The Industrial Core of The Working Class

Danny Goldstick

On the basis that the industrial working class is “the decisive core of the working class”, we often have theoretically worried whether its proportional share in the working class as a whole, if not its absolute number, has been shrinking. But that will have to depend, of course, on what we are going to mean by the phrase “industrial working class”.

Just who are the industrial workers? Without some idea of which workers count as industrial workers and which workers count as nonindustrial, any talk about their numbers or proportions is meaningless.

It is not as if we clearly know that we all mean exactly the same thing in speaking of the “industrial workers”. Are industrial workers:

(1) workers in “smokestack industries”?

(2) manual workers?

(3) workers whose mode of labour is highly organized and collective?

(4) workers whose labour creates surplus value?

(5) workers engaged in the “material production’ of goods rather than services?

(6) workers who could conceivably “shut the economy down” in a general strike?

Or what? These different answers certainly do not all come to the same thing. There are plenty of manual workers outside of the smokestack industries (and non-manual workers in them). Transport and communications workers mostly work in the service sector of “nonmaterial” production, but their participation would certainly be essential to “shutting the economy down”.

Who are the industrial workers? I think the right answer is number (3). Marxism holds that industrial capitalism is doomed because of the basic contradiction in it between, on the one hand, the social character of the industrial forces of production (workers and the means of production) and, on the other hand, the continued private appropriation of the product. Why should that doom capitalism? Because it unavoidably produces recurrent crises (depressions, wars, etc.) and at the same time, above all, produces what the Communist Manifesto calls capitalism’s “grave-diggers”, the Industrial Working Class. It is the first mass class of the oppressed in history imbued by its daily work experience at the point of production with a collectivity and discipline enabling its members to act together effectively on behalf of their common interests – when they see the need – up to the point, in a revolutionary crisis, of taking the country over, together with their class allies.

The industrial workers are the natural leaders (“vanguard”) of mass movements of the oppressed and exploited, up to and including revolutionary take-over, because of their superior capacity of collectivity and discipline in action. It is accordingly the industrial workers, in this sense, who are the easiest to organize, and potentially the most powerful in organized mass action. In Karl Marx’s words:

"Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital ... grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of production itself." (Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 32)

The two most serious alternatives to (3) here would no doubt be (6) and (4). As for (6), a general strike might play a key role in the process of socialist revolution in Canada, but it has not yet played a decisive role in any other country’s socialist revolution, and in only a few socialist revolutions has it played any major role at all. In fact, the general strike has never been the key point in Marxism’s theory of socialist revolution. In any case, service workers in communications or “non-productive” workers in banking might well be better placed to shut the capitalist economy down by strike action than, say, manufacturing workers in the automobile industry. What is key is differences in collectivity and discipline between different groups of workers.

However, the collectivity and discipline of the workers in the production process is a matter of degree, making any statistics difficult. And modern technological changes sometimes increase and sometimes decrease the collectivity and discipline of the work force. Typing pools with computerized word-processing are surely more industrial, in the sense of collectivity and discipline, than individual typists working under separate bosses. But “work-teams” are probably at least a little less industrial, in this sense, than are assembly lines. The general overall long-term tendency surely has in the main been to increase greatly the industrial character of wage-labour.

In Marx’s day, white-collar wage workers tended to be few in numbers, relatively privileged, and almost entirely individual, rather than collective, in the manner in which their work was organized. Today almost all of that has changed, but our thinking has only partly caught up with the changes.

There is, lastly, the sub-category of workers whose labour actually creates surplus value. The ruling class of the capitalist system is indeed based on the private profit-making sector of the economy, but it surely does not follow that it is just the workers there – the “productive workers”, in the parlance of classical political economy – who alone make up the “decisive core” of the working class. Marx ridiculed any idea of attaching deep class significance to the distinction between “productive” and “non-productive” workers as such, pointing out, for example, that teachers in a profit-making private school do create surplus value for their employer – while other teachers, of course, do not (Theories of Surplus Value, Part I, page 411).

Can anybody explain why CP Rail workers belong to the “decisive core” of the working class while CN workers do not? To be sure, as a matter of economic analysis, only the former create value in their work. To those who argued that even, say, government employees could be seen as contributing indirectly to the creation of value, Marx replied in effect that perhaps they could, but then so also, for example, could common criminals whose activities undoubtedly create opportunities for the publishers of law books and the manufacturers of padlocks, etc. (T.S.V., I, 387-8)!

All in all, there would appear to be good grounds for concluding that, when it comes to economic and political class action, the industrial workers are indeed the “decisive core” of the working class, but not at all for drawing the conclusion that the size of the industrial working class has fallen as a proportion of the working class as a whole.

Spark! #2 – pgs. 8-11

Marxist-Leninist Parties And Democracy

by Jim Sacouman

Over the last year, People’s Voice readers have had ample access not only to stories and analyses of capitalism in crisis and of severe problems in the revolutionary struggle for a socialist globe. Careful readers of the Voice have been presented with substantial evidence from around the world of what thoroughgoing renewal can and should entail from a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist perspective and taking into account different historical-material circumstances.

Why is it that those Communist Parties that have most successfully been working out the meaning of the socialist debacle in Eastern and Central Europe have been Parties which have taken up, most completely, the banner of full democracy? What allowed those Parties to reassert readily their continuing commitment to Marxism-Leninism at the recent International Seminar on the Contemporary World Situation and the Validity of Marxism in Calcutta? Were they, perhaps, being right opportunists or left deviationists? Or were they expressing the central core of creative Marxism and Leninism?

