Students and the class struggle
Document submitted by the University of Sussex
Socialist Cub to the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation
national conference, November 1968
THE EVENTS OF the last year have made it more than
ever apparent that society the world over is rotten-ripe for change in
the direction of socialism. The March demonstrations in Poland, the
upheaval in Czechoslovakia, and signs of ferment in all the East
European states, indicate the deep crisis in the Stalinist states. The
May-June events in France, coming out of an apparently blue sky,
shattered the facade of a stable, impregnable European
capitalism. The expansion of world trade, the basis of relatively
harmonious relations, is slowing down: all the main capitalist states
are meeting increasing difficulties in solving their problems, at home
and internationally. At the same time, the strength, cohesion and
confidence of the working class have been immeasurably increased.
Following the colonial revolutions that have been unleashed against
capitalism during the last twenty years, these are the signs that the
conditions are being prepared for titanic class struggles on the world
arena.
Mass action by students in country after country is
for socialists a significant expression of the direction in which the
class forces internationally are moving. The action of the French
students showed the way to the workers, and the impact of the events
that followed created for the first time the possibility of a mass
student movement in Britain also.
The RSSF had its immediate origin in this wave of
radicalisation. It has yet to be given shape and direction. This is not
merely a question of setting up an organisational structure, but of
working out clear perspectives on which the RSSF will be able to
intervene as they unfold.
The role of the working class
AS THE CRISIS develops on a world scale, the working
class is again being brought to the fore as the progressive force in
society. The rapid exhaustion of the workers’ patience with the
parasitic bureaucracies in Eastern Europe places the resurrection of
Lenin’s programme of workers’ democracy on the order of the day. In the
West, the mass action of ten million French workers has shown again the
enormous power of the class when it begins to move. The Marxist
conception of the key role of the workers of the developed countries as
the big battalions in the world struggle for socialism has been
strikingly confirmed. The ideas represented by Herbert Marcuse and
company that the workers have been ‘bought off’, ‘integrated’ into the
capitalist system as passive consumers, have been unceremoniously
shattered,
It is easy now to dismiss Marcuse as a misguided
professor. But his ideas were merely one brand among many. Isolation of
the decimated revolutionary forces during the boom period had a
disastrous effect, even on part of the ‘Marxist’ left. Any number of
ideas which reflected a loss of confidence in the ability of the working
class to move to change society became endemic in the socialist
movement. Embarrassed theorists are now anxious to disown ideas that the
workers have been ‘integrated’, that capitalism has developed ways of
stabilising itself, staving off crisis and so on. All very good. But it
is essential vigorously to reject the intellectual lumber of the past
period. Failure to do so will inevitably result in the outlook of
student socialists being distorted by false perspectives.
Disillusioned with the workers’ movement in the
West, a number of quasi-Marxists looked towards the colonial liberation
struggles in the so-called ‘Third World’ for salvation. The colonial
revolution is indeed proof of capitalism’s inability to develop society
further on a word scale. But it is one thing to support these struggles
as progressive movements against rotten feudal-capitalist regimes and
imperialism, and quite another to see them as having in some way
‘replaced’ the struggle of the industrial workers of the world.
Socialism cannot be achieved in isolation under conditions of chronic
backwardness: the key to the world revolution is inevitably in the
developed economies. Refusal to face up to this during a difficult
period led to a one-sided view of the revolution in the under-developed
countries. Because of the dynamic character and successes of these
struggles (in contrast to the West) and the kudos of a number of
guerrilla leaders, the strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare have
had a romantic appeal for many students. This has had a serious effect
in confusing the outlook of many socialist students.
Few socialists would claim that the future of
society depends on students. But that is the implication of many
theories at present circulating in the student movement. If the working
class is seen as an inert mass, the forces to change society have to
come from somewhere else. Some look to the ‘Third World’. Marcuse,
Theodore Adorno and co [representatives of the ‘Frankfurt school’ of
‘Western Marxism’] came up with the idea that students and
intellectuals, through reaching a critical understanding of capitalist
society, could ‘break the silence’, ‘shatter the facade’ (etc) and set
the revolution in motion. They overlook that (as is being shown at
present) the intelligentsia in general acts as a seismograph,
registering the movement of the forces beneath the surface of society.
In any case, what happened to the ‘critical theories’ of Marx and Engels
(not to mention Lenin and Trotsky)? Students could participate in the
socialist movement as independent contributors. But first they will have
to achieve a clearer understanding than this school of ‘critical
sociologists’ of the role of the intelligentsia and of the way the
workers move.
