Reflections on Class Subjectivism

Marxism as the realpolitik of the masses, and socialism as the perfect flowering of their will-to-power

art: “Who Will Defeat Whom?” by Aleksandr Deyneka

*

The superiority of socialism to capitalism is, in the first place, a subjective superiority—and this is no denigration! To say say that it is “subjectively” superior is to say that it is superior for a certain subject—that is, for the working class subject. It improves his situation, and, moreover, this is not an improvement granted from above as a charity, but a task undertaken from his own subjective standpoint. Socialism is inferior from the subjective standpoint of the bourgeoisie, who stand to lose everything they have thereby—but who is asking them?

The superiority of socialism to capitalism is, also, in the second place, and in a manner of speaking, “objective”. It is superior for the working class, and the working class is “man-as-such”. That is, socialism is humanism, the only real humanism.

*

Marxism, therefore, is not class reductionist but class subjectivist. Classes are primarily treated, not as the objects of analysis, but as the subjects of historical struggle, the agents for whom any political and economic analysis has pertinence.

The standpoint of “class subjectivism” implies that Marxism is a technoscience rather than an “objective science”. Technoscience is science as applied from a certain standpoint, to meet the needs of someone or some class in particular; it is science embedded within a concrete social and historical context, and aimed at objectives furnished by that context, objectives relative to our place in that historical context. Marxism is the technoscience of the masses. “Objective science”, really, is not so different, in this respect. While it presents itself as detached, as non-partisan, a selfless quest for truth—it, too, was the product of history, and it, too, is the instrument historically embedded actors. In adopting a “detached”, contemplative standpoint it tends (and one can only speak of a tendency) to be the technoscience of the ruling class, of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, as a historical class, preside over the state of affairs acknowledged as “objectively present”, that state of affairs which is considered the real existing state of affairs—but this capitalist reality is all-too-real, merely real. The technoscientific application of “objective science” is all too frequently the foreclosure of new realities. Take, for instance, the way technological development is continually funneled into profit-seeking avenues—but profit-seeking is precisely the defining characteristic of the capitalist epoch, and therefore “objective science” becomes for us the technoscience of counter-revolution: the technoscience of Pavlovian manipulation, employee monitoring, marketing techniques, of producing new addictions, in brief, of reinforcing the rule of a certain social class. The expression “bourgeois science” is not an empty cliche.

“Class subjectivism”, no less than “class reductionism”, is, at best, an approximate expression, but as far as approximate expressions are concerned, we would be far better served, from both a theoretical and a practical standpoint, by the former expression. What else does “class consciousness” mean than that one takes one's stand, resolutely, as the partisan subject of a real historical struggle, with a more or less full awareness of, not of some class or another, abstractly considered, but of all that which pertains to oneself, all that which has pertinence to a particular historically engendered social class as one's ownmost situation.

*

The interminable debates over the "class first" slogan (and it is little more than a slogan) entirely miss the point. Like many of the debates that take place online, it is the product of poor framing, rather than a meaningful dispute with real stakes. Class first? Is there some sort of sequence of elements? What comes after that? What comes third? Where does the sequence terminate? Toward what? What criterion arranges this sequence?

Class first? Are you saying that class "should" be first? Is there some sort of moral prescription involved here? Is it “bad” not to prioritize class? Is class the foremost principle that characterizes “the Movement™” you belong to? Is it the first of your ten commandments? The very expression "class first" is what is causing all of the confusion. This muddiness can be cleared up if the respective parties in this debate clarify their objectives. What do they want society to look like? Where do they want to take us? What ills are they trying to cure?

Are you concerned with issues such as low living standards, overproduction, crumbling infrastructure, mass poverty, unemployment, racism etc? If so, then class is the lever which will pry a resolution from out of these conditions. Class is the subject for whom these issues have pertinence, the subject that demands their resolution. The bourgeoisie, in his gated communities, his private islands, his summer homes, has hermetically sealed himself against the assaults of his corresponding social reality, that is, the social reality that is attendant on his class rule.

