the 99%).

The recent experience of the Occupy movement throughout the US has raised the questions of “what role do cops play in society and how should we relate to them?” Lets examine these questions further to figure out how to relate to the police.

The first thing to say is that cops and soldiers do have some things in common. As already mentioned, they are both paid and armed by the bourgeois state. Both are expected to use their weapons and training against the weak, the defenseless, the innocent, and above all: against the working class.

When they are not actively inflicting violence on people, cops and soldiers are expected to hold the communities they monitor in constant terror. Each of them holds their respective targets in a constant state of siege, where everyone they are monitoring is suspect and they are trained to only rely on their fellows in uniform against the occupied population. But this last point of comparison is also where the contrasts begin.

For the soldier, the occupied population is usually in a different country. The training a soldier receives is typically designed to dehumanize people of a specific “foreign” nationality, race, ethnicity, or language group. The dehumanization is intended to assist the soldier in brutalizing and murdering the occupied population.

While the cops are also trained to engage in racial profiling, the difference is that the population that they hold under seige is their fellow compatriots.

So whereas a soldier is trained to murder people in a distant land, the cops experience is of monitoring, brutalizing, and murdering his neighbor. This also gets into the second major difference between cops and soldiers.

Just like the soldier, the cop is trained to hold everyone in suspicion besides their fellows in uniform. But a soldier eventually ends their tour of duty and goes home. Presumably, unless the soldier has suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, the soldier can return to their country of birth and put down the constant suspicion and monitoring that comes from holding others in a state of siege. But the cops are already home. They hold everyone in suspicion always.

This difference also adds a third, and crucial, dynamic to the consciousness of soldiers versus cops. Most people who join the military do so because they have too or because they will receive some sort of financial benefits for having done so (like the GI Bill in the US). So for most people in the military, it is not that they want to go out and brutalize people, but that they are somehow compelled to join for a few years of their lives. This turns the experience of the soldier in the military into a parallel with that of a worker in the work place.

Essentially, the soldier just does whatever they have to do to get through the years in the military. This creates the dynamic of trying to do as little as possible, just like a worker tries to do as little as possible during the 8 hour day to “just get through it.”

This “just get through it” mentality in the military creates a struggle between the upper classes in the military (i.e. the officers and the brass) and the soldiers which can lead to heightened class consciousness for the soldiers and the establishment of soldiers councils which mirror workers councils in the work place.

So whereas you never hear of police mutinies, soldiers mutinies are frequent in history and essential to the victory of a proletarian revolution as the soldiers side with the workers. The cops are in a state of perpetual seige, so there is never the opportunity for dissent as every moment and situation could become deadly (in their minds).

The fact that soldiers eventually end their duty after a few years also adds a fourth dynamic of soldiers seeing their future tied to the success/failure of the working class. What I mean by this is that while a cop’s job security depends on social inequality and the maintenance of “law and order,” the soldier knows thta eventually they will rejoin they will be thrown back into the proletarian masses.

Eventually, the soldier will be out their submitting job applications, resumes, and participating in humiliating job interviews. Once the tour as a soldier is over it will be back to worryong about the rent, the conditions in the work place, and the lack of social welfare programs like unemployment and medical insurance.

These are things the cops never think about. As long as there are poor people who commit “crimes” to make ends meet, the cops have job security busting heads and racially profiling people and they don’t have to think if these things.

So while beating protesters is just another day of paid over-time for cops, the protesters that soldiers beat today might be them or their families tomorrow.

This reality makes a soldier more likely to sympathize with, and even join, the proletarian struggle. Conversely, a cop sees workers struggles as a threat to their job security since the bourgeois state and system keep them paid.

A living laboratory for workers struggle has been Egypt. In Egypt we have seen the difference between cops and soldiers in practice.

In practice, when Egyptian protesters went upnto tanks and walls of armed soldiers, the soldiers (often in spite of orders from superiors) would mingke with protesters and let them pass or continue camping in the public squares.

In practice, the cops did everything they could to disrupt the protesters. They would initiate looting, release prisoners to stir up hysteria, and even ride into protester occupied camps with weapons to terrorize and murder protesters.

In practice, the cops could be counted on as the final defenders of Mubarak while the soldiers tended to remain passive or even join the protesters in their struggle.

To be clear, there is a difference between the soldiers as a section of the working class and the military as an institution, but that is a post for another day.

In short, as we have seen in Egypt and in other moments of world history, the soldiers are a part of the 99% and can be win to our side, while the cops aree the defenders of the 1%.

So if the cops are our enemies in blue, the. How do we relate to them?
- Do we try to win them to our side?
- Do we let them beat us as a principaled dedication to non-violence?
- Do we attack them on sight at every opportunity?

It is important to say that the reality is that therre are no blanket answers to this question. The staring point for figuring out how to relate to the cops is to understand that they are our enemies and AT BEST, we can hope they let us carry on. After that, the answer to the question depends on the balance of forces and the debates within the movement.

If before a mass march, the organizers have made it openly clear that the march may involve street battles with the cops and the majority of protesters understand and accept this, then carry on. If a cops start to physically confront protesters during a march and the protesters clearly out-number the cops, then we’ll see who comes out on top.

