[2.10] Combating Common Wishful Thinking on the White Working Class
It is tempting to look for the slightest tinge of proletarian class interest
among that section of the Amerikan nation (the white working class) that
participates in production and in the circulation of commodities, as well
as in the realization of the social surplus value through the purchasing of
commodities for their own consumption.
It is tempting to look for the possibilities of an irreversible, precipitous
decline in the economic status of certain strata in the vast Amerikan settler
formation. The beleaguered, exploited proletariat residing in the internal
colonies of Amerika could benefit from a little help, or at least neutrality, from the middle classes—the petty bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy—during the insurrection/civil war and the preparatory years.
Settler radicals (meaning radicals descended from Europeans settling North
Amerika)—from the Trots to some Maoists—have long refused to face the
fact that the labor aristocracy is not only not a neutral force, but, if class interests rest on economic interests, not even mildly exploited. To paraphrase
Lenin: the petty-bourgeois revolutionaries take the conditions for their own
liberation to be the universal demands of mankind.
In terms of party-building this kind of thinking sometimes boils down to
promoting left-economist notions of immediate gratification, such as, “Nuke
war tomorrow? Oh shit, where do I sign up?” Such an understanding avoids
the international class analysis necessary to best promote revolution.
To truly take the stand of the international proletariat means to put our
analysis in the spot where the oppressed exist: with no choices available
but further oppression—or rebellion. We can strive to do this even during the periods when the masses actually standing in that spot have not yet realized their strength. For a revolutionary hanging by his/her thumbs in a cold Peruvian prison waiting for the flames to hit, Amerika must look like one huge, undifferentiated mass of class enemies.
That’s from the outside of this toilet. Inside it, we must make the differentiation and coldly separate friend from foe. The friends will throw themselves
into the flames to annihilate the flame-throwers. The foes will stand a little
distance apart at the last moment. As groups, this will be decided, in the
final analysis, by the historical group interest.
In the beginning, we decide what groups are worth our efforts building for
those decisive moments. If there is even a faint hope that the Amerikan
“working class” is waiting in the wings for revolution, then it would make
sense to organize for the demands of this group. (MIM seeks to organize
amongst all groups at all times, but it only organizes for the demands of the
oppressed, not the oppressors.)
MIM holds that, at the present, the majority of white workers in
this country—skilled workers, trade unionists, paper-pushers,
etc.—do not represent a revolutionary class. They do not create
surplus value as much as reapportion the surplus which results
from superexploitation of the Third World and oppressed internal nations. They are not prepared to abandon bourgeois
aspirations and mainly high-paying jobs to drop everything for
the good of the international proletariat.(1)
“Ah ha!” exclaims the desperately vacillating nature of the petty-bourgeois
revolutionary. “Just wait until they lose those high-paying jobs and become
prepared to abandon their bourgeois aspirations! Then they shall be friends!”
The cold-hearted Maoist replies, “Dream on, by that point what’s left of
them shall still be white-collar fascists defending a starving fortress Amerika
and firing bullets at Third World Maoist armies, while eating old Spam and
lining up to perish for the ‘right’ of their toxic-mutated children to ‘live free
or die!’”
These settlers are perfectly willing to fight and die for the continued ability
of their group to experience the taste of that rich and famous, completely
corrupted, seemingly immortal lifestyle.
An article by Lenin, who died before neocolonialism really pumped up the
imperialist alliances of the labor aristocracy and expanded the “shift in class
relations,” still says it well:
The greater part of Western Europe might then assume the
appearance and character already exhibited by tracts of country
in the South of England, in the Riviera, and in the tourist-ridden
or residential parts of Italy and Switzerland, little clusters of
wealthy aristocrats drawing dividends and pensions from the
Far East, with a somewhat larger group of professional retainers and tradesmen and a larger body of personal servants and
workers in the transport trade and in the final stages of production of the more perishable goods: all the main arterial
industries would have disappeared, the staple foods and semimanufactures flowing in as tribute from Asia and Africa… We
have foreshadowed the possibility of even a larger alliance of
Western states, a European federation of Great Powers which,
so far from forwarding the cause of world civilization, might
introduce the gigantic peril of a Western parasitism, a group of
advanced industrial nations, whose upper classes drew vast tribute from Asia and Africa, with which they supported great tame masses of retainers, no longer engaged in the staple industries
of agriculture and manufacture but kept in the performance of
personal or minor industrial services under the control of a new
financial aristocracy.(2)
The above quote was from Hobson, a “social-liberal" whom Lenin found
useful to quote, lest he be disbelieved. To would-be communist organizers
of the labor aristocracy, Lenin exclaimed: “At the present time, you are
fawning on the opportunists, who are alien to the proletariat as a class,
who are the servants, the agents of the bourgeoisie and the vehicles of its
influence, and unless the labor movement rids itself of them, it will remain
a bourgeois labor movement."(3)
Most white workers in this country are not prepared to ditch bourgeois aspirations and high-paying jobs to drop everything for the
good of the international proletariat.
Notes:
What is MIM pamphlet p. 8.
I.V. Lenin, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, Moscow Progress Publishers, 1979, p. 9.
From MIM Theory 1: