AGAINST MINIMISING THE HISTORICAL MISSION OF THE WORKING CLASS
At the same time, the Communists constantly bear in mind Lenin’s warning that "the enlistment of larger and larger numbers of new ‘recruits’, the attraction of new sections of the working people must inevitably be accompanied by waverings in the sphere of theory and tactics, by repetitions of old mistakes, by a temporary reversion to antiquated views and antiquated methods”. [429•*
Lenin’s conclusion is borne out by the development of the present-day world revolutionary movement. The scale of the international progressive, anti-imperialist movement has been increasing. Diverse social sections are joining in the struggle against reaction, for peace, democracy and socialism. The new sections joining in the general revolutionary tide frequently lack political experience and ties with the Marxist-Leninist vanguard of the international working class, and this explains their immature, spontaneous action. All this creates a basis for the adoption, especially by some young people, of anarchist and various extremist views.
Objectively, these views are sometimes close to or on a number of points quite identical with the views propounded by some reformist “critics” of Leninism, “Left”-wing bourgeois apologists of the "third way”, ideologists of peasant “socialism” (like Frantz Fanon) or theorists of present-day technocracy (like Pierre Moussa), who give a distorted 430 reading to the main class contradictions of our epoch. [430•* In one form or another they all attack the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the working class’s leading role in the struggle lor social progress.
For some time now socio- critical and socio-utopian doctrines have been gaining ground in the capitalist West, especially among the "new Left" intelligentsia and a section of the rebellious student youth. In this connection, MarxistsLeninists in various countries have justly stressed that the Communists have to intensify their reasoned criticism of the theories propounded by Herbert Marcuse and other modern “Left” bourgeois ideologists. [430•** This point was also made by prominent leaders of the revolutionary working-class movement at the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties.
One of the main tasks of the ideological work by the Marxist-Leninist Parties at the present stage is to expose the roots and scientific groundlessness of such doctrines, which debase the historical mission of the working class and spread various ideas about the proletariat’s integration with the modern capitalist system, and to analyse the reasons for their revival and influence on some social sections abroad.
As the complex and intensive revolutionary processes tend to change the face of the modern world, and as diverse social anti-monopoly movements of the working people take shape in the capitalist countries (the May-June 1968 events in France are a case in point), more and more people are involved in the fight to abolish the system of man’s exploitation and oppression, in vigorous social action and political life. At the same time, account must be taken of the changes in the social structure of the population in the capitalist countries today. The growth of the wage-labour army is a painful and contradictory process, and entails the formation of various intermediate social categories and groups and emergence of declassed sections of the population. This goes to create conditions for resurgence ot the traditional and 431 appearance of new forms of petty-bourgeois and lumpenbourgeois radicalism and semi-proletarian and pseudo– revolutionary ideologies, many of which bear (lie characteristic stamp of ulo[>iun thinking.
In the theoretical sphere proper, this reveals itself most clearly through all sorts of socio-critical conceptions, immature forms of opposition, burdened with anarchist illusions about state-monopoly capitalism. Events in the past few years in some imperialist countries (USA, FRG, France, Italy and Japan, especially) show that these conceptions have a definite part to play in the mass movement, where they figure as relatively coherent social doctrines adopted by new categories of working people who have yet to realise their real place within the system of capitalist exploitation, and their objective kinship with the working class.
Such ideas seem humanistic to people who feel that they are mere cogs in the bureaucratic machinery of state– monopoly capitalism and who keenly feel the danger of social disaster (like war) and the threat of fascism and militarism, if only because they frequently see these ideas as a record of their own spontaneous feelings raised to the level of general social protest, including their own dissatisfaction with a given situation and a sense of crisis in the society they live in.
The views of the world appearing as ideological opposition to the existing order and current in the USA and Western Europe are highly diverse, differing from each other in ideological, political or methodological terms and enjoying a varied popularity. Some are accepted mainly in academic circles, others among those who take a direct part in social movements.
* * *
A typical specimen of the second type of critical theories in the recent period has been provided by Herbert Marcuse, [431•* a social philosopher whose ideas are in one way or another 432 connected with the Left-radical, mainly youth and student, movements, above all in the USA, France and Germany. It is true that the depth and strength of this connection is frequently exaggerated, and the sensation-seeking bourgeois press is largely to blame, for it has set up Marcuse as a prophet and as virtually the only “inspirer” and “leader” of the modern intelligentsia in the capitalist countries. Incidentally, Marcuse himself has had to recognise as much when he said: "I feel a solidarity with the ’angry students’ movement, but 1 am in no sense their herald. It is the press and public opinion that have invested me with this title and have turned me into a best seller.... I am afraid that very few students have actually read my books.” [432•*
Marcuse does not in fact claim to be an active and direct participant in the struggle. He considers himself a theorist producing an original revolutionary theoretical system, a philosopher discovering and formulating general methodological and logical principles of consistent revolutionary– critical thinking. It is highly important in this connection to study the actual socio-political results that could be achieved by movements wishing to be guided by his constructions and programme, and seeking to realise them.