But it does not help the movement to dedicate protesters to being completely non-violent 100% of the time. It also does not help to egg-on cops all the time either. Both are recipes for disaster and demoralization. The fact is that the cops are brutal and deadly and every situation has to be taken on a case by case basis depending on democratic and open debate within movements as well as depending the balance of forces at a given moment.

For more info please see this article in Socialistworker.org and this lecture at wearemany.org.

HOW TO BECOME A MARXIST: 29 – Understanding Austerity, Taxing the 1%, and Society’s Wealth

Since 2008′s Great Recession started the media internationally has been  desperate to ram through anti-working class austerity policies like increasing the retirement age, slashing public spending on health care, and doing mass lay offs of public and private sector jobs.

Until the Occupy Wall Street protests kicked off, it was basically taken for granted that the only way to pay for the budget crisis had to be on the backs of the working class.

But what the hell does that all mean? Lots of folks on both the right and the Left seem sort of uncertain as to whether or not there really is any viable solution besides the regular austerity measures that are usually thrown in our faces. So lets take a minute to see the economy from capitalist and Marxist perspectives.

1) Capitalist Economics: A World of Scarcity, Greed, and Privilege

There are two fundamental principles to a capitalist economic analysis of society. The first and underlying notion is that the rich are rich because they DESERVE to be so and that any improvements of society depends on their business interests. The second notion built on this one is that there is only a LIMITED amount of wealth in the world and that is why individuals and countries must compete for the limited wealth that can be tapped into.

In essence, the two fundamentals of bourgeois economics are based on the bourgeoisie’s “right” to private property (as distinct to “personal” property) and that the right to private property means that those who lack private property (i.e. working class people who do not own businesses, do not own heavy industry, or are not CEOs of major multi-national corporations) are the only logical targets of austerity as any taxation, nationalization, or occupation of the wealth of the bourgeoisie would be an infringement to the right of private property.

In essense, the right to private property is the right to be rich at everyone else’s expense. This is the fundamental nucleus of capitalist economics.

2) Marxist Economics: Democratically Planned Economy Based on Human Need

You could call it the economic perspective of 99/99/99. The two fundamentals to understand for Marxist economics are that the working class is the “UNIVERSAL CLASS” meaning that it is international in scope and that it is the first class in human history capable of abolishing class society precisely because our international existence allows us to democratically plan an economy internationally, without the need for privare ownership of the businesses and industry but insread owning and running these things in common.

The second point is that the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION has created the science and machines that are capable of mass producing enough food, housing, clothing, and medicine to address everyone’s needs and that as world population grows it only adds to the working class’ capacity to produce.

For Marxist economics, the scarcity, private property, and competition of capitalism is not just obsolete, but it is actually a deadly hinderance for the maintenance and fulfillment of humanity. 

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SO what do these two perspectives say about solving the economic crisis? There are two major starting points for pools of wealth in society. One way to tap into society’s wealth is to hit the proletariat. Although individual workers are poor compared to the wealth of individual capitalists, the collective mass of workers have wages, savings, benefits, home equity, etc which can be tapped into to pay for the economic crisis. Since the international capitalist economy is currently suffering from over-production, that means that there are currently no new markets to tap into. 

When nothing new can be sold, the only alternative is to dig. To make up for the lack of profits from direct sales, the bourgeoisie lowers wages, removes benefits, and increases prices for products/services until savings and equity are all tapped out. This is the capitalist solution for the economic crisis which allows them to hold on to their class status while getting the system back on track. In the process, the bourgeoisie gets the proletariat accustomed to a new, lower quality of life while the capitalists themselves go on being unimaginably wealthy.

The Marxist alternative is to attack the second pool of wealth: the Bourgeoisie. They hold enourmous amounts of wealth in bank accounts, property, investments, etc. By taxing them at a sigificantly higher rate many social services could be saved and even improved. If we took this demand a step further, to arresting the bourgeoisie and seizing their wealth, we could end the world economic crisis.

But the Marxist alternative does not stop there. The reality is that as long as capitalism exists, there will be a division between rich and poor. Since the rich can afford to buy politicians and write laws, any legislation thst imposed on them would only be temporary. Also, the bourgeoisie would never let themselves be arrested en masse and have their wealth seized (even if this would benefit 99% of the world population). This is where the Marxist perspective takes on its particular turn.

Marxism is, in a nutshell, the self-emancipation of the working class, by the working class, as a class. Putting this into practice, this means that for the working class to win even a modest gain such as a taxing the 1%, workers need to organize together beyond racial, gender, national, and sexual borders to take down the rich and powerful. This level of struggle against the bourgeoisie requires developing grassroots vehicles for democracy which, in the process of fighting for reforms, can become the basis for a future workers government.

For Marxists, the solution here is not just to struggle to tax the bourgeoisie, but to become prepared to rule society without the 1% and overthrow them in the process snd replace them with a worker’s state that can defend the working classes’ gains. Of course, every struggle for rerforms does not end in revolution, but in every struggle largerr and larger sections of workers are drawn in organizing and activisim and turned on to radical ideas about how to build a better world based on human need instead of corporate greed.