The idea that students can initiate revolutionary
action by ‘detonation’ also flows from an exaggerated conception of the
significance of students as a strata in society. Events in France, where
students showed the way of action, gave a semblance of truth to the
idea. But as the abortive attempts of the German SDS (Sozialistische
Deutsche Studentenbund) to do the same thing showed, if the conditions
have not been prepared and the mood does not exist among the workers, no
amount of ‘detonation’ will set them off. The misconception underlying
this notion (connected with the glorification of guerrilla warfare) is
that the socialist revolution is simply a question of insurrection, of
revolutionary technique. Students show how it is done, provoking the
state into ‘exposing itself’, and the workers suddenly see the way to
change society, entering into combat with the bourgeois state. The
‘detonators’ latch onto the form of the socialist revolution, but grasp
none of its content.
For scientific perspectives
THE IDEAS AND programme of socialism are the
generalised expression of the working class struggle under capitalism.
The fact that capitalism has historically only a limited ability to
raise the productive level of society, and in periods of crisis
inevitably attempts to solve its problems at the expense of the workers,
objectively poses the need for a socialist transformation of society.
But revolutions do not drop out of the skies, nor are they accomplished
immediately by a single act. It obviously requires exceptional
circumstances to tear the chains of conservatism from the workers’
discontent. But the ‘exceptional circumstances’ are prepared by society
itself. In the last analysis, the dynamics of the workers’ struggle flow
from the movement of the capitalist economy, ultimately the world
economy. And the general lines of the struggle, even the turns in
events, are laid down in advance by historically determined conditions.
It is evident that, at the present time, the small
numbers of people claiming to be revolutionary socialists cannot hope to
influence the general direction things will take. It is entirely
otherwise in a period of revolutionary movement when rapid and intense
changes in class psychology take on decisive importance. But the events
required to provoke a revolutionary upheaval are outside the making of
handfuls of revolutionaries. It is therefore a prerequisite of
revolutionary activity that we arrive at a clear understanding of the
relationship of class forces and the direction in which they are moving.
There is no question of laying down a mechanical
schema for future developments. But using the Marxist method it is
possible to make a prognosis of the way in which things will develop.
Possible variations must be kept in mind. But only if we make a bold
prognosis which we are prepared to put to the test of events, will we
have a basis for serious strategy and tactics. It is also necessary,
drawing on past experience and analysis of political relations, to work
out in advance the way in which the masses will move under the impulse
of events.
The idea has been put forward that action alone can
generate consciousness, break down barriers, bring students and workers
together. All experience points to the opposite: to the need for
worked-out perspectives. Failing this, socialists would meet
developments hopelessly disorientated.
‘Spontaneity’ and the workers’ organisations
THE PRESENT MOVEMENT amongst the students in Britain
is certainly spontaneous in the sense that it was provoked by events and
arose without being planned or organised. But it would be entirely wrong
to conclude from this that a viable socialist student organisation can
be built through ‘spontaneous action’. This would mean that students
would come and go with the ebb and flow of events without being drawn
into a consistent political struggle. Action yes – but action for what?
What is ‘spontaneity’ anyway? Many struggles are set
off by incidents without being prepared in advance. Nevertheless,
however ‘spontaneous’, every struggle involves people who take the
initiative, give direction. The important point is: do they give the
right direction, where are they taking the struggle? Insistence on the
‘spontaneous’ nature of struggles invariably conceals an inability, or
an unwillingness to provide serious answers to these questions. And in
relation to the workers’ movement, it more often than not betrays a
completely false approach.
Exponents of ‘spontaneous struggle’ are invariably
led into counterposing ‘rank-and-file struggles’, ‘do-it-yourself
reforms’ (etc) to the struggle to build a mass left wing in the
organised labour movement. The two forms of struggle are not
incompatible. Socialists have a duty to support every progressive
movement. But at the same time it is important to realise that organs of
struggle such as tenants’ committees, unofficial strike or liaison
committees, and so on, arise concretely on specific issues. Unless the
militancy generated through these ad hoc organisations is broadened and
consolidated through the mass organisations, it will remain purely
episodic.
Standing apart from the mass organisations, students
are readily inclined to write off the mass organisations (the trade
unions and the Labour Party) as ‘bureaucratic structures’ with no part
to play in revolutionary developments. In reality the situation is not
so simple: the mass organisations have a dual character which must be
understood.
