Fresh Friday #3

I was reviewing some of my recent posts and realized I haven't really addressed any strategies for a United Left outside of a call for Evangelistic Marxism. So I wanted a return to this concern since that is, after all, the modus operandi of the blog. So I will be talking about sectarianism within the American Left (and the Left in general), and how we can address these problems.

On Uniting the Left: Socialism Without Adjectives
-E.M. Diderot

My Comrade, Jack, posted on Facebook yesterday "Socialism without adjectives". It sparked a few tongue-in-cheek responses including my personal favorite: "Sentences without adjectives or verbs." But the sentiment is very real. Another Comrade, Chris, has been posting lately on the Anarchists, with whom the radical left on Facebook recently spontaneously and (nearly) unanimously declared solidarity over the Anarchist Memes fiasco, and their absolute refusal to accept our solidarity. I have to say the level of despair he is proclaiming is not unique to him. There is a reason I have stopped actively engaging the AnCaps on the usurper AM page. There is a reason many of my Comrades have dropped the offensive. But then, in a Facebook group whose aim is the discussion of radical Communist theory in general, on the same day as all this, a post was made asking which Leftists would we be unwilling to work with in a revolutionary group.

Three independent individuals, posting at different times in different places with different intentions, all in one day, underlining the ever-present snake that is Leftist sectarianism. And it really made me think about what "Socialism without adjectives" and the concept of a "United Left" really mean.

For starters, "Socialism without adjectives" is simply that. It is sort of a declaration similar to non-denominational Christianity. You are declaring your adherence to a particular ideology and its particular set of principles without any further qualifiers or modifications. So adjectiveless Socialism would necessarily argue for (in general) the following:

• The abolition of capital;
• The emancipation of labor;
• The full democratization of political power; and
• The full equity of social relations.

Sounds nice, right? Well, the definitions of each bullet point, how they relate to class struggle, and how they are best to be accomplished are what causes sectarianism among the Left. So it's really a lot harder than it looks to nail down what the basic tenets of a United Left or "Socialism without adjectives" should look like. But it's a place to start. That being said, using those (highly simplified) bullet points, we can very quickly throw out a few groups as NOT being amenable to a United Left or belonging to an adjectiveless Socialism. These even came up in the post about who you wouldn't work with:

• Liberals; they support operation within the current system which is opposed to the abolition of capital and the full democratization of political power--we cannot consider them as being on the Left.
• Stalinists; my understanding of Stalinism and its modern adherents is that the full equity of social relations and the full democratization of political power are questioned if not outright denied--no matter how "Left" they are, we cannot consider them Socialists

I'm sure there are others, but these are the ones who most readily come to mind. This is the first restriction on the definition of a United Left in this country, that not all who lay claim to the Left can be considered allies in the sense of pursuing class struggle to its inevitably revolutionary end. Hal Draper discusses this trend in his 1948 critique of Neo-Stalinists, and he is far less forgiving than I am in his treatment of whether or not they can claim to be "socialist". 

As far as the Anarchists who refused our solidarity and openly mocked it, challenging us on the merits of Marxism rather than the merits of unity and solidarity, it is the question of the third bullet that truly divides us from them: what, in a post-revolutionary society, would the full democratization of political power look like? They advocate for the complete abolition of a state apparatus upon the success of the revolution, while we (generally) advocate for a new kind of people's or worker's state. This is the rub of it. Ergo, because Anarchists do not represent a wide spectrum of the Left, a United Left can only be considered as such insofar as it unites and brings together various groups of a Marxist, Socialist, Communist variety. Anarchists can and should be admitted so long as the question of unity and solidarity trumps sectarian division on the question of the existence of the state, and we should openly support Anarchist groups and declare our solidarity with them, but in the actual formation of a United Left it is unfathomable to recommend full agency to Anarchism precisely because the definition of the state would be enough for schism.