A better world is possible: Occupy everything, demand everything.

HOW TO BECOME A MARXIST: 28 – Understanding Demands, Slogans, and Protests

Demands, Protests, Slogans: Drawing in the Masses

In a previous post I wrote about the fundamental role of the revolutionary newspaper. In a nutshell, the revolutionary newspaper serves the purpose of including the masses in the political debate of current events as well as providing revolutionary leadership for the masses to realize their own potential to run society democratically.

The central point of the revolutionary paper is the involvement of the masses, which is also why protests, slogans, and demands are important. I wanted to write this post awhile ago, but the question of why demands and protests matter has risen to the front since the Occupy movement took off a few weeks ago.

There are two main political trends in the occupy movement that are, to one degree or anotherr, jostling for leadership (whether consciously or unconsciously). One political trend is the notion that we need to raise demands for different reforms and even radical changes to society. The other trend is the political concept that the occupations in cities around the world are ends in-and-of-themselves and that they are an “experiment” in a future society or new ways of living.

It is, first of all, completely true that the occupations, by inviting any and all of the 99% to camp out, participate in political discussion and democratic/consensus organizing is absolutely a testament to the capacity and desire amongst most working class people to live in a better world. The occupations are all evidence that a better world is possible and that there are people willing to build it.

But, it is also important to understand that movements grow and shrink and that movements also last more or less time. In spite of the fact that many people within the occupy movement claim that there are no demands and that demands “legitimize the power of the 1%” the reality is that the occupations did not begin with people silently taking over a public space. There has always been the explicit demand for people to realize that most of us are the 99% and that we need to join the occupations. There has, from the beginning been that basic demand, which is itself an attack on the 1%.

The reason I mention that movements grow and shrink and stick around or disappear is that to begin the movement, there needed to be a demand to mobilize people to join the struggle. But for the struggle to grow and last it needs to continue drawing in wider sections of the working class. The only way to do so is to raise various demands that resonate with people and show them that the occupy movement does indeed represent the 99% (i.e. Black, white, LGBTQ, straight, male, female, people of all faiths and nationalities, etc.).

Raising demands doesn’t empower the bourgeoisie, they already have the legal and physical power. They have the bourgeois laws that enforce private property. They have the police that arrest, brutalize, and murder people who stand up to the capitalist system. The power is already theirs. Our workers power, the power of the 99%, can only be realized when workers unite across racial, gender, sexual, faith, and international lines.

To tap into this power, the actual living, breathing individuals that make up the 99% have to be reached out to. The only way to reach out to the masses is through demands, slogans, and protests. When an individual comes across a demand or slogan they have the same affect as when a corporation puts out an add or catch-phrase for their company (i.e. “I’m lovin’ it” or “built Ford tough”). Advertising, like slogans and demands are something large numbers of individuals can see and then potentially identify with.

Just as advertising draws individuals from the masses to certain corporations or products, so too political movements and organizations must raise demands and slogans that reach out to the masses and convince larger and larger sections of the 99% that the occupy movement does indeed represent their best interests and that it is necessary to actively participate in it.

Protests are that all important physical way of demonstrating a show of force. Just like the former USSR used to parade around missiles, and the US still has its militaristic “air shows” in major cities every summer, a march or protest is an important way for the masses to demonstrate the level of support a particular cause or demand has. 

But also, a protest provides a physical and (generally) safe space for people interested in the demands and politics of the movement to learn to participate, to feel the power of being surrounded by like-minded comrades, and become activists who will in-turn help pull in more people to join the struggle.

The mass marches that have occurred, literally, around the world since the occupy movement kicked off has been a major source of inspiration to billions of people. The lesson is that we, the 99%, the working class, are not alone and that we are capable of organizing ourselves to fight back against the right-wing, the police, and the 1%.

After years of the right-wing and bourgeois media promoting the idea that the Left is dead and protest doesn’t matter, we are relearning that protests do matter and that they can help revive and rebuild the Left to fight for a better world. 

The only way to win a better world is to involve the masses, the 99%, the working class. To mobilize and organize the 99%, we need demands and slogans that resonate with our brothers and sisteres against the bourgeoisie, against war, as well as against racism, sexism, and homophobia. 

All over I hear people at work and amongst my loved ones say, “I like the occupy movement, but what are they fighting for?” the majority of the people who have actively participated have had a gut-reaction and identified with the movement and tried to build it. But this instinctive identification with the class war can only continue for so long without a more deliberate attempt to draw people in through slogans and protests that more and more people can identify with and broaden the political debate in this country while also pushing it to the Left.

A better world is possible: Occupy everything, demand everything.

HOW TO BECOME A MARXIST: 27 – Capitalism, The Industrial Revolution, and Socialism

I’ve been having a bit of writers block regarding how to explain the Industrial Revolution and its relevance to both human history in its past, current, and future forms. On top of that, the 99% have hit the streets from Egypt, Greece, Spain, New York, Japan, and beyond! For the first time in a few generations the masses are on the move and starting to wake up to their collective existence and collective power!

But back to the post… The first two things to say about the development of heavy industry is that it began the process if mechanizing labor in a major way, unlike was ever previously dreamed. The machines were able to multiply the labor of one person 100x over. 