It is undoubtedly true that the very strength of the
labour movement provides a basis for bureaucratisation and a tendency
for the tops to be tied into the state. But the role of the labour
‘leaders’ depends on the actual relationship of forces. In the post-war
period the labour bureaucracy has been incapable of ‘policing’ the
workers to the extent that it did in the pre-war years. The frequency
and confidence with which the rank-and-file have taken unofficial action
in the boom period is an indication of the strength of the mass
organisations, not of their weakness. Despite the present political
complexion of many union leaderships, the trade unions remain powerful
embodiments of the class instincts of the workers. Already we are seeing
a shift to the left. And it can be predicted with certainty that as
capitalism begins to reproduce its characteristic crisis conditions the
workers will in general turn to the organisations which they built up
over decades of struggle against such conditions. This poses problems
for revolutionaries that are by no means simple.
In a period of revolutionary development the labour
‘leaders’ would, as in the past, adopt a left pose to try to maintain
their position at the head of the movement. While they may become
enmeshed in the state apparatus, their position in the last resort
depends on their defending the workers’ interests. But the fact that
they regard the trade unions and the Labour Party as ends in themselves
means that they inevitably attempt to confine the struggle to the limits
of the capitalist structure. The task of revolutionaries lies precisely
in carrying this struggle over into a fundamental transformation of
society. This cannot be done by disassociating oneself from the
bureaucracy as an act of personal salvation, of insisting on a pure,
spontaneous struggle unpolluted by organisational structures.
We find in practice that spontaneous, rank-and-file
struggle is an abstraction which relieves would-be revolutionaries of
the necessity of facing up to the real problems. The relative prosperity
of the past period, the ease with which the workers have been able to
make gains, has had an effect on the shop-floor organisations also. Many
shop stewards are politically backward, to a greater or lesser extent
‘boss’s men’. This in the last analysis is the basis for the
bureaucratisation of the movement as a whole. But it is a reflection of
the level of participation in union activity, of the level of
consciousness as it is. Revolutionaries have to start at this level and
attempt to raise it. It is no use saying to the workers: ‘support us or
be sold out’. It is rather a question of seriously taking up the
day-to-day demands of the workers and attempting to show their
incompatibility with capitalist limitations, their inseparable
connection with a socialist programme. We are entering a period when
practically every struggle in industry raises fundamental questions of
the control of production and the state. Insofar as the workers do not
grasp the necessity of implementing a socialist programme they remain
under the sway of the employing class and its political representatives.
But the correctness of the programme and the reliability of those
fighting for it has to be proved in the workers’ own experience. This
cannot be done by descending from the skies on the eve of the revolution
with a gospel of spontaneity more appropriate to the struggle at the
time of Luddism and vitriol-throwing than the conditions of present-day
class society.
We note again the serious consequences of a romantic
attitude towards the revolution in the colonial world. Starting from
small beginnings, a guerrilla struggle may, under certain conditions,
draw wider and wider layers spontaneously into a struggle against the
existing regime. But this is essentially the character of a peasant
movement. The peasantry is moved to fight by common social grievances,
but because of their primary interest in their individual land holdings
are incapable of action as a class. Never has the peasantry created a
political leadership of its own. Given the inability of the still-born
colonial bourgeoisie to find a way forward and the weakness of the
workers in the under-developed countries in the present period,
leadership of the peasantry has almost invariably devolved on
bonapartist leaders whose direction is determined by the correlation of
forces. The essence of the role of the working class lies in the
necessity of its transforming society collectively – as a class. And
this presupposes a consciousness of the tasks before it. Those who
attempt to apply the concepts of guerrilla warfare to the urban
societies of capitalism have not understood the first thing about the
physiology of the socialist revolution.
The socialist programme & revolutionary leadership
IF THE EXPERIENCE of the past fifty years has
confirmed the key role of the working class, it has also shown that the
movement of the masses is not in itself enough to achieve socialism. A
transformation on socialist lines presupposes a revolutionary programme
and a revolutionary party capable of organising the class behind that
programme.
In February 1917 the tsarist autocracy was
overthrown by a massive advance of the Russian workers and peasants.
None of the general conditions for a bourgeois-democratic regime had
been established in Russia: yet the immediate outcome of the revolution
was a bourgeois government headed by the Mensheviks. This was in spite
of the fact that in many cases it was the cadres of the Bolshevik party
who led the workers in the factories and local committees, and despite
the fact that workers’ power was an established fact. Because of the
superiority of their press, the greater number of public speakers, their
standing in official politics, the Mensheviks still held sway in the
political arena. The workers had yet to draw the necessary conclusions
from their position of power. It required the organised intervention of
the Bolshevik party in the process of the active orientation of the
masses to events to win mass support for a programme that would
guarantee the gains of the revolution – the programme of workers’ power.
The lessons of October were confirmed in a negative
– and tragic – manner by the German, Chinese and Spanish revolutions.
