Theses on the Class-Community

Brunch is Praxis

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We need a Marxist theory for our time, and to craft a Marxist theory for our time must mean to craft a revolutionary Marxist theory for our time. Marxism must always rise above mere description. It must be active and transformative.

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Revolutionary activity is only possible on the basis of an organization of the working class, and an organization of the working class is only possible on the basis of their socialist education—and this is precisely what is lacking. Misinformation and confusion are rife in our time. “Cold War” propaganda is still passed off as “common sense” fact.

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Therefore, what is needed, above all, are educational-collectives, “think tanks”, local and online classes, the production of educational material and propaganda—audio, video, writing. Media technologies must be leveraged to the maximum. We need educational-collectives in order to produce an educated collective. Spontaneity on the part of the working masses, as Lenin puts it, is the very opposite of class consciousness. It is an unconscious movement which, therefore, necessarily defers to the default notions that are already “up in the air”—which is to say, it necessarily defers to the notions of the capitalist class.

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The term “education”, however, is too narrow on its own, and does not attain to the full scope of what is necessary. What is needed is that the workers become a collective, that they feel themselves to be a collective, that they feel themselves to belong to a “class-community”. Community is not an abstraction. It is not accomplished by panel discussions, it is not fostered by jargon about “wellness” and “marginalized voices”, it is not born through activism and sloganeering. Community is found at the bottom of an empty beer mug, and in the center of a full stomach. Human bonds are forged in the everyday and in the near-at-hand. Political activism, in the usual sense, cannot be the essence of community organization. That is not to say that it has no place within organizational work, but that it belongs to the periphery, and in our over-emphasis of the peripheral we have lost sight of the center. Without a center one cannot even have a periphery—by definition. Therefore, if we want the periphery, we must be dead-set on building up a center. What is needed are common meals and festivities, all organized under the auspices of a working-class movement. The class-community is the living organization of the working class. It is the deep-rootedness of class in everyday communal practices.

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There is simply no way around it: socialism must be made fun. Fun, excuse the pun, is fundamental. If life under a socialist order is not to be dreary, gray, and dull, as opponents of socialism are fond of alleging, then socialism here and now, that is socialism within a socialist movement, must not be dreary and dull either. Man’s capacity to find enjoyment in his fellow is the cement of social bonds, and hence forms a part of the basis of social-ism. Joy must be part and parcel of the theory of socialism, of its everyday practice, and the of the objective which it seeks after.

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The class-community is, at one and the same time, a network of social relations, a set of material practices, and a state of consciousness. These material practices include the already mentioned common meals and festivities. That these meals and festivities are done under the auspices of a working-class movement is an integral part of the equation, though, on the surface, it might appear to be a mere formality—a festivity which is, as it were, formally declared to be or labeled as a “working-class” festivity, as though this could change the tangible content of such an event. This “mere formality”, however, promotes a shared working-class consciousness. Formality and discursive reasoning are part of the landscape of consciousness, and help it so situate itself and that which it encounters, to render its world intelligible, and to give our plans for the future a direction. Thus, to formally situate such events under a socialist banner is to facilitate (though not to guarantee) their actually becoming socialist. We have named the place where we stand, we have put it on the map, and can chart our way forward on that basis. This does not preclude other contrivances which would obviously attend any such event—music, speeches, art, discussions, study circles, and the like—all of which constitute the actual content of that which is formally announced.

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Consciousness is no mere abstraction, the importance of the above mentioned formal aspect notwithstanding. Consciousness is always imbued with color, mood, flavor. A working-class consciousness is not a threadbare awareness, but requires all the instruments of art, culture, and imagination to give it real flesh. Human consciousness is musical and imaginative, and our lives do not move haphazardly but always to a rhythm. Art and music are not matters of mere personal taste, but the fabric of a shared social space. A work of art does not convey only my view or your view, but a world-view, the view of the world to which it belongs. Art is the material of consciousness, and human consciousness is always social. What sort of art is capitalism constructing our consciousness out of? The sort of art that belongs to its world-view. The music industry is nothing other than a state of protracted warfare against working-class consciousness.

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Community, too, is no abstraction. Community does not happen in the abstract, but always must happen somewhere. The reclamation of public spaces is a basic expression and objective of the real, the tangible, organization of class-community. The privatization of public spaces is an act of protracted warfare against the working-class, hedging them into narrower and narrower circles of activity. By fiat, the ruling classes declare “this and only this is public”, this park or that playground, but the public extends beyond the limits of their arbitrary declarations. Every cafe, every restaurant, every hotel, every office building—all that which pertains to the everyday concerns and activity of the public is a de facto public space.