Marcuse’s conception clearly reveals the contradiction between his critical, radical schemes and the ultimately uncritical content of the theory embodying them.
At first sight, Marcuse starts out to characterise the capitalist system with the most serious critical intentions. He believes that the most characteristic tendency in the USA today (Marcuse himself believes that his theory is the product of his observation of development in that country) is the emergence of a special social state which he has designated as “one-dimensional”.
He says that what is decisive for the whole social climate in the USA and West European countries is a movement towards the establishment of a comprehensive, integrated system of interacting production, administrative and educational institutions, a system of universal, functional interaction between all the elements of the social structure. This technological, economic and administrative “totality” or "one dimension" creates a rigid system determining the life and the behaviour of the individual; there arises a 433 powerful, all-pervading apparatus conditioning the hearts and minds of men, and educating them in a spirit ol "social conformism”. The “standardised” rules and values designed to adapt members of society to the existing order are converted into the individuals "inner ’ dimensions. Thus, in strict accordance with the "one-dimensional society" there arises "one-dimensional man"’ with a "one-dimensional thought”. This “one-dimensional”’ society is ruled by forces over which the individual has no control.
In the USA and Western Europe there is a progressive "enslavement of man by a productive apparatus”, which tends to destroy the life of those who produce and use these instruments. "Technological rationality is geared to the requirements of the Cold War, which is waged not only ( perhaps not even primarily) against the external enemy, but also against the enemy within the established societies— against a qualitatively new mode of existence which could free man from enslavement by the apparatus which he has built.” [433•*
Consequently, the modern capitalist society, whose technological achievements and rising levels of consumption are recognised within the framework of these conceptions, is on the whole given a clearly negative assessment, mainly because its development tends to deform the will and abilities of the individual, and doom him to an unquestionable, even if veiled, bondage.
What makes Marcuse so different from many other liberal or reformist critics in the USA and Western Europe is his insistence, which is clear-cut and frequently impassioned, that capitalist society should" and must be subjected to revolutionary destruction. However, our interest lies above all not in Marcuse’s personal sympathies and antipathies, but in the objective content of the abstract constructions which he sets up as theory of society.
One important fact at once leaps to the eye: Marcuse’s conception of "modern society" is most frequently identified with the conception of "advanced industrial society”, without the relation to l/ie means of production, property relations and the forms of property being included among the 434 fundamental characteristics of the modern social organisation. This suggests that Marcuse accepts as an article ot laith the idea which is typical of all the schemes now coming under the head of "one industrial society”. He also accepts the erroneous postulate, formulated within the framework ol this theory, that there are no essential distinctions between modern capitalism and socialism. [434•* Let us recall that the "one industrial society" theory has a delinite function to perform in the present-day ideological struggle, which is to obscure in the minds of ordinary men the private property character of capitalist relations thoroughly exposed by Marx and Lenin.
Whenever Marcuse speaks of “capitalist” society he most frequently has in mind either a geographical instead of a social entity of concrete countries and states, or only the political-ideological and cultural-typological features of their organisation, instead of the political-economic foundations of the social system.
There is an obvious shift in Marcuse’s conception: he blames industry and technical development for all the ills of modern society, and so falls victim to technological fetishism. He criticises the view taken by the founders ol Marxism-Leninism of the ways and historical prospects for man’s emancipation and the development of the full man as being "too optimistic and idealistic”. He adds: "Marx underrated the extent of the conquest of nature and of man, of the technological management of freedom and self-realisation.” [434•** Marcuse casts doubt on the very possibility of realising the "humanist ideals" in the course of socialist transformation, for, in his opinion, this "is suppressed by the overwhelming power of technical progress welded into an instrument of totalitarian domination”. [434•*** That is why hopes for a better future should be pinned above all on a "total reconstruction of the technical apparatus" and "fundamental change in the direction of technical progress”. Elsewhere he says that "no matter how ‘technical’ the basis of socialism has become, no matter how much it is a matter of the redirection and even reversal of technical progress”, the tasks of the struggle for socialism "are political tasks, involving radical 435 changcs in the society as a whole”. [435•* However, he does not explain in concrete terms what these radical changes of society as a whole, as a social system, should be.
