File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-11-13.154, message 71


Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 21:44:49 -0500 (EST)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: Re: M-I: The Search for a Western Proletariat: Lukacs, Korsch, Gramsci & Modernity


        
Dave is not at all sure what I mean by:

>>Lenin applied the term [proletariat] to the most versatile and dynamic of
all the classes.        

I was of course drawing a distinction between the proletariat (defined here
as that class of industrial worker poised on the front line of the class
struggle at the "point of production") as it existed in Lenin's time,  and
the "proletariat" of our own day.    Need I once again point out the obvious
difference?    Lenin's ideas were formed at the very peak of Western
industrialization and machine-power,  when the proletariat was growing
exponentially both in numbers and political power,  when virtually every
public issue from health to transportation was obsessed with the salient
social fact of this power.    If industrialization was the talisman for less
advanced countries in Europe and Asia to achieve a status comparable with
that of Britain or Germany,  the industrial working class and its
development was seen as its indispensable concomitant.     

Today,  we exist in a far different era.    We in the West have shifted to a
new form of capitalism --to the ephemeral, decentralized world of
technology,  consumerism and the culture industry,  in which the service,
finance and information industries triumph over traditional manufacture,
and classical class politics yield ground to a diffuse range "identity
politics."    The "proletariat" of Lenin's day is in steep and irreversible
decline,  locked in the throes of epochal change,  in a depthless,
decentered,  ungrounded descent into near oblivion.    It is not,  by all
accounts,   the leading force in history.     Its historic role has been,
clearly,  one of reformism,  not revolution.     Can it continue to play
even that limited role on the world stage? 

And I of course quarrel with your categorical statement that the "industrial
proletariat" "led" the masses of poor peasants during the October
Revolution.    I am much more congenial to the view of E.H. Carr that the
"party",  rather than the peasants or the proletariat,  were the main actors
in 1917.

I do,  however,  share your endorsement of Trotsky's *History of the Russian
Revolution*.   Unlike most of his followers,  Trotsky is always worth
listening to even when he's wrong.    And he was wrong at fairly short
intervals. 

Turning to Justin Schwartz:

>I have a few cavils, one of which is quite important. This is Louis'
>identification of the proletariat in Marx and some of these other thinkers
>with the specifically industrial working class.        

I think if you re-read my post,  you will notice that I quote the *Cambridge
Companion to Marx* (an excellent little volume edited by Terrell Carver and
published last year [2nd ed] by Cambridge University Press) to the effect
that Marx's definition of the proletariat was a bit more inclusive.   At the
risk of having you all slump forward in your chairs,  here is the full quote:

"Despite his emphasis on the industrial factions,  Marx intends the class
terms *simpliciter* to extend much farther than the industrial qualified
ones.    In the *Communist Manifesto*,  his discussion of the organizing
effects of industry is continuous with a description of a revolutionary
triumph,  possibly imminent,  that will constitute both proletarian rule and
"winning the battle of democracy" -- hardly the rule of a small fraction of
a class.    In later writings on important social actions,  including his
great narratives of the Parisian working class,   Marx often uses the word
*proletariat* to embrace garment workers,  construction workers,  and others
who do not employ industrial equipment.   In practice,  the notion he uses
in strategic inquiries isthat of people whose way of making a living
encourages support for the industrial proletariat in its struggles" (p. 63).

Moving on to Lukacs,  Justin wonders:  

>I am not sure I grasp Louis' distinction between the proletariat and "the
>class": what class? Is his idea that the proletariat as he conceives it is
>only part of the working class? Or that without consciousness it is not
>yet the working class?

I am echoing Lenin's dictum that,  left to its own devices,  the working
class would develop --through its historic struggles with the bourgeoisie--
only a "trade union" consciousness.    This struggle would never become a
genuine *class struggle* until *true* class-consciousness was implanted from
the proletariat from without by an organized revolutionary party.    Gramsci
himself,  in hailing the October Revolution,  frankly asserted that this
event was a revolution *against*  Marx's *Capital*,  that it showed "the
canons of historical materialism are not as iron-clad as....it has been
thought," and clearly refuted the "positivist and naturalist incrustations"
that often sullied Marx's own writings (*Pre-Prison Writings* ed by Richard
Bellamy [Cambridge,  1994: Cambridge University Press], p. 40).    For Lenin
(and Gramsci) ,  the notion of the proletariat as subject to the rigid
compulsion of external realities--even if they are the realities created by
bourgeois society itself,   was anathema.    Class-consciousness,  implanted
in the minds and wills of the proletariat by the vanguard party,  was the
political impetus that allowed it to fulfill its historic role.    

>Louis gets Lukacs dead to rights, Hegelian abstraction and unsolved
>central problem both. Though I would say that coming down to earth from
>the "Hegelian" abstraction involves looking, as Gramsci di[d], at [cultural]
>as well as economic factors. Also I think that Lukacs' abstraction is more
>Weberian than Hegelian. Weber was a friend and strong influence, and his
>idea of the ideal type is crucial for Lukacs' early work. That may heklp
>account for why Lukacs' abstract proletariat is _so_ abstract.