Heavy industry is to production what power steering is to driving. With the least amount of exertion human beings are able to use the machines to build the homes, create the clothing, and produce the food we all need at speeds and quantities that can end hunger, homelessness, and all other forms of economic humiliation.

But where did the machines come from? Why hadn’t anyone made them before? The answers to this question are too long for this single post, but a few major points are worth understanding.

1) The development of heavy industry required unprecedent amounts of wealth to form the material basis for their invention and development. In a world divided into classes, the only way to get this extreme wealth was to steal it while underwriting the theft through slavery (i.e. a double theft).

Europe was able to develop heavy industry long before all other parts of the world by robbing the Americas and Africa to develop its industry over a few centuries. For another example, Stalinist Russia developed its heavy industry by hyper-exploiting its own population with concentration camps. For a more modern example, India is currently one of the fastest growing industrial powers. A major portion of the development of its modern industry has involved the displacement of “Tribals,” or Adivasi, in the central parts of India. 

Developing heavy industry, under capitalism, requires hyper-exploitation and unbridled access to raw materials.

2) The development of heavy industry also required an economic system that put a premium on labor for profit. So while other previous socieites focused on individual, family, or communal labor for subsistence; capitalism is a system based on deliberately producing way beyond mere subsistence for the purpose of selling everything that has been produced. 

The competion created by the market system where, without any logic or planning, various capitalists try to sell whatever they can in competitiom with one another, created the competitive drive to streamline labor to make it more productive to better compete against other capitalists.

The hyper-wealth coming from the Americas could fund both the materials, the research, and the progressive development of smaller and more primitive machines that would eventually evolve into the heavy industry that changed the world with mass production.

So why hasn’t the industrial revolution ended poverty? In fact, why has it been used instead to throw billions into poverty, created ecological disaster, and international war? It comes down to who controls the machines. The machines are just that, machines. They are at the mercy of whichever CLASS is in control of society. So while the capitalist class is based on competition and profit, they will use the instruments of society to meet those interests.

So what if the working class could lay its hands on the machines and democratically control them? The working class is not built on competition. Instead, the experience of the working class is of cooperation in the workplace and the desire for democracy both inside and outside the work place. While capitalists are supposed to compete for market share, workers are supposed to cooperate to produce.

Someone recently found my blog by typing the question: “What can Marxism offer economically developing nations?” Or something like that. I’m paraphrasing here, but it is was something like that. That got me thinking, “what can’t it offer?”

For starters, Marxism is all about internationalism. It is opposed to the division of the world into competing nations, which inevitably results in the division between oppressor and oppressed nations. Marxism supports the struggle against Imperialism by oppressed nations in both political and armed resistance. Though ultimately, Marxists stand for the abolition of all nations because the working class has no country. We are everywhere and the whole world is ours.

But also, this got me thinking about economics and industry. In a democratically run run society, which would include a democratically planned economy, individual nations woukd not have to struggle to develop heavy industry independent of, and in competition against, other capitalist nations.

The reason Stalin’s Russia and today’s bourgeois-democratic India have hyper-exploited their populations (and the populations of others) is because the nations that were able to industrialize first exist in a competitive capitalist economy in which it does pay to share technology because that evens the competitive playing field. So while the industrialized nations use their technological might for imperialism, weaker capitalist nations hyper-exploit “their own” lower classes to catch up.

But of we lived in a society with an international, democratically planned economy, a socialist economy, that emphasized human need over corporate greed, the less industrialized countries could be provided with the necessary technology to improve living standards for people all over the world.

Moreover, some aspects of industry would nit even need toe shared, per se, since the currently existing levels of industrialization already have the potential to provide for everyone. 

For socialism to be possible, it required the technology and science to end scarcity. The capitalism’s international spread and drive to profit have created the international networks and technology that make unimaginable amounts of wealth possible. The question now is who gets the “legal” right to control the machines that produce this wealth, and the wealth itself? Should the capitalists hold the right to private property over the machines (i.e. the capital) and its wealth, or should it be democratically owned and used by the people who work the machines and produce the wealth?

These are the questions the world is starting to ask. The “Occupy” protests have spread around the world and they are beginning to ask the same questions internationally: “do we need to live in a capitalist society,” and “what kind of a better world can we build?”

A better world is possible: Occupy everywhere and demand everything.

Ten Years After 9/11: A Socialist’s Perspective (The World Scene)

Technical issues. Will update.

HOW TO BECOME A MARXIST: 26 – Normal, Polarizing, and Revolutionary Periods

As discussed in the previous post, capitalism has economic crisis built into it due to the anarchy of unplanned production for the market, as opposed to democratically planned production by the working class.

These economic crisis also have political implications because they necessitate political solutions to solve the economic crisis. For example, with the Great Recession that started in 2008, we have seen an intensified attack on the working class by ratcheting up attacks on unions, wage and benefit cuts, as well as attacks on government programs that working class people need like social security, medicare, and unemployment insurance.

All of these are reactionary attempts to use the current economic crisis to politically justify the elimination or reduction of programs that working class people fought for so many decades ago.

