In the early days of forming a movement of which we can say we are in today the early signs of a fight back with the trade unions finally stepping on the scene some may say and i'd agree took them long enough. But in these early days it is important to raise ideas of a change in society with people.
Back when capitalism was going through its "boom stage" we found it hard to convince workers that this system cannot meet all of your wants and needs and ultimatly a crash will come which is enevitable under capitalist boom and bust.
But these days where a heightened increase of the class struggle and many commentators in the media making claims of a "class war" and other such like the ideas of revolutions in the arab world the idea of a change in soceity has become mainstream once again The idea that the occupy movement has coined slogans such as we are the 99% and capitalism is crisis are just two of what i have picked out of a change in contiousness out there among people.
You cannot tell me that these sorts of slogans and phrases would have been being talked about on radio phone in shows and television 3 or 4 years ago. Ever since the banking crash of 2008 the world has changed and we will never go back to that place.
For revolutionary socialists like myself who have drawn the conclusion that capitalism is a deeply unfair system and we need to change society todays plain is still a tough place to convince people of our ideas but at least we can highlight examples of exploitation and greed in society. The widening gap between rich and poor to a wide gulf is having a impact on people and their thinking. A certain layer of workers have arisen from a long long sleep if you like and are currently in a mass state of confusion. Many blame MP's, The labour party and now the tories others less informed like to play the race card and blame the lack of jobs to a imigration issue something of which i will blog more on tommorrow and the dangers that can entail.
But certainly as marxists with ideas of how the system of capitalism works and trying to further understand it ourselves through the ideas of Karl Marx relating those ideas to todays issues is becoming easier in one way but harder in another due to peoples confused state they are waking up from.
Many know something is wrong and something has to be done about it but few have drawn vague socialist ideas as yet many just simply feel the world is not fair and getting worse.
We agree, but we have a programme a alternative that can help move us on from the position we find ourselves. It is known as the transitional programme which we apply to every step of the class struggle.
Getting in and amongst workers and being involved in their daily struggles, making their fight our fight and our fight their fight is a key to keeping in touch with current contiousness and having a influence on such a contiousness,
Being able to explain our ideas in a comradely way a friendly and welcoming fashion will attract workers who are desperatly searching for a alternative to this mad rotten capitalist system.
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Showing posts with label agitation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label agitation. Show all posts
Monday, 16 January 2012
Thursday, 29 December 2011
What did Lenin mean when he talked of trade union contiousness and social democratic contiousness ?
As marxists we are constantly asking ourselves which state of the class struggle are we passing through. As dialectic thinkers we do not see a situation as a stationary one something has happened for us to get to where we are and something is currently happening that will impact on where we go next. We are constantly looking at the working class movements and seeing where if anywhere they are heading.
Lenin was no different in the early part of the 20th centruy when he posed in his excelent pamphlett "what is to be done ?" Lenin formulated that the spontinaity of workers when struggle arises can be bracketed into diffeernt contious and non contious thinking. Lenin explains to us that trade union contiousness is simply workers using the collective power of the trade unions to fight for better pay, conditions and a shorter working day etc. These struggles which are limited to fighting within the existing system of capitalism are key as they do raise contiousness as we well know. But lenin clearly pointed out these struggles are not social democratic as they do not look to challenge the system as yet.
In this piece below from Lenin's what is to be done he makes a excellent point taht on their own the working class cannot draw the conclusions that to fully imancipate themselves as the marxist term goes that the system of explitation and greed needs to be over thrown. Only by the intelligencia and more academic thinkers who understand marxism who can be workers too of course can influence the mass's to convince them that a change of the system is needed. As socialists we have already drawn these conclusions but convincing other workers that there is the need to change the system is our daily task. Showing the inequalities and exposing the capitalist system for what it is is a daily task of a revolutionary.
"A. The Beginning of the Spontaneous Upsurge
In the previous chapter we pointed out how universally absorbed the educated youth of Russia was in the theories of Marxism in the middle of the nineties. In the same period the strikes that followed the famous St. Petersburg industrial war of 1896 assumed a similar general character. Their spread over the whole of Russia clearly showed the depth of the newly awakening popular movement, and if we are to speak of the “spontaneous element” then, of course, it is this strike movement which, first and foremost, must be regarded as spontaneous. But there is spontaneity and spontaneity. Strikes occurred in Russia in the seventies and sixties (and even in the first half of the nineteenth century), and they were accompanied by the “spontaneous” destruction of machinery, etc. Compared with these “revolts”, the strikes of the nineties might even be described as “conscious”, to such an extent do they mark the progress which the working-class movement made in that period. This shows that the “spontaneous element”, in essence, represents nothing more nor less than. consciousness in an embryonic form. Even the primitive revolts expressed the awakening of consciousness to a certain extent. The workers were losing their age-long faith in the permanence of the system which oppressed them and began... I shall not say to understand, but to sense the necessity for collective resistance, definitely abandoning their slavish submission to the authorities. But this was, nevertheless, more in the nature of outbursts of desperation and vengeance than of struggle. The strikes of the nineties revealed far greater flashes of consciousness; definite demands were advanced, the strike was carefully timed, known cases and instances in other places were discussed, etc. The revolts were simply the resistance of the oppressed, whereas the systematic strikes represented the class struggle in embryo, but only in embryo. Taken by themselves, these strikes were simply trade union struggles, not yet Social Democratic struggles. They marked the awakening antagonisms between workers and employers; but the workers, were not, and could not be, conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism of their interests to the whole of the modern political and social system, i.e., theirs was not yet Social-Democratic consciousness. In this sense, the strikes of the nineties, despite the enormous progress they represented as compared with the “revolts”, remained a purely spontaneous movement.