One can always juxtapose Lukacs drunk with Lukacs sober.   In the Europe of
1920-- and after the experience of the abortive Hungarian revolution of the
previous year-- the proletariat had somehow to be brought to earth,  and
theory attuned to practical experience.    In this deperate period,
revolutionary idealism was still a living force.    Lukacs could still hail
the Soviets as the form of organization through which the proletarait would
attain class-consciousness,  and so liberate itself and society as a whole
>from the rule of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist system.

Two or three years later,  with the decay of the Russian Soviets and a
succession of revolutionary defeats in Western Europe,  and especially in
Germany,  the vision had begun to fade.    In 1922,  in an article on the
problem of organization,  Lukacs devoted some embarassing paragraphs to the
role of the Communist Party.   "The pre-eminently practical character of the
communist party," he explained,  "the fact that it is a fighting party,
presupposes its possession of a correct theory."    Proletarian
class-consciousness must necessarily be "reflected in the organized form of
that class-consciousness,  in the communist party".    It is not difficult,
by using a little hindsight,  to imagine where these arguments would lead,
and Lukacs never appears to have returned to them in so explicit a form
(Lukacs, *History and Class-consciousness* [London,  1971: Merlin Press Ltd)]. 

Turning to Gramsci,  Justin tells us:

>I am less happy with Louis' treatment of Gramsci. On one hand I learned
>something from Louis' discussion of a market socialist Gramsci. I had
>never looked at G in that light, but as a a market socialist I am happy to
>have Gramsci in the club.

This is an odd statement.    True,  Gramsci favored free trade and stood
foursquare against protectionism (as did Marx),  and he favored the
semi-autonomy of the Workers Councils,  which the unions eyed with some
chagrin.    But to equate his Proletarian State with "market socialism" is
surely a flight of fancy.    His was a radical model of bottom-up democracy,
nevertheless hierarchically organized and administering,  through the
Councils and their derivative structures,  a fully unified economic plan.
His plan leaned heavily on the existence of a strongly disciplined Communist
Party as indispensable during the transitional period of the "dictatorship
of the proletariat", though the Party would flourish within the Councils by
its "prestige" rather than brute force.   The coherence of Gramsci's
position rested largely on the holistic ontology that underpins most
"organic" theories of the State.    He assumed,  in other words,  that
within his fully developed communist society the different activities of the
productive process,  which he came close to identifying with the entire life
of the community,  would be inherently complementary and harmonious.    He
would have recoiled at the very premise of what we in the West briefly toyed
with in the 1980s as "market socialism." 

Justin is skeptical:

>On the other hand, Louis does not address the central role in Gramsci's
>thought of the concept of hegemony and of the role of hegemony in the
>formation of the proletariat. G views hegemony, crudely, as rule by
>consent as opposed to coercion and locates it, most oif the time, in
>"civil society" as opposed to the state.       

In this regard,  it is important to note that the concept of hegemony or
*gegemoniya* had a long history in the Russian labor movement going back to
the writings of Plekhanov.    Within this tradition it had been used to
refer to the need to form a revolutionary awareness and political will among
the proletariat that went beyond their narrow corporate interests,  but it
did not have the additional meaning Gramsci gave it to describe the
mechanisms of ideological consensus within a developed political system.
Lenin himself had adopted the term from the Russian Social Democrats and it
was employed in the documents of the Third International,  from which source
Gramsci almost certainly picked it up.   However,  the term also has an
Italian lineage in the writings of the nineteenth-century philosopher
Vincenzo Gioberti,  who used it in an analogous manner to signify the "moral
primacy" one province within a national grouping might exert over others.
To Gramsci,  for the proletariat to become the ruling or dominant class,  it
must first "succeed in creating a system of class alliances that allow it to
mobilize the majority of the working population against capitalism and the
bourgeois State." (Gramsci,  *op cit*, p. 316).    Gramsci,  too,  was
writing of "peripheral capitalist states" like Italy where the proletariat
was still largely undeveloped and politically static.

Finally,  Justin wonders:

>... whether Louis' treatment of the proletarit in G is
>accurate. For Louis, G's proletarian is a Turino factory worker, sober,
>serious, devoted to self management. That's one of the types that G deals
>with, but G's analysis is remarkable for the fine detail and
>differentiation between lots of groups and for locating them in their
>historical context.

This is true.   I was speaking here of Gramsci's "ideal proletarian" --which
bears an uncanny resemblance to the "ideal proletarian" of the historicism
of Croce as well as to that of the "actualism" of Gentile.    This reflected
his (and their) outspoken criticisms of the low level of contemporary
Italian cultural life,  which each of them attributed to the corruption of
the Italian political system.    Gramsci shared the contempt of liberals
(like Croce) and Fascists (like Gentile)alike;  he merely radicalized their
criticisms.     Gamsci,  in fact,  was at least as strongly influenced by
Sorel as he was by Marx in formulating his theories of the modern
proletariat,  something you should bear in mind before reifying him. 

>So, there's alot more to G's
>proletariat than Louis lets on.

Undoubtedly.

Louis Godena




     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005