HOW TO BECOME A MARXIST: 19 – Post-Industrialism and Permanent Revolution

I recently read about a radical that was “going beyond Marxism” to analyze the new phenomenon of workers who operate with computers all day and, instead of fighting for shorter work hours, are actually trying to get overtime. What this radical is basically stating is that the Marxist approach no longer applies to analyze society, much less to overthrow the existing capitalist order.

This analysis made me remember a recent discussion I had with a comrade about Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution and how it applied to today’s so-called “post-industrialist” world.

But before I go into that, I wanted to start with the concept of “going beyond Marxism.” As Engels pointed out in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, and as Hal Draper pointed out in Two Souls of Socialism, the whole point of Marxism is that it went beyond the strictly idealistic analysis of previous philosophers and tied philosophy directly to the material, historical, technological world that we live in today. In other words, “going beyond Marxism” requires going beyond the real, living breathing material world and back out into the oblivion of idealist analysis.

With that said, the reality is that while capitalism has stayed fundamentally the same (i.e. the major centeres of power remain in the US and Europe, capitalism is still a class society divided between workers and capitalists, the working class remains the revolutionary agent of change), capitalism has evolved to sustain itself in new and expanded circumstances.

So whereas in the 1800s and early 1900s, there were still vast sections of Earth where capitalism and industry were still absent, today imperialism has covered every inch of our planet. In the process it has spread industry and the working class all over the world. With the expansion of imperialism came some de-industrialization in the imperialist nations as well as the simultaneous expansion of service sector and office jobs to help sustain the myriad of new business and financial instruments meant to exploit while propping-up the imperialist project.

In the process, we have seen the same Dickensian circumstances that came with the industrialization of England and the US replicated all over the world. Sweatshops that once existed in 1840s Manchester, England found homes in Mexico, China, and India. The working class and the instruments of their immediate emmiseration and potential liberation were spread all over the world. The flip side is that in the process, the revolutionary class, the proletariat, is now bigger and more internationally interconnected than ever before. 

Far from being a “post-industrial” world, there is actually more industry and more potential for socialism than ever before. Because capitalism’s a system and the proletariat as a class are international in their scope, we always have to analyze both on the international scale.

To be clear, it is ridiculous to think that factories and other industrial forms of labor no longer exist within the old order of imperialist nations. A trip through the west and south sides of Chicago can lead to several industrial work places where the stereotypical proletariat can be found toiling away at machines that produce more than any individual worker ever could.

But moreover, just because some workers are now in office jobs does not mean that they are living the good life. Plenty of people toil away doing mind-numbing work in offices, where “productivity” is just as much the watchword as it is at any factory on Earth. People in call centers and accounting offices are always under the gun to make sure they are completing tasks in record time and are constantly grilled at department meetings to find new ways to make their work more exploitative for them, to the benefit of the corporate president and CEO.

Whether in an office or a factory, the bosses still control and fire the workers, though the workers don’t need the bosses to sustain the workplace.
Whether in an office or a factory, a strike will still shut down the workplace and management could just as easily be replaced by a democratic workers council.

This gets to what I wanted to address regarding permanent revolution. For starters, Trotsky’s theory was originally developed after the 1905 revolution in Russia. The center of it was that although Russia was not industrially advanced, and therefore incapable of sustaining socialism in one country, the level of industrial development in Europe allowed for the possibility of going from a predominantly peasant economy straight into socialism so long as the socialist revolution spread throughout Europe (most notably into Germany).

Today, with major parts of the world having become industrialized to greater or lesser degrees, the question here at home, in places like the US becomes what role can non-industrial workers play in the coming socialist revolution? 

The issue being that, although a one week strike of oil or auto workers could easily cripple the national and even international economy, a national strike by baristas or non-profit office workers would directly do ZERO damage to any economy.

So for the majority of us, the non-industrial workers, how do we factor into the struggle against the bourgeoisie? Here is where permanent revolution comes in. As usual, the general premise that the revolution has to be international is, of course, absolutely still true. But also you have to keep in mind that our society is a living breathing society of living, breathing human beings. So while, for example, a bunch of students occupying a public square has no direct revolutionary or economic implications, the capacity for those students to raise political demands that strike a chord with the broader working class in general, and the industrial working class in particular, makes permanent revolution a living possibility.

Let’s take another example. Non-profit workers have nothing to do with the traditional Marxist analysis of labor and production. As a sector of the economy, non-profit workers would not make any major impact if they went on strike for any number of days, weeks, or even months. The struggle between those specific workers and their specific boss may be may see some gains through such an action, but in it of itself it would not cripple capitalism.

But let us say that the non-profit workers work for an organization that provides free health care services to the differently abled. Let us say that the reason they are going on strike is because of budget cuts that are going on nation-wide. Then let us say that as part of their strike, they raise the demands that the budget cuts be stopped against them, as well as across the country. 

Moreover, they start to demand other things like “tax the rich” and maybe even demands for universal health care. Now they have the ears of workers around the country that may dpidentify with their struggle and might join in too. As more sectors of the proletariat support and even join in solidarity strike actions, suddenly the industrial proletariat throws it’s weight into the struggle by launching a general strike.

Then we have seen a revolutionary situation open up and a permanent revolution from seemingly unrevolutionary workers spreading all the way to the working class heavyweights.

As long as capitalism exists, the working class exists. As long as workers make their bosses rich by doing the actual daily labor, the fundamental antagonism between the ruling class and the working class still exists. As long as the working class is centralized in factories, offices, hospitals, schools, and cafes then the possibility exists for the workers to orga use themselves, rise up, and overthrow the bourgeoisie.

In terms of the modern understanding of permanent revolution, there are two things to keep in mind:
- The revolution still absolutely must be international.
- The revolution might not start with the industrial proletariat but it must end with them.

I recommend some further reading to go beyond my little post here.

To learn more about:

Autonomism - http://www.isreview.org/issues/44/autonomism.shtml

Permanent revolution - http://www.isreview.org/issues/48/permrev-whitehouse.shtml  and  http://www.isreview.org/issues/48/permrev-damato.shtml

Post-industrialism - http://www.isreview.org/issues/52/postindustrial.shtml