None of the political debate so far, at least in the main stream, has revolved around increasing taxes on the rich, increasing taxes on corporations, taking back the bank bailouts and redistributing it to the working class, ending the war of terror to use those funds instead for government run green job creation, etc.

These political points would instead be an attack on the bourgeoisie and a demand that the bourgeois government provide aid to working people, especially since clearly the bourgeoisie is unwilling to use their vast reserves of wealth to save the world economy. This is even after getting the multi-billion dollar bailout of tax-payer dollars and after creating the economic crisis in the first place!

These two points get at the heart of the difference between “normal” times under capitalism and “revolutionary” times, as well as the intermediate polarizing period between the two. The heart of the matter is that the economic crisis open up periods of heightened political polarization. And not simply in the superficial sense of “liberals vs conservatives” or “democrats vs republicans” but in the broader sense of overall class struggle and the radicalizing politics that emerge with intensified class struggle.

The greater the level of economic polarization, the greater the number of everyday people that begin to think about, debate, and participate in politics: whether at the ballot box or workplace strike.

So whereas when the economy is at a high point, there may be more or less political equilibrium (and corollary mass “apathy”), with the tepid politics of “centrism” being the order of the day, the worse and/or longer an economic crisis is, the more people begin to turn to political ideas that are further and further to both the Left and the Right (and the more they become politically active as well).

For example, in Greece, where worker’s struggle has reached several boiling points of mass protests, street fighting with police, and general strikes, there has been a heightening of socialist and anarchist politics.

Conversely, in the US, where there has been very limited class struggle against the politics of austerity, openly fascist organizations have been springing up at an alarming rate all over the country to promote racist, anti-immigrant, and Islamophobic politics as “solutions” for the economy.

So contrary to the usual political calls to “put politics aside and deal with the real issues,” the reality is that the bourgeoisie and their politicians are actively trying to push politics to the right and win concessions from the working class without any concessions whatsoever from the bourgeoisie.

Without active struggle on the part of the working class, this sets the stage for previosuly small sectors of the far right to win a wider audience and recruit moree openly than before.

But when the working class is able to organize itself and provide a determined fight to defend itself, the working class is able to propose as well as absorb radical left-wing ideas to further the struggle against the bourgeoisie.

It is important to understand capitalist crisis and the ensuing political polarization because it is precisely these crisis which, on a long enough timeline, force greater numbers of previously “apathetic” people to join in the class struggle. The question then becomes, what ideas and organizations will be availble when they are pushed into action by capitalism itself? Will there be fascist ideas/organizations that promote anti-worker struggle to reinforce capitalism? Or will there be revolutionary socialist ideas/organizations that promote pro-worker struggle to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism?

The political polarization is inevitable as the economic polarization throws greater numbers of people into poverty or at the brink of poverty, leaving the reigns of power in increasingly less hands. This polarization is developing as we speak. IF the economic situation is fixed in the short term, it will undoubtedly be done at the expense of working class living standards. If it is not fixed soon, the race to the bottom will continue at an increasing speed and intensity. In either case, when the dust settles, new parameters will be set for what is politically acceptable.

So far, the political debate has only been set by the right-wing. For the working class to begin winning short-term and long-term demands, it is important to begin building leftist organizations, promoting leftist politics, and engaging in leftist struggle. Rebuiliding the Left now will help the working class defend itself in the longterm, as well as build the organizations and expand the political debate towards the Left, to win the revolution in the long-term.

We have seen from revolutions throughout history, and most recently in the revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt, that revolutions break out without planning on the part of most working class organizations. In that regard, they can be considered “spontaneous.” but as revolutions take off, the need for previously organized revolutionary groups becomes more and more apparent. In the beginning of a revolution, the broadest section of the masses, working class and non-working class, join together to overthrow the figurehead of the existing system.

But overthrowing a figurehead (such as a dictator, a czar, or hated president) is one thing. Overthrowing the capitalist system is a much larger and more difficult project. After the figurehead is overthrown, the previously united broad masses splinter between the previously sympathetic bourgeoisie, the previously sympathetic petit-bourgeoisie, and the still-revolutionary working class.

The development of the revolutionary left in the period before the revolutionary outbreak occured, as well as its development during the outbreak, determines its ability to win broader sections of the working class to the ultimate program of social revolution. Otherwise, the revolution becomes stunted and results in a return to business as usual for capitalism. Either with a return to a new dictator or equally dispicable president, or even a fall backwards into a more viciously repressive and even fascist government that drowns the former revolutionary movement in blood.

To breifly summarize: just as the economic crisis creates a more visible polarization between the haves and have-nots, so the economic polarization also leads to an inherent political polarization in terms of finding solutions to fix the economic crisis. That political crisis is shaped by the number and size of leftist organizations that existed before the economic crisis set in, as well as by the confidence of the working class to engage in struggle to resist the “solutions” of the bourgeoisie which all are basically an attack on the working class. 

The greater the level of political polarization the more urgent the need to build revolutionary politics and organizations in preparation for the revolutionary moments that no one can predict but everyone will be forced to participate in. In effect, a revolution is the highest point of polarization that a moment can achieve as the greatest number of people have been won to one or another political pole and therefore the masses, in the truest sense of the word, are active in shaping history.