The South African CP has, of course, for many decades played a leading role, autonomously and through the ANC, unions and other social movements, in the struggle against apartheid and for democracy for all South Africans. The Party supports formal-legal political democracy; it also centrally proclaims the necessity of moving towards economic, social and cultural democracy through the massively conscious efforts of workers and all oppressed.

Full support for economic, political, social and cultural democracy was made central to the Portuguese CP’s programme at the very same time that the Party militantly reaffirmed its commitment to enhancing democratic centralism in its internal workings. The Portuguese CP, of course, has led the struggle for a democratic Portugal since the successful fight against the dictatorial Salazar regime of twenty years ago. The Party is strongest and most popular precisely in those regions where the struggle has been most prolonged and harsh. In alliance with the Greens, the Party is regularly elected at the municipal and regional levels. It has attracted many of the best of the youth, of women, and of cultural workers.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has embedded itself in huge areas of the country. Where it is strongest it has consistently enhanced local and regional forms of political, economic, social and cultural democracy, despite conditions of immense impoverishment. As an expression of its continuing commitment to Marxism-Leninism and a socialist globe, the CPI(M), of course, organized the above-mentioned International Seminar.

The Cuban CP’s rectification process began years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since the collapse, that process has intensified and deepened despite/because of the increased economic hardships caused most directly by US imperialism. Central to the rectification process has been a reassertion of the importance of creating ‘the new human being’ through intensifying economic democracy at workplaces, social democracy in communities and public works, cultural democracy in forms of expression, and political democracy at the local, provincial, and internal Party levels. Internally the Party has moved rapidly to incorporate young people, women and Blacks.

In Canada, too, our Party’s strength has been its ability to take up, collectively and in concert, democratic struggles – be those struggles for the economic and social rights of the unemployed, our internationalist contribution to the fight against fascism in Spain in the 1930s, or the most recent battle for democracy in our own Party against the liquidationist misleaders who were dictatorially going against the expressed will of more than 85% of the membership.

Now, what links the positive examples from Communist Parties in South Africa, Portugal, India, Cuba to our Party in Canada is certainly not similar historical-material conditions and circumstances. What these Parties regularly demonstrate for us is a common commitment to Marxism-Leninism, on the one hand, and an expressed and popularly perceived leadership in the struggle for profoundly democratic socialism, on the other hand. What these Parties have correctly confirmed is that full democracy was absolutely central to both Marx’s and Lenin’s critiques of capitalism and to their proposals for transformation towards socialism and, eventually, communism.

One of the very few themes that weaves together the entirety of Marx’s work was his central focus on the necessity and possibility of the revolutionary transformation of capitalist alienation/exploitation through the massive and massively conscious efforts of workers and their allies. ‘Workers of the world’ could unite in their own parties and organizations to begin, consciously and democratically, to defeat capitalism and build socialism and ultimately communism. In this sense the bourgeoisie’s battered principles of liberty, equality and solidarity can be made real for all.

One of the most central (and centrally ignored) arguments of Lenin’s writings, especially during the period of both Imperialism and State and Revolution, was his emphasis on the importance of soviets in workplaces and communities to begin the profoundly democratic task of building socialism. In that context, a vanguard party of militants committed to profound transformation was seen by Lenin as crucial given the immensity of the task and the vicious nature of imperialist capitalism. ‘Workers of all countries and all nationalities’ could thus democratically transform the highest stage of capitalist exploitation and oppression into the beginnings of a socialist globe.

For excellent reasons, both Marx and Lenin and all the Parties mentioned previously have been highly critical of right opportunists mouthing democracy for their own bourgeois or petty bourgeois interests. From at least 1988 to 1992, our own Party experienced the self-proclaimed democratic spew of a misleadership that used entirely anti-democratic, bureaucratic manoeuvres within the Party to finance out of Party funds its own joint ownership and control of a ‘left movement press’ that pretends to be merely a mouthpiece for ‘the movements’ but which has no democratic means of either editorial or membership control.

Again for excellent reasons, both Marx and Lenin also argued against anarchist ultra-leftism that would move overnight from capitalist alienation/exploitation/oppression to a communist utopia of complete workers’ control of workplaces, communities, households, and bodies. The Cuban CP in particular has had to constantly be aware of this anti-Marxist, anti-Leninist, seemingly leftist trend in order to sustain its revolutionary process through the current imperialist capitalist onslaught.

The point is that never did Marx, Lenin, or any of the current Leninist parties react to the real threats from the right and the ‘left’ by denying that full democracy is what socialism makes possible and that full democracy within socialism is what the parties are committed to. Indeed, many current Leninist parties have, at least arguably, incorporated the fullest programmes of economic, social, cultural and political democracy available; they are increasingly recognized among workers and all oppressed in their own countries as steadfastly upholding these programmes.

As we move towards our next convention, our Party should also resolutely examine both its constitution and its programme to debate and change those sections which do not yet facilitate internal democracy and democratic-centralist decision-making within the Party and which do not set the Party on the path of playing a leading role in the struggle for a fully democratic socialist Canada. Out of utter necessity, we have made defensive changes in our Constitution that have brought the leadership back under the control of the membership. But much more has to be done positively to project ourselves as leading the struggle for full democracy at all levels.

By our creative development of Marxist-Leninist theory, by our rigorous commitment to replace that economic, political, social and cultural system of alienation, exploitation and oppression known as capitalism with full socialist democracy, and by our developing practice of taking on the democratic struggles of all the alienated, exploited and oppressed from our internationalist, workers’ perspective, our Party can become uniquely situated to attract the most militant battlers for a new world. No other party or organization-movement has our vantage and advantages. No other party or organization-movement has our complete disdain for capitalism and our commitment to profound transformation in a step-by-step and, therefore, meaningful, consciously concerted fashion.

Spark! #2, pg. 3-6