He does not deny that socialism requires a high technological level, but he does not know—and frankly admits as much—in what way this development differs from the present-day processes usually designated as ’"scientific and technological revolution”. However, of one thing he is sure and on it he insists: "As long as the established direction of technical progress prevails ... change in the ownership and control of the means of production would be quantitative rather than qualitative change" (our italics—Authors. [435•** Consequently, Marcuse discounts the problem of changing the socio-economic, production, class relations as being secondary and not fundamental; he says these relations have a minor role to play in the historical process and in the shaping of the objective logic of social development. Incidentally, many commentators and critics have remarked on this tendency in Marcuse’s writings. For example, Lucio Goletti, Assistant Proiessor at Rome University, says: "In Marcuse’s writings we find an indictment not of capitalism but of technology.... What he is fighting is the industrial society, industry itself, without class make-up.” [435•***
Marcuse treats as an absolute not only the role of technical progress in society’s historical development, but also some oi the intrinsic specific features of this process, above all the rationality of modern production organisation under capitalism.
The model of the “one-dimensional” society, which Marcuse simultaneously constructs and criticises, is one of a comprehensive rationally regulated system of functionally interconnected social institutions—production, economic, administrative and educational. In his description of the principal tendencies in US social organisation, he stresses that it is now shaping into a society with an intrinsically entrenched and irremovable “rationality” in governing things and men. It is true that at the same time he declares this society to be irrational from the standpoint of the general ideals of humanism: after all it has shown itself to be 436 inclined to wage aggressive wars and to suppress the human individual. Nevertheless, intrinsically, in its economic, administrative and ideological practices this society is moving towards realising the principles of rationality, co-ordination, regulation and control. He makes the groundless assertion that it is a "well-functioning, prosperous society" [436•* from the standpoint of the tasks of its self-reproduction and realisation of the pragmatic aims formulated by the organs of power ruling it. [436•**
He regards the social system of capitalism in the advanced countries as one which is capable of functioning without conflict and boundlessly improving itself merely in consequence of its "technological rationality”. The result is that his theory is dominated by clearly idealised and Utopian ideas about the advanced industrial-capitalist society, a “ onedimensional” view of the individual, who is typical of this society and who allegedly has a content or even "happy consciousness”. Let us add that Marcuse views some of the actual features of the philistine, accommodating mind as universal structures of the mind of members of all social groups, comprising the majority of the working people and the exploited masses in the modern world. That is why Marcuse declares class peace to be the characteristic feature of this society.
He says modern capitalism is capable of maintaining continuity and stability, and "seems to be capable of containing social change”. This society and state attain an unprecedented "unification of opposites”, [436•*** which includes the unity of all the main classes, among them the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, allegedly integrated into a “totality”, and also the unprecedented unity of the individual member of the exploited class with the social and political whole.
Marcuse’s model of the “one-dimensional” and “ wellfunctioning” capitalist society, whose main attributes are “rationality”, "unification of opposites" and "happy consciousness”, is remarkably like the schemes, constructions and postulates of apologetic thinking, fdentification of the conception of modern society with that of "industrial 437 society" and denial of any qualitative distinctions between the capitalist and the socialist socio-historical formations are starting postulates both in the doctrine of Marcuse and of such well-known specialists in advertising the state– monopoly bureaucracy as Walt Rostow, Raymond Aron and others.
A characteristic tendency in the present-day forms of bureaucracy in the advanced capitalist countries is the depersonification of the connections between men and the establishment of an organisation alienated from the working man, who appears only as a tool for ensuring the interests of the monopolies and the bourgeois state: the workers and even a large section of engineering and technical personnel turn out to be a mere appendage to production processes (the functioning of a system of machines), and office workers of different grades, an appendage ol administrative-financial processes and the administrative mechanism.
This tendency is only outwardly expressed as the result of the realisation of the general principles of rationality. But this is a special type of rationality, one that is confined to the framework of capitalism, a formal and partial rationality whose operation most frequently extends to the means and not to the main aims of developing production and all social organisation (these aims ultimately reflect the interests of ruling classes and cliques). But apologetic philosophy and the philistine mentality often identity this reproduction of dehumanised connections and processes in the sphere of the economy and administration with "technological rationality”, an approach that tends to conceal the objective connections between the bureaucratic, dehumanised organisation and the type of “rationality” proper to it, on the one hand, and the nature of the objective material relations, and the character of the culture typical of the given society, on the other. But these arc the very connections that the MarxistLeninist revolutionary .scientific theory brings out, emphasises and critically analyses.
In Volume Iff of Capital, Marx analysed these connections, and showed the intrinsic duality of the forms of control of socialised production under capitalism. He showed that there the organisation of control was subordinate not only to the objective requirements of rational industrial production, but also, and this is especially important, to the class interests of the economically dominant social sections, commanding things and men. The selection of alternatives in the process of 438 administration, the choice of criteria of the effectiveness of administration depended on the system of dominant social relations and values, with the latter ultimately reflecting the objective socio-class structure, and the historically rooted type of culture of the given society. The scientific principles underlying the approach to real forms of organisation of production and administration, which arise under state-monopoly capitalism, were elaborated by Lenin. One need only recall Lenin’s assessment of Taylorism. Lenin demanded that within this system of management a distinction should be made between the elements arising from a rational consideration of the specific and functional requirements in developing definite forms of modern production (large batch, mass production) and the elements reflecting real class relations of domination and subordination.