HOW TO BECOME A MARXIST: 25 – Understanding Marx’s Theory of Capitalist Crisis

One of the fundamental places where Marxists disagree with bourgeois economists is around capitalist economic crisis.

Bourgeois economists try to pin the blame for economic crisis in capitalism on scapegoats. Usually the scapegoats are sections of the working class (like undocumented workers) or on organizations/programs designed to alleviate the exploitation and suffering of the working class (like unions and social security). 

Other times they try to simply pretend that the economic crisis is a fluke, an accident, a glitch in an otherwise perfectly functioning system of the capitalist drive for profit. All of these have been the responses of the bourgeoisie to the current capitalist crisis which started in 2008 and shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, according to most commentators, the world capitalist economy is on target for a “double-dip” recession with ramifications that most people hate to consider.

But whereas the bourgeois economists try to scapegoat workers for crisis, or pretend that the crisis are just a blip and will be over soon enough, Marxists understand that economic crisis are built into the system of capitalism and will continue to occur periodically as long as capitalism exists.

The very nature of capitalism (multiple competitors producing anarchiclly to secure the biggest share of the market) most hit periodic crisis for two main reasons: 
1) Over-production
2) Diminshing profits from mechanization of labor

OVER-PRODUCTION

The first point is easy enough to understand. There are, for example, tons of car companies. Off the top of my head I can think of Toyota, Hyundai, Kia, Ford, Dodge, Lexus, BMW, Volvo, Volkswagon, Honda, and Tata. And these are just car companies that I was able to remember. I am certainly missing several others. But the point is this: each of these companies wants you to buy one of their cars. 

They also want everyone else with money to buy one of their cars. But no one has gone out to find out exactly who actually wants a car, nor who actually has the money for one in the first place. And they dont intend to find out, becauae that would requier democratic planning, which would eliminate the competitive element of capitalism. And capitalism without competition is not capitalism, but would instead be communism, and the capitalists aren’t ready for that social revolution.

So all of the companies I mentioned, plus the ones I wasn’t even able to think of, will produce as many cars as possible, hoping that they sell more of their own cars compared to their car manufacturing competitors. Obviously, not everyone on Earth needs, wants, or can even afford a car. So on a long enough timeline their is a glut in the market. Too many cars and not enough people to buy them. But the issue goes beyond this.

Cars, for example, are made of various raw materials that were mined from different parts of the world by workers. Those raw materials were then refined or transformed into other products or auto parts by othere workers, possibly in a different country than where the raw material was originally found. These refined or newly manufactured products are then sent off to the country with the car company to incorporate this refined raw material or product to complete the car. 

Meaning that, a glut in the car industry does not just affect the car industry itself but also affects workers and economies all over the world that mine the raw materials, refine or manufacture other aspects of the car, and ultimately come here to complete the car. So what looked like it was just a glut in cars has created an international shockwave affecting the world economy. 

This is a basic outline of how the 2008 crisis began, except that instead of a glut in cars, the over-production occured with homes. Too many houses were built in the anarchy of trying to sell as many as possible to gain the biggest profit. In addition, other industries (like the banking industry) tried to cash in on this by “over-producing” mortgages. They tried to get a little extra out of these mortgagea by adding predatory lending and hedge fund speculation into the mix, creating one of the most destructive financial “bubbles” in recent history.

DIMINISHING PROFITS FROM THE MECHANIZATION OF LABOR

This next one is a mouthful, but bear with me here. For starters, Marxists don’t see value simply as a ratio between supply and demand. We agree that supply and demand plays a role in determining the monetary value of a product, but we say that the greater part of a products value comes from labor. This is called the “labor theory of value.”

Lets take a quick minute to explain the labor theory of value before moving on with the issue of diminshing profits from the mechanization of labor.

Labor theory of value in a nutshell:
You have a great idea,  but an idea does not make you rich. An idea is immaterial and useless as long as it is stuck in your head. Hiring workers that produce your idea in the real world with natural resources to then sell it on the market while paying those workers less than you pay yourself is where profit comes from.

Diminishing profits from the mechanization of labor in a nutshell:
The more you mechanize the labor of those workers, the less value the product they produce has, as the easier it is to produce something the more its value dips, the less you can charge for the product and the less you pay the workers.

The issue of overproduction and diminishing profits from the mechanization of labor are not mutually exclusive either. These issues are constant threats in the capitalist system and often complement each other. For example, with the housing crisis, new machines make the matereials necessary to build homes, and the actual process of building faster and easier, which lowers the value of the homes. At the same time that the necessary materials and actual process of building homes has been further mechanized, the bourgeoisie continue over-producing homes until there is a glut that shuts down the world economy leading into the Great Recession.

This was, of course, a simplified sketch of events. But at its core these are the fundamentals of both the current crisis and periodic economic crisis in capitalism more generally.

WHY UNDERSTANDING CAPITALIST CRISIS IS IMPORTANT

As mentioned in the beginning, these crisis are built into the competitive nature of capitalism. A system based on competing firms is an economy based on reckless, undemocratic, production for pkroduction’s sake. As long as capitalism exists it will always produce for the sake of production with the intent to maximize profits.