We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.[2] The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. In the period under discussion, the middle nineties, this doctrine not only represented the completely formulated programme of the Emancipation of Labour group, but had already won over to its side the majority of the revolutionary youth in Russia.
Hence, we had both the spontaneous awakening of the working masses, their awakening to conscious life and conscious struggle, and a revolutionary youth, armed with Social-Democratic theory and straining towards the workers. In this connection it is particularly important to state the oft-forgotten (and comparatively little-known) fact that, although the early Social-Democrats of that period zealously carried on economic agitation (being guided in this activity by the truly useful indications contained in the pamphlet On Agitation,"
So what i myself draw from all this is that the role of a revolutionary party involved in the day to day struggles of the workers and inside the unions fighting day to day against the boss's who look to push down their living standards to increase their own profits. We must be alongside workers to explain that that this doesnt have to be this way. There is an alternative and we can achieve this through agitation first and foremost awaking the workers to the task in hand.
Lenin was no different in the early part of the 20th centruy when he posed in his excelent pamphlett "what is to be done ?" Lenin formulated that the spontinaity of workers when struggle arises can be bracketed into diffeernt contious and non contious thinking. Lenin explains to us that trade union contiousness is simply workers using the collective power of the trade unions to fight for better pay, conditions and a shorter working day etc. These struggles which are limited to fighting within the existing system of capitalism are key as they do raise contiousness as we well know. But lenin clearly pointed out these struggles are not social democratic as they do not look to challenge the system as yet.
In this piece below from Lenin's what is to be done he makes a excellent point taht on their own the working class cannot draw the conclusions that to fully imancipate themselves as the marxist term goes that the system of explitation and greed needs to be over thrown. Only by the intelligencia and more academic thinkers who understand marxism who can be workers too of course can influence the mass's to convince them that a change of the system is needed. As socialists we have already drawn these conclusions but convincing other workers that there is the need to change the system is our daily task. Showing the inequalities and exposing the capitalist system for what it is is a daily task of a revolutionary.
"A. The Beginning of the Spontaneous Upsurge
In the previous chapter we pointed out how universally absorbed the educated youth of Russia was in the theories of Marxism in the middle of the nineties. In the same period the strikes that followed the famous St. Petersburg industrial war of 1896 assumed a similar general character. Their spread over the whole of Russia clearly showed the depth of the newly awakening popular movement, and if we are to speak of the “spontaneous element” then, of course, it is this strike movement which, first and foremost, must be regarded as spontaneous. But there is spontaneity and spontaneity. Strikes occurred in Russia in the seventies and sixties (and even in the first half of the nineteenth century), and they were accompanied by the “spontaneous” destruction of machinery, etc. Compared with these “revolts”, the strikes of the nineties might even be described as “conscious”, to such an extent do they mark the progress which the working-class movement made in that period. This shows that the “spontaneous element”, in essence, represents nothing more nor less than. consciousness in an embryonic form. Even the primitive revolts expressed the awakening of consciousness to a certain extent. The workers were losing their age-long faith in the permanence of the system which oppressed them and began... I shall not say to understand, but to sense the necessity for collective resistance, definitely abandoning their slavish submission to the authorities. But this was, nevertheless, more in the nature of outbursts of desperation and vengeance than of struggle. The strikes of the nineties revealed far greater flashes of consciousness; definite demands were advanced, the strike was carefully timed, known cases and instances in other places were discussed, etc. The revolts were simply the resistance of the oppressed, whereas the systematic strikes represented the class struggle in embryo, but only in embryo. Taken by themselves, these strikes were simply trade union struggles, not yet Social Democratic struggles. They marked the awakening antagonisms between workers and employers; but the workers, were not, and could not be, conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism of their interests to the whole of the modern political and social system, i.e., theirs was not yet Social-Democratic consciousness. In this sense, the strikes of the nineties, despite the enormous progress they represented as compared with the “revolts”, remained a purely spontaneous movement.
We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.[2] The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. In the period under discussion, the middle nineties, this doctrine not only represented the completely formulated programme of the Emancipation of Labour group, but had already won over to its side the majority of the revolutionary youth in Russia.
Hence, we had both the spontaneous awakening of the working masses, their awakening to conscious life and conscious struggle, and a revolutionary youth, armed with Social-Democratic theory and straining towards the workers. In this connection it is particularly important to state the oft-forgotten (and comparatively little-known) fact that, although the early Social-Democrats of that period zealously carried on economic agitation (being guided in this activity by the truly useful indications contained in the pamphlet On Agitation,"
So what i myself draw from all this is that the role of a revolutionary party involved in the day to day struggles of the workers and inside the unions fighting day to day against the boss's who look to push down their living standards to increase their own profits. We must be alongside workers to explain that that this doesnt have to be this way. There is an alternative and we can achieve this through agitation first and foremost awaking the workers to the task in hand.
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