It is an unfortunate reality that a United Left must necessarily recognize that certain groups that are historically on the Left or historically claim membership among the Left would be detrimental to a wider united front. But if we do not address these questions now, it would become harder later on to address them and address them effectively. Council Communism, Party Vanguardism, Democratic Centralism, etc. can all vie for prominence among the membership of a United Left because they all agree on the basic idea that a state apparatus in some form would exist post-revolution. But because Anarchists do not agree, these other strains would not even be able to vie for influence because the question of "state? yes or no?" would dominate everything else.

The DNA of a United Left is to be decided upon what we on the Left can agree upon in general without relying on specific definitions. This rather exoteric approach to Marxism, a self-described scientific dialectical theory, has its issues, and problems most definitely would arise from it. But far from attempting a dogmatic orthodoxy of Marxism, it is a framework in which vibrant heterodoxies can flourish and challenge each other, urging a dialectical synthesis of Marxist formulations. Without insisting on a rigid, disciplined orthodoxy, a United Left could potentially be a formidable force. It is simply a matter of finding the platforms upon which we all in general agree, which is, of course, no simple matter at all.

Marxism Monday #2: Labor value

Marxism Monday is brought to you today by the letters S&P, for Standard and Poor! Standard and Poor is a financial services company that is a subsidiary of McGraw Hill Financial (who also owns that textbook publishing company...just so you know). They publish market and financial research and their indices track stock health and overall financial and economic health. They're also one of the international credit ratings agencies. So, why is Marxism Monday brought to you by one of the most influential Capitalist organizations in the world? Because of this:

Do you notice anything about those dips? They correspond with the two most recent major sector collapses in the world economy. The first was the general economic downturn after the dot-com bubble collapsed and 9/11 shut down trade and consumer confidence (says Liberals and Capitalists), and the second is the occurrence of the housing bubble collapse and the banking sector collapse in rapid succession of one another. But what precedes both of them are unparalleled periods of growth. Seriously. Go to Google right now and type in "INDEXSP:INX" and it will give you the same page. Expand out the window. This rate of growth is ludicrous. Do you see how close that line is to the bottom before 1995? And look at the far right where it is now at the dawn of 2014.

A much more detailed analysis of economic activity would be necessary to explain fully these massive gains in the S&P 500 (S&P's American index) during periods when real wages are falling drastically against inflation and jobless numbers are down simply because people have stopped looking for work or jobless benefits have been cut. But what these graphs parallel is the state of the worker in relation to industry in Capital, Marx's seminal work. In "Outline and Criticism of Communist Theory from Marx to Mao", James J. O'Donnell explains it simply:

[T]he laborer is himself treated by the bourgeoisie as a commodity, and thus receives only the equivalent of the amount of labor that has been expended in producing him, that is, his subsistence...A laborer earning a daily wage of eight dollars might complete eight dollars' worth of work in three hours. If he works an eight-hour day then the additional five hours represents surplus value. Marx defines surplus value as the difference between the sale price and the worker's wages. It is something actually created by labor but appropriated arbitrarily by employers. (27)

This labor-value appropriation is very apparent when one looks at the above graph in relation to the state of workers in this country and Europe and even in China today. Record profits, record CEO bonuses, record growth in stock markets, etc. Yet real wages are in free fall. Rents and the price of food (specifically milk and eggs, the real measure of the health of the economy) are rising. West Virginia's coal mines are literally destroying clean drinking water while their CEO and his girlfriend laugh. The situation in the United States, specifically, is one in which Capitalists have already begun reaping their rewards for undermining business and banking regulations put in place due to the Great Depression. The worker is finding himself commoditized in ways unheard of since the 1920's. Though not as bad, things are certainly setting themselves up to be possibly much worse. Not only that, but the state and Federal Reserve Bank have run out of ideas on how to fix the problem.

Quantitative Easing didn't work. Letting the market collapse didn't work. Intervention didn't work. Non-intervention didn't work. These are the two strategies our government seems to think are the only viable options. Marxism says there is another option.

