What should the working class do?

I had a really interesting and thought provoking question earlier tonight. I was asked well how I think the working class should be organised. This sparked interest in my mind and instantly I thought well why not turn it on its head this question. Why not ask ourselves how can the working class organise itself? Which is precisely the question in my mind right about now. I think leadership is important but not necessarily the concept of leadership we are used to. As a free thinking socialist I like to look at things from all angles so when someone says to me what about leadership and organisation I reply well those are both important but what type of leadership and organisation do we want and what should we strive for? It’s not that I believe that leadership and organisation are flawed but it’s the question to me well what kind of organisation should we look for and what kind of leadership do we need? Do we need one who looks and tells us what to think and act all of the time? Or as I do believe those workers and those who want change the progressives if you like can and will act and think for themselves. As marxists many do think a vanguard or a self appointed elite of workers or a so called advanced layer will need to lead the mass's to think and act for the greater good but I personally hold far more faith in the workers the mass's the down trodden if you like than most Marxists. I personally feel that we should not treat the working class as dumbed down backward thinking people but forward thinking free thinking even mass's who can grasp the situation at hand. As we speak the ruling class are rolling back all the concessions that the power of the organised working class has won from the state. The state is just the enforcer of capitalism, and making that enforcement more naked at the expense of ordinary people doesn’t benefit anybody except those with political and economic power. The real alternative is a world without either the state or capitalism – libertarian communism. To get to that, we need to replace state-provided social welfare with voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. But you can’t have that in a profit system founded on private property, and so in the present its state services or a privatised nightmare-version of 21st century feudalism. As far as the alternative to the vote, what has the ballot box gotten us? Even the vote itself was won through direct action, and the greatest gains of the 20th century – the welfare state and the NHS – were not a result of putting an x in a box. They were concessions offered to appease the strength of our class. “If we don’t give them reforms, they’ll give us revolution,” in Tory MP Quintin Hogg’s words. The alternative to the vote is that threat. The willingness to use direct action, not only for concessions in the present but also to push for a better world in the future. This is what we must keep in mind when asking the question about the working class it is not simply a thing we can mess with and manipulate for our own ends these are actual people with individual thoughts and feelings. I think as Marx always taught us the working class is the only revolutionary class and that class alone can only be the one who changes its own situation. I am not sure that a vanguard of workers those who have appointed themselves without a mass popular vote and decision can be the ones to take us all forward we need mass precipitation and engagement with democracy at all times. Let’s be wary of those who claim to speak for us and their real aims and objectives. We must remember workers have nothing to loose but their chains.....