If capitalism was capable of expanding into infinity then it would be theoretically possible for everyone to eventually become rich and there would be no need to overthrow capitalism. Instead of redistributing the wealth, or redistributing the “pie,” we would just “make the pie bigger.” this was basically the dogma behind neoliberalism with its fanatic support for free trade. “if the capitalists can make moree money they can trickle down greater wealth to the masses so they don’t have to fight for better wages or greater social spending.”

The current crisis, with its desperate need for more and better funded welfare programs (i.e. welfare itself, social security, unemployment insurance, etc.) as well as the need for government job creation are more glaringly necessary now than ever before.

So the point is capitalism cannot expand into infinity but instead will periodically launch millions and even millions of people into desperate poverty. These periods of hyper-oppression and hyper-exploitation create both the ideological basis and practical need for revolution.

The crisis create a scramble between the capitalists domestically and internationally to force each other to pay for the damage (think of the way that France and Germany are trying to get Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain to pay for the crisis) as well as trying to get the workers in their own countries to pay for it while the capitalists who caused the crisis get richer (think of the bailouts Bush and Obama gave to the banks while letting working class people suffer forclosures and wage cuts).

But the world is not simply divided between politics and economics. Both are connected at the hip and shoulders in the real, living, breathing world. Capitalist crisis leads to divisions between capitalists on how to resolve the issue. The choices they make (like the austerity measures in Greece) or the inability to offer any solutions (like in Egypt) opens up disputes between domestic capitalists on how to appropriately handle the situation in the interests of capitalism.

When the bourgeoisie flinches and their iron fist is even briefly loosened by their infighting or indecision, the proletariat catches a glimpse of freedom and an opportunity to resist. When the bourgeoisie’s iron grip is loosened there begins to open an ideological gap in which the brutality and obsolescence of the bourgeoisie’s ability to command society is exposed. This opens up new horizons for workers where they see an opportunity to unite and push their master to give in to their demands.

The more the proletariat push the more they start to realize that they can do more than simply push, they can even overthrow! Capitalist crisis therefore are built in political crisis for the capitalists as well as built in OPPORTUNITIES for the working class SO LONG AS THE WORKERS ARE ABLE TO GENERALIZE THEIR SITUATION, IDENTIFY THEIR OPPRESSORS, AND UNITE TO RESIST/OVERTHROW THEM.

By “generalize” I mean that workers are able to identify the situation as affecting them all collectively and that the only solution can be found by collective action.

The last time the world saw a major depression was in the 1920-30s. Though it was by no means automatic, that was one of the last major episodes in history where capitalist crisis ignited the US labor movement which fought and “pushed” the US bourgeoisie to hand over the New Deal which included social programs that were previously considered taboo.

The programs of social security, welfare, the right to unionize, etc. Were all handed down to AVOID revolution. That was what we were able to win then. The question is what can we win now, or else risk letting the bourgeoisie use this crisis to their own advantage by further scapegoating social welfare programs, unions, and immigrants.

Because capitalist crisis is potentially an opportunity for emboldened class struggle. But it is also potentially an opportunity for the bourgeoisie to clamp down harder on workers and get us to blame ourselves and each other for the crisis. They can use this chance to convince us that “we all need to tighten our belts” while in reality the rich get their tax cuts and we get wage cuts.

For a more intelligent discussion and understanding of crisis theory, please see this article in the International Socialist Review: http://www.isreview.org/issues/32/crisis_theory.shtml

Things I Overheard: “Why do we need unions?”

“Why Unions?” It is a sad and bewildering state of affairs for the left in the US that this question is still asked amongst many people.

Unfortunately, the recent history of unions has tainted the idea for most. Folks who normally hold very progressive ideas on all sorts of topics have been tricked by bourgeois propoganda into thinking that somehow, having an organized body within the workplace is a BAD thing. If organizing on a college campus, local community, or around other specific issues like racism, sexism, and homophobia, then why not for workplace justice and democracy?

We are told that unions are bad because they “don’t do anything” or because they “just want to collect your dues.” But this is absurd. Any organization is only as useful as the rank-and-file members that actually try to use the organization to the benefit of the cause. If you leave any organization strictly in the hands of the formal leadership and bureaucrats, then the group will absolutely be useless, whether it is a union or some other civil rights group.

But also, any group that exists needs funding to create posters, fund some full time staff to manage daily affairs, create an action fund or provide publicity of one type or another. But again, the utility of paying dues to a union or any other group is based on how much the individual is motivated and organized to mobilize the organization to meet the necessary challenges with the appropriate strategy and tactics.

Effectively, what most people are saying is that because the unions in recent history have let our enemies (i.e. the bourgeoisie and their management team) run the show, we should drop unionism and just deal with our exploitation as working class people in the work place. This is equal to saying that it is useless to fight for our civil rights in the work place. Absurd! 

Now more than ever, we need unions. And yes, it is absolutely true that over the last few decades the union bureaucracy has absolutely betrayed workers by siding with the bosses on most major issues and by being unwilling to use the strike as a legitimate form of struggle to improve or defend workers rights. 