Marx posits that when workers control and collectively own the means of production, there is no Capitalist to arbitrarily appropriate the added labor-value contributed by the worker. Therefore, a greater portion of the final price of the commodity can be appropriated to the worker's wages. With rules in place (or psychological barriers, but that is a topic for Marketing Mondays...on another blog) to keep commodity prices from artificially inflating, consumer confidence returns. And Socialist or Capitalist, consumer confidence is important because it means 1) items are available to buy, and 2) they are being bought. Say what you will about consumerism (it's bad), any economy that still utilizes a currency relies on consumer confidence. Unless we're talking about Owenites, and I don't think we are, this holds true for most transitional Socialist societies as well. Ask Slavenka Drakulic, in her book "How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed". She says the reason Communism failed was because they did not produce enough tampons--her metaphor for consumer goods. And really, this is a common complaint from the former Soviet Bloc: everyone had plenty of money, but they were still standing in line for bread.

But, I'm in danger of veering off into tangential history. The point of this Marxism Monday can be summed up very briefly:

The price of any item is composed of three things: 1) the cost of initial goods to make the item, 2) the added labor value imparted by the worker, 3) profit. Labor value is calculated (according to Marx) as the difference between the sale cost of an item and the initial cost to make the item. The allocation of profit in Capitalism is arbitrarily done according to the individual desires of the Capitalist. The allocation of profit in Communism is intentionally done according to the collective needs of the workers. Arbitrary appropriation of labor value results in volatile markets, uncontrollable collapses, and vast increases in financial indices simultaneously alongside freefalling real wages, dangerously-high inflation, and uncontrollable cost-of-living increases. Intentional appropriation of labor value helps fix the market, ensure high standards of living, and overall economic health.

Now, this does raise a valid question, and one that has been alternately taken seriously and generously dismissed by Marxists and Capitalists, alike: that of the Socialist "value calculation"--that without a free and competitive market, how would economic value and item price be determined? Understanding the abstracted idea of what composes a "price" according to Marx, we will look into this next week on Marxism Monday.

Fresh Friday #2

Happy Friday! It also happens to be my sister's birthday today, so I'm getting jazzed up to celebrate with her on Sunday (we all work too much). That being said, let us engage in some new ideas.

I had originally had a lot of trouble thinking up what I was going to discuss today. I had tried culling some articles from my collection, trying to rehash some theories and ask some questions, but then something happened that sparked my curiosity, and at the same time allows me to refer back to Fresh Friday #1, on Evangelical Marxism. So, on to Fresh Friday #2:

On the Integration of Social Media in Party Organization
-E.M. Diderot

It is the prerogative of any Marxist organization to administer its business according to their own rubrics. If this is according to Lenin's Democratic Centralism, or total political democratization, it is the prerogative of the organization to choose its means of administration. Just as any revolution will look different based on the socio-political context of the revolution, so will any organization's administration look different based on the same contextual concerns. This, however, has its limits when it comes to strategy and evangelization of the organization.

At its core, the mission of the organization should be twofold: the ultimate usurpation of the state and fundamental restructuring of society to rid the state and the workers of the parasitic bourgeoisie, and the protracted working goal of evangelization. The state cannot be usurped with a minority or else this would constitute a coup and in no way represent a revolutionary social shift as is necessary for the building of Socialism. It must be attained through protracted class struggle by a violently conscious working class. The only way to attain that level of class consciousness is through the twofold approach of education and integration. All other short-term working goals are subordinated to this one--of expanding the organization and invigorating it with new blood.

As part of an evangelical approach to Marxism, it is imperative that any tool that allows a Marxist organization to reach as many people as possible be utilized. Social media has given us unprecedented ability to do this, even as Facebook attempts to shut down anti-Capitalist, Feminist, LGBTQ, non-heteronormative, etc. pages while defending heteronormative, anti-Feminist, pro-Capitalist pages. Facebook is a tool that must be recognized for what it is: a way to coordinate and attract like-minded comrades from every corner of the globe. It is also a way to establish coordination networks for local actions off of Facebook, since the network records what you DON'T share, and has the potential to start recording what you do. Despite this, the administration coteries of several Communist, Anarcho-Syndicalist/Communist, Socialist, etc. groups make it a point that only people who are known outside of the network in real life (IRL was an acronym I hadn't seen for awhile...ahh nostalgia!) are to be considered for administration positions.