Class is not some element which has priority in a sequence of other elements. The working class is the affected party of the above problems, and therefore the resolution of these problems requires a seizure of power by themselves, for themselves. Working class political sovereignty is the solution—to speak almost redundantly—to working class political subjugation. Where is there room here for a sequence of elements in which class has the first place? Class is not the detached object of contemplation, but a subject who contemplates—and not only contemplates, but acts in a revolutionary way.

Of objects we say "this first, that second". The subject is the one who says "this first, that second". Class does not come first—class is the subject who elucidates what comes first or what comes second. Saying "class first" only confuses this. It is (unintentionally) obfuscating.

Again, it is a matter of one's objectives (object-ives). From out of a certain list of objectives one can infer for which subject these are objectives. Class-oriented objectives are oriented precisely toward a class-based subject. Objectives of other natures, toward other subjects. It is of objectives and not of subjects that we say "this first, that second", and it is for the subject that they are either first or second.

*

Race (these online disputes generally take place between those accused of “race essentialism” and those accused of “class reductionism”) is not the revolutionary subject vis a vis capitalism. It is, however, a central revolutionary issue for the working class subject vis a vis existing historical capitalism. There is nothing precluding a “racism-first” approach to revolutionary practice, as long as it is kept in mind for whom it is first. At different epochs of historical development, in different national, cultural, and political contexts, different issues press themselves to the fore as “access points” for revolutionary struggle. If racism is the pressing issue of the day, then taking a “racism-first” approach is in no way exclusive of revolutionary socialist practice—again, so long as we bear in mind for whom it is first, and why, in such and such a given context, it is first for him. To place the working class as first in a series of objects which have priority for us, as a matter of principle, a principle which, as principle, would have a universally binding value across time and space, is to drastically depart from anything even remotely resembling historical materialism. The working class itself has no “universal” existence (where was the proletarian, in the strict sense, during the Middle Ages?), neither as subject nor as an object. Its existence as a class is historical, and so is its struggle. It is not for us a universally binding principle, but the revolutionary subject at work in the present state of social relations, social relations which, too, are the products of history.

*

“Class reductionism” is a severe restriction of working class sovereignty. It tells the working class subject that he may only be concerned with one object—the working class! It is a solipsistic Marxism. For the working class, every concern is his concern as long as it is taken from his standpoint. Every struggle is his struggle as long it is he, as a conscious historical subject, that undertakes it. To what outside force should he submit?

*

One reason, among others, that the “revolutionary subject” is the working class, is because the only class, at present, which, as a whole, even is a subject is the working class. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois classes do not represent a whole subject, but a multitude of competing interests.

This is also why a race, as such, can never be the “revolutionary subject”, since a given racial group will be composed of diverse class elements with conflicting long term interests. Race does not constitute a whole subject, but, at most, an agglomeration of various subjects, brought together as a symptom of the broader class-based struggle of our historical epoch.

That said, even among the working class there can be short term conflicts of interest, such as that between the workers as a whole and the labor aristocracy, but the long term interest of both of these groups is identical.

*

The bourgeoisie exist as individual subjects, but not as a class subject. Their class character is that of an object—capital. Thus, the structure of the bourgeois class can be summed up as “individual subjects, class object”. The workers exist individually as objects to be exploited by the owning class, but as a class they are, even now, the subject of a historical struggle. Thus, the structure of the working class can be summed up as “individual objects, class subject”

*

Marxism, as a doctrine, belongs to a who, and that who is the working class subject. One of the commonest errors among a certain type of “Marxist intellectual” is to subject their programmatic agendas to an it, that “it” being certain theoretical conceptions established in advance. It is called social-ism, not correct-theory-ism. Our programs of actions always must submit themselves to a who, that same who that puts those agendas into practice for his own sake. Theory is for the workers, not workers for the theory.