Time and again the workers took the road to revolution, seizing power
into their hands. But in the absence of revolutionary parties with
clear, resolute programmes (combined with the treacherous role of the
so-called ‘Communist’ and ‘Socialist’ leaders) the workers were in each
case thwarted and then put down in blood.
A revolutionary programme cannot be thrown up
spontaneously by events. This does not mean to say that it is merely
something thought up by people with some sort of special inspiration.
The programme of Marxism represents the crystallised experience of the
working class throughout its whole history of struggle. From this
follows the need for the most active, conscious members of the workers’
movement to educate themselves in the ideas and methods represented by
the programme in order to play a guiding role as events unfold. It goes
without saying that this requires serious education and theoretical
work, a consistent effort to strengthen the Marxist vanguard. Theory is
an indispensable guide to action, but it cannot be correctly developed
apart from active intervention in the class struggle.
Perhaps the greatest danger for revolutionaries at
the present time is for them to fall under the delusion that they
themselves can build a left wing. On the one hand this expresses itself
in attempts to replace involvement in the actual struggles by abstract
propaganda for a programme, by merely proclaiming the revolutionary
party. On the other hand, it is revealed in attempts to create a left
wing synthetically through education groups, or ‘rank-and-file’
organisations, etc. The active minority is confused with the class as a
whole, and the would-be revolutionaries delude themselves that they can
set up artificially something which has to arise from experience of the
masses of workers. Only on the basis of mighty social upheavals can a
mass left wing be built and the class rise to a comprehension of its
historic role. To find a road to the masses Marxists must attempt to
give a lead in all the workers’ struggles, at every stage, while at the
same time fearlessly advancing the ideas and perspectives on which alone
the class can go forward to victory.
Revolutionary organisation
THE SUCCESS OR failure of a socialist student
organisation depends not on its organisational structure but on its
political organisation. This nevertheless requires a serious approach to
organisational problems. To win wider sections of students to the
organisation, and to give direction to the student movement, the
organisation must have bold perspectives and a clear programme. A loose
‘federation’ merely attempting to ‘coordinate’ various activities would
not be able to give real direction. On the other hand the strategy and
tactics adopted by the organisation must be worked out on the basis of
thorough discussion amongst the membership.
If we are to come to grips with the problems facing
the workers’ movement as a whole student activists must be prepared to
formulate consistent and clearly defined positions rigorously,
appraising (in a comradely manner) other political tendencies. Avoidance
of this under the guise of ‘fighting factionalism’, ‘preserving unity’
is a completely false approach. In practice, the ‘anti-factionalists’
turn out to be the worst factionalists: they adopt a certain course but
are not prepared politically to justify or to defend their positions.
Unity is vital. But it has to be built on a firm
basis. A ‘unity’ that amounted to nothing but a tacit agreement to sink
differences, eschew discussion of major problems, would be completely
hollow. In the last analysis, every theoretical difference becomes a
question of practical importance. Only ideas capable of consistently
measuring up to events will provide a basis on which to unite students
and, more important, to find unity with the workers.
It is necessary to work out an organisational form
capable of achieving united action, and at the sane time allowing for
the maximum possible discussion throughout the membership. A number of
people have opposed the idea of a clear organisational structure on the
grounds that it produces a ‘bureaucracy’. In fact, it is the other way
around. Lack of firm organisational norms would mean that, in the
absence of proper control, the organisation would be dominated by those
who happened to be at the centre. It is this that would open the way to
cliquishness.
We suggest the following general organisational lines:
(1) That RSSF consist of RSSF branches and
affiliated socialist clubs etc which accept the aims of the
organisation, both have equal status. Wherever possible RSSF membership
should belong either to a branch or an affiliated society.
(2) That final authority in the organisation on all
questions shall be held by the national conference, to meet at least
annually and to consist of delegates from branches and affiliated
societies in proportion to their membership. While only delegates have
voting rights, the conference should be open to all members.
(3) That there should be a national committee to be
elected on a political basis, from the conference, to be responsible for
implementing the decisions of the conference. All national committee
members should be subject to the right of recall and would also be
responsible for all publications of the organisation.
(4) That there should be a secretariat elected from
the national committee and responsible to the national committee to run
the day-to-day business of the organisation.
(5) That the organisation of branches and affiliated
societies should be on similar lines, with an executive committee
elected by and responsible to general meetings of the branch, club or
society.
The task facing us at the present may be summed up
thus:
(1) To work out a programme based on the
perspectives outlined above, armed with the programme of Marxism, then
students could play a tremendous part in the fight to transform society
on socialist lines.
(2) To turn to face the workers: the aim of a
revolutionary socialist students organisation must be to penetrate the
ranks of the workers and integrate itself in the workers’ movement.
October 1968
|