While laudable since it is a way to verify the intentions, history, and credibility of a potential admin, it is severely limiting and self-defeating. If one's purpose is to build a loyal organizational base administered only by people you know in person, it is far easier and more sensible to do it the old fashioned way out of a basement somewhere and shun the social networking. It means that no matter how the evangelization of Marxism effects the membership of your organization, if there is no prospect for their advancement because you do not know them personally outside the online face of the organization, they might as well not exist, and your membership numbers should be revised to reflect that only the administrative core exists as members.

Instead, any evangelical approach to Marxism must recognize that we all exist outside of the internet. And while this does not mean everyone who joins up on your Facebook page must be guaranteed administrative access, it means the requirements and rubrics by which administrative promotion is done must be revised. Contributions to the organization via news items, reports about activities of enemy organizations (AnCaps, anti-Feminists, etc.), conversational contributions, and extra-organizational contributions via publications and direct actions should be weighed against the requirements to be given administrative access.

Why is this so important? Because, believe it or not, genuine Left organizations do not exist in all areas. Just as any revolution will take on different forms in different climes, and any organization will take on different forms in different settings, Leftists take on different forms in different conditions. The Communist Party USA and Socialist Party USA are all Social Democrats and do not represent the political Left in any meaningful sense. American trade unions are mere tools for the further exploitation of their membership by Capitalists, and grassroots Leftist organizations are very easily co-opted by well-intentioned but poorly-educated Liberals. So, in many places, devoted comrades do not have access to other comrades and organizations. If we are to overcome Communism's crisis of relevance in a post-industrial, service-oriented economic environment, we must use the tools available to us in every instance to spread Marxism, raise class consciousness, and secure the revolution. We cannot rely on the operational strategies of the 1880's, 1910's, 1950's, or even the 1980's. In the Twenty-First Century, at the dawn of 2014, our methods and strategies must reflect the technological changes that have occurred in the almost 140 years of Marxist history. If we fail to do so we will die, and the world will die with us.

Fresh Friday #1

So anyone who read the Inaugural Address post will know that I missed one of the features I promised (Theory Thursday). That was quite unintentional. You see, I'm recently recovered from a broken foot and will be returning to a full time schedule this upcoming week and I was trying to cram as much social time in as possible during my last long mid-week-off. For those interested, I wanted to discuss Hal Draper and his feminism. Since I did not do this, it gives me another week to go over it again and hit any points I might have missed and it will give you guys a chance to familiarize yourselves with the text as well. But, Fridays are not for theorists who are well and published and properly established. Fridays are for fresh ideas, or ideas that I at least think are new. So, without further ado, onto my first installment of Fresh Fridays.

An Evangelical Marxism: How to Approach Marxist Social Education in the Twenty-First Century

-E.M. Diderot

Under the (now) Blessed Pope John Paul II, the Catholic Church embarked on something called the "New Evangelization", the idea that the way the Church interacts with the world is out of sync with how the world has developed in the last century. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI also talked about the New Evangelization, and entered into a broader ecumenical dialogue with other Christian denominations and interfaith groups. So far I haven't seen Pope Francis say anything about the New Evangelization, but his platform centered on Social Justice and (tentative) Liberation Theology seems to be on par for the course. What does this have to do with Marxism?