*

Many who call themselves “communists” need to take a step back and ask themselves why they want communism, to begin with. All too often, a communist wants communism because he is a communist, and communism is what a communist is supposed to want—a vicious, left-communist circle. Communism is for the masses, not the masses for communism. Or, in the words of Christ, “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”.

*

Common socialist fallacy—“phase-ism”. The various phases of socialist development are given a higher priority in phaseist conceptions of socialist politics than the working class for whom alone these “phases” have any relevance. One objects to this or that policy undertaken by a socialist government as a “backward step”, as though this were a “sin”. On the contrary, it is for the worker to do as he pleases with his political sovereignty. The phases exist for him, not he for the phases. If he finds it advantageous to enact a phase of market reforms, or to transition into a phase of “war communism”—this is a matter left to his own deliberation. The phaseist says “my phases are more important than the worker—we must arrive at higher phase communism on schedule”. There is no schedule given from above like the revelation at Mount Sinai. The task of scheduling belongs to the working class, and the “phases” of development proceed at his leisure. If there is any “revelation”, here, it is not the instantaneous revelation of a complete socialist program (which, neither Marx nor Engels ever provided), but revelation as the sometimes gradual and sometimes alarmingly sudden unfolding of working class consciousness; as the construction, sometimes gradual and sometimes with revolutionary swiftness, of real working class power.

*

The radical is a pathological revolutionary. The revolutionary plays to win. He does not stay a revolutionary forever. The radical wants to prolong his playact of revolutionary pathos indefinitely. It is literally patho-logical. The pathos associated with revolution becomes a “principle” (logos) to be obeyed as eternal law. Here, also, the working class becomes an object, an object in the hands of an ideo-logical subject—an abstract, structure-furnishing idea takes a real, living social class in its grasp, as the instrument with which it remakes society in its own image. Ideology becomes the subject and class the object. The working class, rather than taking up its position as the supreme artifex of society, becomes the empty canvas of ideology.

*

Socialism is not, primarily, about wealth redistribution. It is about who gets to be in charge of, and primarily benefit from, wealth creation. Under capitalism, the bourgeoisie have sovereignty over the process of wealth creation. Under socialism the workers oversee this process. Redistribution of that-which-is-already-there is a zero-sum process. Wealth creation is open-ended, expansive, and transformative. Capitalism subjugates this capacity for creativity to the profit-motive. Socialism unleashes it. Redistribution is a mere afterthought.

With the subversions of profit-seeking taken out of the equation, human creativity can become, at one and the same time, more practical and more ambitious. The waste and triviality of commodity production no longer has any appeal—since the appeal was always primarily in the profit, and not in the the production of such and such a trivial commodity itself. Exchange-value ceases to take precedence in our productive activities. Therefore, “Money is no object”, and man can afford to dream big, to pursue monumental projects—space exploration, ambitious construction projects, scientific researches coordinated on scales previously unimaginable. This is only a natural consequence of putting the productive power of society into the hands of a class for whom the profit motive has no meaning.

Capitalism is the asceticism of profit, and socialism the the perfect flowering of man’s will-to-power.

*

There is a divide within the left between those who merely want to give working people moderately improved or tolerable conditions, and those who want to give them power—and with such power the working masses can greatly exceed mere well-being. This division also reflects two diverse standpoints. Who is it that wishes to give working people a merely tolerable existence? For whom is this useful? And, again, who is it that wants the working class to seize power for itself? I believe these questions answer themselves.

*

In the past, liberation from the chains of oppression has been frequently pressed to the forefront as the central incentive of socialist revolutionary politics. Today, I believe, we require a different incentive—power. We must make the masses hungry for power, lusting for glory, ambitious after great things. Only socialism can secure a great human destiny. Socialism must appeal to the imagination. Only human labor, liberated from the bondage of profit, can actualize the imagination, and on a monumental scale. For the liberated working class, imagination ceases to be “mere imaginings”, just as socialism, taken from the subjective standpoint of the working class, ceases to be utopian socialism (which was always a more or less petty bourgeois project).

