AND REVOLUTION

(i) 'Class in itself' and "class for itself".

THE STRUGGLE of the working class against the bourgeoisie arises from the latter's appropriation of the surplus product of the worker's labour over and above that portion of the product required to replace the value of labour - power purchased in order to set production in motion.

In so far as all workers share this characteristic of being exploited because • of their ownership only of labour power, which is sold as a commodity, they form a class—a class 'in itself, as Marx, following the expression of Hegel, termed it; but not yet a class "for itself.

Process

For the latter, a process of development was necessary:

"The political movement of the working class has as its object, of course, the conquest power for the working class, and for this it is naturally necessary that a previous organization of the working class, itself arising from their economic struggle, should have been developed up to a certain point.

'On the other hand, however, every movement in which the working class comes out as a class against the ruling classes and attempts to force them by pressure from without is a political movement.

'For instance, the attempt in a particular factory or even a particular industry to force a shorter working day out of the capitalists by strikes, etc., is a purely economic move'On the other hand, the movement to force an eight-hour day, etc., by law is a political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers, there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing a general social force of compulsion..."

Marx is here expanding the. concepts put forward in his early works (particularly "The Poverty of Philosophy, "The Communist Manifesto'): in so far as the proletariat is created by the advance of the bourgeoisie, by its 'other' , it constitutes a class 'in itself', 'in relation to capital'.

But this is only the precondition for process: •.. in the struggle ... this mass unites and forms itself into a class for itself.' There is not some metaphysical, predetermined necessity that each class 'in itself will become a class' for itself'. It is only in so far as the material struggles forced upon ('Marx, Letter to Bolte, 23 November, 1871.) I would like information about THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE: Fill in the form below and SECRETARY, SOCIALIST 186A CLAPHAM HIGH ST, Name Address the class make is possible for it to unite and realize itself in political action that this transformation takes place, a transformation which can then bring from the political level of the class's activity a decisive reaction upon the economic level from which it sprang.

As Marx's letter to Weydemeyer (quoted at the beginning of the previous part of this series) put it, the class struggle under capitalism leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat and through this to the abolition of classes.

The same point is brought out, this time 'negatively, but with a more detailed exposition of its meaning, in Marx's analysis of the peasantry in France in the revolutionary period 1848-1850:

"The small peasants form a vast mass, the members of which live in similar conditions, but without entering into manifold relations with one another. Their mode of production isolates them from one another, instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse.

"The isolation is increased by France's bad means of communication and by the poverty of the peasants. Their field of production, the small-holding, admits of no division of labour in its cultivation, no application of science and, therefore, no multiplicity of development, no diversity of talents, no send to NATIONAL LABOUR LEAGUE, LONDON, SW4. wealth of social relationships.

'Each individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient; it itself directly produces the. major part of its consumption and thus acquires its means of life more through exchange with nature than in intercourse. with society. The small holding, the peasant and his family; alongside them another small-holding, another peasant and another family. A few score of these make up a village, and a few score of villages make up a Depart'In this way, the great mass of the French nation is formed by simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sackful of potatoes. In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that divide their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile contrast to the latter, they form a class.

'In so far as there is merely a local interconnection among these small peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no unity, no national union and no political organization, they do not form a class."

Origin

Whereas the proletariat's economic origin constantly leads it into a common struggle, binds it into closer internal relations, forces it to undergo radicalizing experiences in industry through the development of the productive forces (science, communications, technique), and thrusts it towards the necessity of its independent political expression of this common experience as a class, in 'a form possessing a general social force of compulsion', the opposite is true for the small peasants.

The inexorable revolutionization of the conditions of production' in the bourgeois epoch certainly affects the peasantry, but, in contrast to the proletariat, in such a way as to ('Marx, 'The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte', in Selected Works. Vol. II pp. 414-415.) dissolve or at least to divide it as a class: some become bigger farmers, but others go down into the proletariat; or, characteristically, peasant agriculture declines and stagnates at the side of big industry and large capitalist farming for whole historical periods, and the members of this class eke out their living and protect their 'independence' in sharper and sharper opposition to the other members of their own class.

Collective

From time to time they organize collective struggles and protests, which even on the largest scale issue in defeat and despair so long as they are not combined with the development of the proletarian revolution.

What then is the charactertic political reflection of the ass nature of the small peaThe potential in the working class of political independence, of its social force achieving an expression which is not simply an affirmation of its oppressed position, which is not used simply to develop quantitatively the existing tendencies in the political life of capitalist society, but can bring about qualitative, revolutionary transformation, is the essence of the problem around which the development of Marxism in this century has centred, that of working-class consciousness and revolutionary leadership.

Consciousness

What immediately suggests itself is that the working class will require a consciousness which cannot be derived TSK own experience in economic and day-to-day struggles.

The political tasks posed directly or completely from its braces the overall development of society.

It is interesting to note Marx's original formulation of this aspect of the problem, in which he describes the proletariat as •.. a sphere which does not stand in a one-sided contradiction to the consequences, but in a general and all-round contradiction to the very hypotheses of the German state."

In understanding the Marxist view of this problem, it is important to approach it as a process of struggle for work(''Critique of Hegel's of Right'. 1843.)

ists" who ake class 'In reality lead having risen fo much as the bourgeoisie.

Defence of Marxism P. 16 ing-class consciousness and not in terms of whether a given set of ideas 'fits' the abstractly conceptualized position of the proletariat in society general'.

Marxists must obviously answer the question of how to characterize the level of consciousness represented by political leaders of the working class who certainly represent or control organizations at the level of the mobilization of the class as a class, and yet do not embrace the revolutionary outlook of Marxism.

It is, of course, not uncommon to find commentators who explain such political ideas by saying that they reflect the class itself and are in this way historically justified.

Such an interpretation has nothing to do with Marxism. who take it airecuy nuIp above . na la a the proletariat, A political leadership is rever the automatic 'reflection' if the economic needs of the class.

'Men of Politics' Political parties and tendencies are formed at the level of the political superstructure, and 'men of politics' take their stamp from the prevailing forces in that sphere so long as they are not engaged in constant and conscious struggle against it with an explicitly critical and revolutionary theory and practice.

'Only vulgar "Marxists" who take it that politics is a mere and direct "reflection" of economics, are capable of thinking that leadership reflects the class directly and simply.

In reality leadership, having risen above the oppressed class, inevitably succumbs to the pressure of the ruling class.

The leadership of the American trade unions, for instance, "reflects" not so much the proletariat, as the bourgeoisie."

Implicit in Trotsky's .remarks is the basic point which he himself had so strongly emphasized in his 'Literature and Revolution': the notion of 'economic base - ideological superstructure' is applicable only at the level of society or socio-economic formation:

To reduce it to the scale of a particular class, as if the latter had its 'own' base and superstructure is to mutilate the theory.

Character

While the conditions of life and experience common to a particular class give a distinctive character to the habits and opinions of its members, it must be borne in mind that the ideological superstructure of the whole society, developed as a reflection and at the same time an instrument of the domination of the ruling class, is concentrated into very ideological and political manifestation in the society, including the spontaneous reactions of the oppressed classes.

If this were not the case, revolution would be an automatic growth, whereas it is in fact the product of, on the one hand, objective economic contradictions, and, on • the other, the resolution of an ideological and political crisis in the midst of the revolutionary class itself, in which the old ideological forms are thrown aside and the objective character of the contradictions is perceived.

(Trotsky, In Defence Marxism', p. 14.)