First, the point of this blog is discussion on the creation of a United Left. There is no point to creating a united left unless this unification can attract new blood. In the Twenty-First Century, Marxism is suffering a crisis of relevance in the same way as the Catholic Church. Both Marxists and Catholics see themselves as fundamentally relevant to the creation of solutions for the world's endemic problems, but both are finding a hard place to gain a foothold to inspire mass cultural and social change. A lot of this is rooted in the fact that the Catholic Church still approaches its interaction with society in general and its congregants specifically from the standpoint that it did in the Nineteenth Century. Marxism is very much the same. The development of high degrees of economic specialization, technological advancement, and the birth of the internet and social networking have fundamentally changed the relationship of labor to capital in the modern economy. But much of our language and educational strategy is still firmly rooted in the romanticized notion of the flatcap Irish immigrant in a steel mill twelve hours a day. Capital is still firmly represented with top hats, and that is something WE need to appropriate. Ngyes! (Nigel Thornberry accent required)

Secondly, the language and posturings of religious institutions for (largely) religious populations has been a very effective and prolific strategy in Marxist enterprises around the world. For an in-depth look at how the Bolshevik Party appropriated religious language, attitude, and mentality for its own message in Russia, please reference Nikolai Berdayev's The Religious Foundations of Bolshevism. So, in the United States, the land of Sara Palin, Michele Bachmann, and others, a country where the fastest growing demographic are underpaid, overworked Central American Latino Catholics, why would it not be beneficial to adopt the same language and strategies as a revitalized Catholic Evanglization? Approaching Marxism in an evangelical fashion would not be limited to Catholics, either. The United States is the birthplace of Evangelical Christianity, with its roots in Southern Baptism. Adopting the same sort of apocalyptic language and charismatic posturing would do wonders to draw parallels between the theological hell being prophesied by their fire-and-brimstone preachers and the very real material hell in which they live, now.

If it is the considered opinion of a United Left that the Evangelical Strategy be promoted, it would become necessary for all Marxists to familiarize themselves with the writings of Liberation Theologians and Evangelical and Charismatic Christian authors. Principally, this is due to two factors:
1. It would allow the easy generation of arguments that clearly explain Marxist positions in language that is immediately recognizable and accessible to the masses; and
2. It would eliminate the highly academic air that much Marxist discourse has in the Twenty-First Century today.

This second point I feel is the most important thing we need to combat in approaching cross-ideological Marxist education, today. Much of our language has become increasingly technical and highly sect-specific. To an outsider, this vocabulary is not easy to understand, and it is not their responsibility to educate themselves before encountering it. How many coffee-house conversations have ended due to mutual frustration when the other person "just doesn't get it"? How many times have you had to sidetrack your main argument just to explain a term or concept that is self-evident to you? By adopting the language of the most virulently anti-Marxist populations in the country, we can make these terms and concepts self-evident, as well, and we can get the point across much, much sooner.

Problems and contradictions:

Marxists are materialists, first and foremost. Religion is not a materialist philosophy, and it must be combated. However, I hold that religion in and of itself as a concept is not harmful. Therefore, the focus should not be an offensive war against religion as a social institution, but, instead, an offensive war against the problems that force a need for religion. The religious can very easily be our allies. It was the revolutionary anti-religious attitude of the First International that received the condemnation of Marxism by the Holy See in the first place. It is why the evolution of Liberation Theology has been so troublesome. It is why concepts like "Christian Socialism" and "Christian Communism" have built-in contradictions. The generational impact of a social norm that says "Communism is Anti-Religion" implies that nothing good can come out of Marxism, therefore, its arguments, no matter their validity, must be vigorously combated even when it is against one's own self-interest to do so. Is it any wonder that the Republican Party has so effectively undermined the self-interests of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, yet continue to garner their support?

Marxists must understand that their anti-religious position must as a matter of pure necessity and pragmatism carry with it the caveat that religion will exist so long as it is necessary. Legislating it out of existence (even in a post-revolutionary hypothetical America) will not be possible. It cannot be done in the United States. The First Amendment is more inviolable than the rest of the Constitution in its entirety. What must be sought, instead, is alliance with the religious community, especially the Catholics who already make up a plurality of self-identified religious Americans, so that the reasons religion is sought out can be addressed and corrected. When all religions fade away, the First Amendment will still be there, just in case a new religion springs up.