We must transition from a privative conception of mass politics (organizing around grievances), to a positive conception of mass politics (organizing around ambitions). What this involves is not an exchange of one for the other, as though they were mutually exclusive, but a change in polarity between them. We exchange center and periphery. Ambition must become our center. The overcoming of poverty and oppression follows inevitably in the wake of working class power.

It bears emphasizing here that to say “periphery” is not to say “unimportant”. It is to say that it has a conditioned character. The center conditions the periphery. Working class power, the power to do, is the condition of working class liberation, liberation-from. Here, I am only repeating the same old Nietzschean distinction between freedom-for and freedom-to.

“I just want healthcare” is a petty pessimism that, at bottom, does not even believe itself capable of securing its “goal” (i.e. healthcare). Such narrowness of soul gets us nowhere. We must want vaster things than these.

*

Simone Weil’s political dyad of rights-duties, which can be taken as typical of utopian thinking, can be contrasted with the Marxist dyad of needs-powers. We have certain needs, not limited to the sense of need as “bare subsistence”, but rather socially defined needs, and the power to provide for them. The exercise of that power continually expands and our needs expand in tandem. Rights and obligations are the features of a fixed, permanent order. Needs and powers are the features of an order in motion, an expanding and contracting order, a historical process. The dyad of rights-and-duties belongs to objects, to machine-men. It is, ultimately, nothing other than a more “humanistic” way of saying cause-and-effect. Needs and powers belong to an historically embedded subject.

The Marxist dyad is vaster than and encompasses Weil’s dyad, for, among our “powers” is the power of imposing obligations and instituting rights, and the presence of obligations and rights as a part of the social fabric has itself become a need among other needs, a sort of political and institutional need.

*

From the standpoint of power, negative and positive liberty are the same thing. A positive liberty which includes no protections from systemic restraints is really the positive power of the one who does the restraining to do the restraining. A negative liberty in a certain domain which includes no provisions assisting in the attainment of that which is proper to that domain is merely the guarantee of monopoly power over that domain to those who already have that power.

e.g. liberty from slavery, that is, liberty from total economic and social domination, without provisions for attaining actual social and economic power (for the liberated slave), is the guarantee of power in the social sphere to the class that already has it—that is, it is to reintroduce slavery in another form (which we call wage slavery).

Power is the crucial consideration, not abstract liberties. Only power can render abstract liberties concrete. The most concrete of liberties under liberal polities is the liberty of the exploiting class to exploit, because only this liberty is wedded to power.

Therefore, power is always the most crucial consideration, and because the quantum and extent of power that belong to man individually is negligible, the pertinent consideration is social power, and because society is divided into antagonistic classes, the pertinent consideration is the power of certain classes.

*

The crucial question in the “free speech” debate, from a Marxist standpoint, is not the abstract “right” to speech, but the concrete power of speech. Taking Donald Trump’s recent Twitter ban as an example, while it may seem, on an abstract level, that his “right” to speech has been infringed upon, in actual fact his power of speech still far exceeds that of the average person. With all the resources available to him in the form of wealth, connections, and social notoriety, his power of speech is tremendous. Even on Twitter his presence has not been truly effaced. All he has to do is make some offhand comment in front of a news camera and countless people will reproduce that comment online.

Twitter’s power of enforcing speech, therefore, has little effect on Trump’s power of projecting speech. It does, however, have decisive effect on the average person’s power of projecting speech.

There is no question of agreeing or disagreeing with either side in the “free speech” debate. The terms and assumptions of the debate have to be left behind, because those assumptions obfuscate the real character of the situation. What must be protected, above all, is the average person’s power of speech, not the mere “right” to it—after all, what “right” does a person have to speech on a privately owned platform? This is why the nationalization of social media is so crucial.

Technology has been developed that allows ordinary people to project speech to very large audiences and, instead of celebrating and promoting this power, we have given non-elected private owners the ability to regulate it as they please, in accordance with their own distinctive political goals or their profit incentive.