But that does not change the fact that the union provides everyday working people with a formal network that they can use through active, grassroots mobilization to push for demands. Whether those demands are higher wages, or preventing the firing of a co-worker, or winning benefits like maternity leave, medical coverage for a same-sex partner, or free on-site childcare.

None of this changes the fact that at the end of the day, our bosses are the enemy. Our bosses are the ones that fire us, lower our wages, cut our hours, take away our benefits, and make us work harder and harder to increase “productivity” when what society needs is NOT more productivity but a democratic economy based on democratically organized work places. In other words: socialism.

As long as we live in a society where a boss can fire a worker, but the workers cant fire the boss, then the workers need a union. A union is a work place civil rights weapon to be used against the CEOs, corporate presidents, and supervisors, and even dictators.

Lets not forget, it was mass action tied to the unions that brought down US-backed Mubarak in Egypt when the unions started to call on general strikes across the country. The revolution in Egypt has brought out tons of lessons for anyone interested in fighting for a better world. One of those lessons was the potential power of unions when the rank-and-file members of those unions take the union into their own hands and use it to meet the needs of the day. 

For the Egyptian workers, the needs of the day was the overthrow of a US backed dictator. Next, the Egyptian workers need to use the experience of overthrowing a US-backed puppet through work place activity to see the potential to run society without bosses, without capitalists, and without capitalism itself.

In practice, a union gives a network and financial support system for workers to organize and launch strikes to win concessions from the bosses. Anyone can try to organize their work place without a union. And ironically, or dialectically, it often requires previous self-organization by workers in the work place to struggle and win the right to organize a union in the first place. Historically, the struggle to win unionization has actually gone beyond the scope of union struggle itself, such as in the Great Minneapolis General Strike.

But once you have the union you can concretize your gains against the boss, as well as have an organization the provides legitimacy and support for struggles that workers might engage in. In the work place, all workers are pitted against each other for quality and quantity of productivity. So in the work place workers have to cooperate to keep the business running, but compete to get bonuses or avoid being fired.

But having a union in the work place creates a formal and concrete bond between workers where they can say to themselves and each other “we are in this together and we will defend each other” from speed-ups, lay-offs, etc. The union holds the workers accountable to each other, both formally and psychologically. But only in so far as the workers actively participate in it and feel that it genuinely represents them. And the only way to genuinely represent someone is by standing up for and with them.

Again, no matter what arguments the conservatives and liberals try to use to justify smashing unions or blocking them, we have to always remember the fundamental fact: bosses can fire workers, but workers can’t fire bosses. As long as capitalism exists, this will be the way society in general, and work places in particular, operate. As long as this is true workers need their own organizations to defend themselves from the bosses.

This is why we need unions.

Night at the Movies: Rise of Planet of the Apes

OMG. This movie is fantastic. There is a lot to say about this movie, and I am sure that plenty of other expert movie critics will hit all of the necessary points in a succinct and clever way. But what I want to say from a Marxist perspective is that this movie is not only great in it of itself, but also that the political timing for this movie could not have been better.

For starters, the movie has come put now in the context of successful mass revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as ongoing revolutions throughout North Africa and the Middle East, as well as against the backdrop of continued mass upheaval throughout Europe and other parts of the world.

Into this context comes Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a movie fundamentally about oppression, exploitation, resistance, and revolution. If you have never seen the original Planet of the Apes series, you will still enjoy this film as the story and political implications of the film are so fundamentally important now more than ever in a world of permanent recession and austerity measures for the poor while the rich get bailouts and tax breaks.

Interestingly enough, if I am not mistaken, the original Planet of the Apes series was released in the context of the ongoing Cold War and was a critique of a world where mutually assured nuclear destruction was a reality that haunted the everyday lives of people all over the world.

Rise of Planet of the Apes is in many ways a mix between Frankentstein and Animal Farm. Regarding Frankenstein, just as the scientist Dr. Frankenstein creates the monster but is unable to accomodate for it in a world that sees it as an abomination rather than a miracle, in the same way the lead human character in Rise inadvertently creates a creature he is unable to either tame or sustain. 

Regarding Animal Farm, where the animals rise up againat their human bosses and resist their exploitation and oppression in the interest of founding their own society, the apes in Rise do the same and launch a resistance against their jailers and masters.

There is tons more to say about the movie and several great basic lessons for people who see the film, sympathize with the oppressed apes, and see the movie as a call to organize and resist their own oppression and exploitation.

The fundamental point of the movie is that there is a difference between the oppressor and the oppressed and that the grievances and resistance of the oppressed is fundamentally legitimate. Moreover, as I mentioned, the movie does not stop at legitimizing resistance, but also at politically supporting revolution.

Finally, the movie placed a very specific light on the role of police in society and revealed them as the enemy. The police murders of Oscar Grant and Kenneth Harding in California, as well as the recent uprising set off by the police murder of Mark Duggan in Britain make the role of police un society all the more relevant and visible. Also, the whole world witnessed the role of police in Egypt as one of the final defenders of the internationally hated (and US-supported) dictator Mubarak.

One of the final messages of Rise is “f*** the police.” this is a message more people are starting to listen to.