Second issue: how to overcome anti-Communist bias and stigma among the religious right. It can be done, but it must be done in the same way one church poaches the membership of another. Marxists MUST represent themselves in a moral and an ethically positive way. This should be a matter of fact and self-evident to all Marxists whether they embrace a Marxist Evangelization or not. We seek a humanitarian end, yet we do not always behave as humanitarians. The revolutionary period of American history has not yet come, so we do not need to concern ourselves with violently ridding ourselves of the Capitalist system. To engage the world in the way that St. Paul demanded of the early Church, but with a Marxist ethic rather than a Christian one, would do more to inspire people to overcome their anti-Communist bias than anything else. And if we are already armed with the language and vocabulary of the religious right, it is simply a matter of having coffee with them, and an entirely new demographic will be added to the cause and movement of the United Left.

Marxism Monday #1

Oy vey! It's 10:30 PM here and I haven't done anything for Marxism Monday. I had originally planned to do a simplified outline of Marx's primary arguments from Das Kapital or the Communist Manifesto, but I realized twenty minutes ago I hadn't done any of the prep work for that. So, let's just explore a couple basic ideas. Remember, kids, this is for those who are interested in Marxism, not already learned. So I'm assuming said hypothetical person maybe isn't too familiar with it. We'll be building from the ground up on this assumption. So, let's begin!

What is Marxism?

Marxism is a socio-economic political theory that examines societal relationships in the context of dialectical materialism (definition to come). It is most often associated with economics because of its drastically and fundamentally different economic paradigm made necessary by the explanation of social relationships within the system. It is named for Karl Marx (1818-1883) and was the base-line inspiration for the majority of socialist experiments on local and national scale for the greater part of the Twentieth Century.

Dialectical Materialism is a philosophical materialism based on the dialectic philosophy of George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), who posited that experiential truth and actualization of a manifestation of an ideal was arrived upon following a thesis + antithesis = synthesis model. An example is the development of a human's potential:

Thesis: potential + freedom
Antithesis: actual + bondage
Synthesis: actual + freedom

It's all rather complicated and could take up an entire blog, as volumes on Hegelian Dialectics have been written. Check out the wikipedia page on Hegelian Dialectics for more further exploration.

Anyway, understanding the structure of Hegelian Dialectics is important to understanding Marxian Dialectics (or dialectical materialism as we generally call it today). Marx accepted the Hegelian approach to dialectical history, but posited that it was not ideas that lurched humanity forward into different epochs but material concerns. He outlines this simply in the Communist Manifesto when he discusses the various groups of owner and slave classes through history: patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, capitalist and laborer. He says that classical economics met feudal economics, and when feudalism no longer provided for the greater amount of people, capitalism arose to take its place. Likewise, he theorizes, when capitalism no longer provides for the greater amount of people, socialism will take its place. And once socialism is no longer useful, communism will arise and create an ultimately classless society where materialist concerns are no longer governing.

To this end, Marxism posits several alterations to existing world class relationships, including economic democratization, democratic ownership of capital, the concept of world-wide revolution, and the end to capitalism-induced wage slavery. It's because of Marx's emphasis on economic relationships that Marxism is most-often viewed in purely economic terms, when it actually supports a radical redefinition of society to reflect the reorientation of economic relationships.

To further this idea, most national-level socialist experiments have initiated fundamental social reconstruction as one of their first post-revolutionary reforms. The Soviet Union, People's Republic of China, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Socialist Republic of Cuba, etc. have all set forth policies and programs to intentionally redirect the relationships between units within their societies. Venezuela is doing it now with the invigoration of their youth councils and labor boards.

While I apologize for the brevity of this entry, I'm hoping to expand upon individual ideas from here on out. Next week is an exploration of what Marx has to say about class relationships and how that translates into the Marxian concept of class warfare.