There is no urgency whatsoever in protecting Trump's power to speech, since that power has barely been dented. There is urgency in protecting the speech power of average people, since it rests on such a precarious foundation, as evidenced by the recent mass Twitter purges.

*

Political representation must reflect political power—otherwise what is being re-presented? As long as the working class lack a real power base in a possession of the means of production, there is no real political representation that is possible for them. “Political representation” has no sense except as the re-presentation (that is, “presentation again”), in public institutions, of what is already present as social power.

*

It is only in our time, under the current mode of production, that democracy becomes socialist—that is, that democracy bases itself on socialized labor. In ancient Athens, democracy was military. The kratos portion of the demo-kratic equation, under industrial production, comes from the measures taken to seize the means of production and increase social station of the working class, and improve their condition in life. These measures to improve the standard of living are not primarily undertaken for “humanitarian” purposes, but are practical measures intended to secure power. The increase of this class’ power is the precondition for improvement in its living condition, and improvements in its living conditions amplify and secure that same power, just as a healthy man is more powerful than a sick one. This is not, primarily, the idealist’s dream of a better world (though such dreams are by no means excluded), but a matter of the starkest realpolitik. Marxism is the realpolitik of the masses.

*

One of the insidious consequences of “individualism” is that all class character is effaced from our view of society, and consequently we fall prey to cliches like “all people deserve our respect and consideration” as though all people were of a selfsame abstract essence—no, the owning class, and those who enforce their interests, do not deserve the “respect and consideration” of the worker. One does not handle one’s enemy with kid gloves while at war.

*

There is a general belief “up in the air” that the raison d’etre of political parties is to represent different “views”, that views and opinions are just free floating in the atmosphere, at our arbitrary disposal, and we align with certain political parties based on which of these views we choose to identify with.

Political parties are supposed to represent the interests of real existing social constituencies, not free floating opinions, and in that respect the United States is a one-party bourgeois dictatorship. Insofar as political parties represent distinct social constituencies, we have a single party, divided into two segments, that represents the bourgeois class, but we have no worker’s party. The working class constituency has no political representation here.

*

The goal of revolutionary socialism is to put political and economic power (these are, really, the same power—power over the polity, in a broader sense) in the hands of the working class. What they do with that power is their affair—but then does anyone have to tell the bourgeoisie what do to with their power? Must they be taught in the virtues of profit-seeking? No, they always and everywhere pursue their advantage without having to be inculcated into it by any dogma or bourgeois economic theory, though the role of such theories and bourgeois philosophies, which are legion, must not be underrated either. The workers, once in power, will similarly pursue their own interest. One, of course, must distinguish between the struggle to invest the working class with power, and the condition of a working class already invested with power, between a working class locked in combat with his class enemy and a triumphant working class. Spontaneity, as Lenin points out, always defers to that which is already up in the air, to the prevailing ideological atmosphere, and to the prevailing social order. As long as that prevailing order is a bourgeois order, the working class cannot dispense with the most advanced theory. Spontaneity belongs to play, not to war, and play is the privilege of already secured power. War is always a struggle to secure power, and theory has the value of an indispensible wartime strategy.

*

There is no such thing as “the state” unqualified. The state is an instrument, and an instrument does not use itself. So, we must always ask “whose state?”. The bourgeois state? The worker’s state? The aristocratic state? The answer to this question makes all the difference. Social classes are rooted in real, material relations to social productivity. The way they act, even their cognition, is tied to this condition. Their character cannot be abstracted as generically “statist”. These states always have and always will act in ways distinct from one another, have distinct priorities, even have distinct epistemologies (even if not rendered theoretically explicit).

Though, as a matter of fact, it is precisely the bourgeois class tendency to abstract the character of the state because they are the most abstract of classes. The whole basis of their power is the fiat declaration of ownership, and therefore our belief that they have power.