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That electoral politics can achieve certain things is not in dispute, but we must also look to what it does not accomplish, what, perhaps, it even serves to occlude. Electoral politics does not accomplish the organization of the working classes, and, at such a preliminary stage as ours, even positively distracts from it. Electoral politics is the organization of voters, not of workers. This is not to say that one should not participate in elections—on the contrary—but rather that there is a world of difference between a voter casting a vote and a worker casting a vote. This, while seemingly a “mere formality”, situates it within the world of class struggle, and puts it on the map. We must know where voting stands in relation to us, and where we stand in relation to voting. The voter and the worker live in different worlds.

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One of the most prevalent forms of ignorance to be combated is the arbitrarily narrow conception of politics that reigns today. It is nothing other than a sleight of hand and misdirection. “Political activism” too frequently means activism directed at the particular state apparatus concentrated in Washington D.C., but what about the other political institutions, that is, the other institutions that make our polity what it is? Can there be a polity apart from production of goods and their distribution? All institutions that condition the structure of the social space, the structure of the polity, are political. The polity is something much bigger than the bureaucratic state apparatus. Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon are de facto political institutions. The interference of corporate lobbyists in the state is a myth—they are the state. All real political activism must be founded on such a broad understanding of what a political institution is—it is any institution, whatsoever, which conditions the structure of a polity. This is not to say that activism directed particularly at the state apparatus concentrated in Washington D.C. is not good. It is to say that it is good, but not good enough. Our field of action, and our corresponding conceptions, must be broadened. We must see the wider context in which Washington D.C. itself is situated in order to understand what it is.

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All these “businesses” and “corporations” are public institutions masquerading as private despotisms. That their structure and role is more or less taken for granted as a natural fact is the error underlying electoral politics. We plead with the state, in the narrow sense of the “ bureaucratic state”, to interfere in this domain, to build up economic dams against this “natural” torrent of the “economy”. We approach this domain indirectly through our politicians who appear to us in the guise of experts trained to tame the wilderness. This wilderness is the state. This wilderness is our polity. We must take the wilderness head on!

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What is needed among the left in the United States is a capacity for long-term action. We need “five-year plans” and “ten year plans”, not only for the direction of economic production, but for the direction of socialism as a movement, and for the “production” of a class-community. Not to ask “what can we do here and now, in this election cycle?”—the left is too small and disorganized for impactful immediate action—but to ask “where can we be ten years from now, and how do we get there?”. We must be as slow and plodding, but, in the same measure, as unstoppable, as a Titan—that is, we must build up momentum. Short and hasty actions can be cut short with an equal haste. Build up momentum, and the ruling class can do nothing but brace for impact and pray that they are not flattened on the spot.

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The class-community is a permanent institution. The primary purpose of the class-community is not to bring about a revolution. That, again, is the periphery. The periphery is important, critical even, but without a center the periphery has no meaning. The class-community is the revolution. It is the life of a socialist future already made present. Therefore, the class-community is concerned chiefly with everyday matters, and only secondarily with agitation. And, note, to say “secondarily” is to say that it is, indeed (and in deed), concerned with agitation. A secondary concern is still a concern, and a highly prioritized one, at that. Why, then, “secondary”? Because political revolution is for the class-community, not the class-community for political revolution—“the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”. The political revolution is needed as the indispensable means of the class-community’s self-realization, as the means of removing all obstacles to its cultural, political, and economic development. The means and ends must not be confused. It is in this sense, and in this sense only, that a political revolution is “secondary”.

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This means that we must also have a different conception of the labor union, which is one of the forms that a class-community can take. The labor union as a means of “getting along” under capitalism becomes a de facto instrument of the bourgeois state, and tends toward the creation of a “labor aristocracy”. If the labor union as a “getting along” under capitalism attains to the status of a permanent institution, as we envision for the class-community, then it also must tend toward the permanence of capitalism! For this reason it is imperative that the form of the labor union, as that of the class-community of which it is an instance, be that of a future socialism already made present. The labor union must be a type of class-community, not the class-community a type of labor union. That is, the struggle for better working conditions under capitalism must be a symptom of the class-community’s existence, one of its natural activities, not its whole raison d’etre.