In the USA, bureaucratic ideology concentrates attention on man’s “socialisation” as demanded by the functional requirements of the management machine, and on the properties and mechanisms of the human mind connected with man’s capacity to adapt himself to a system of social roles, rules, standards, and disciplinary regulations set before him. The accent falls on the mechanisms of conformism, and the capacity of the mind to be directed and controlled. Main attention centres on the practice of manipulating man, so that the facts above all in the field of vision of the apologetic mind are those which testify to the relative successes of this practice.
Let us note that those in the USA who today are taking an immediate part in this process of “socialisation” are usually more realistically minded and not as optimistic: in contrast to bourgeois ideologists they normally declare that there is a massive latent and wide open protest among rankand-file workers, and that this applies especially to the strike movement. The men actually performing the functions of manipulation, increasingly draw attention to the deeply buried charge of discontent, which for the time being lies concealed deep in the minds of rank-and-file workers by hand and by brain, a charge which may explode at any time and cause serious upheavals in the outwardly “stable” social system. The mass riots, and social protest movement which have become so characteristic of life today in the USA and the West European countries, in fact refute the optimistic utopia of the apologists of capitalism. 439
And so Marcuse, despite his “radical” critical aspirations, accepts the current apologetic notion that in that society, which is examined only in the light of modern technology, there is an all-embracing and all-powerful tendency towards conformism, and that the existing system of control in fact ensures a "total one-dimensional" state of the mind and "unification of opposites" between the antagonistic classes.
There is also a distortion of the contradictory social reality in the approach to the problem of consumption, and this is an important part of the "social critique ’ construction after Marcuse’s model. The progress of modern industrial, large-batch, specialised production, combined with the class struggle of the proletariat, results in substantial changes in the level of consumption for rather broad masses of the population in the advanced capitalist countries. This does not mean, in any sense, that this ushers in an "epoch of universal welfare" as Rostow, Galbraith and others insist. One need only recall the generally known fact admitted by official statistics that mass pauperisation exists alongside patently parasitic forms of consumption by the governing elite.
State-monopoly organisation makes use of the sphere of consumption not only for artificially stimulating enterprise, but also to foster a massive “consumer” ideology and mentality, and shape a special type of individual, with standardised tastes and conformist consumer habits. This type of individual turns out to be a handy instrument for manipulating his thinking and behaviour by those who control the modern means of mass ideological influence, the mass media. It is generally known that there is widespread consumer individualism and competition for consumer status among a large section of the population, and this is expressed in a constant drive for possession of things which are symbols of the individual’s social prestige.
Marcuse, highly concerned over the fact of this development of a consumer attitude to life, nevertheless takes an uncritical view of the fetishist notions of the role played by things. He himself also sees a direct connection between the individual’s ideological and moral qualities and the things themselves, whose abundance he directly connects with technical progress. In so far as Marcuse is sure that, things have a negative influence on present-day social life and the activity of the individual (which in the present conditions is also a peculiar critical-fetishist stereotype) there arises in his 440 view a new basis for denying technical progress as such. As a result, his theory has come to be dominated by the Utopian notion that any modern, industrially advanced society quite naturally (in virtue of its advanced character) becomes a "consumer society ’.
The sources of the poverty and the sharp social contrasts in living standards in the advanced capitalist countries essentially remain outside Marcuse’s "critical field of vision”, as also the dialectics of the requirements (“the law of rising requirements”, as Marx puts it) arising from the individual’s development under the scientific and technological revolution. He also takes a “one-dimensional” view of the patent dissatisfaction of the working people in the USA and the European countries with their level of consumption, which is not always an indication of the narrowly consumer attitude to the world and is very frequently the result of the legitimate and necessary demands of the working class, demands which Leninism has always taken into account in defining (he policy of the revolutionary proletarian movement.
Marcuse frequently gives a negative off-hand critical assessment of the mentality and behaviour of men who are members of a given society, of their needs, aspirations, standards and their everyday life and work, their legitimate desire to improve their working conditions and living standards, to secure greater rights and realise concrete forms of free political action.
Consequently, Marcuse ignores the humanistic importance of the working people’s struggle to improve their economic condition, censuring it as a form of conformism, and so essentially echoing the hackneyed “Leftist” demagogues, who insist that the worse people have it, the better for revolution, talk which often seeks to cover up and justify antihumanistic social practices.
Marcuse always feels a deep sense of disappointment, not to say confusion, when confronting the real contradictions and embryonic awareness among broad sections of the population under capitalism. That is the usual reaction of all Utopians. They were well described by Lenin who stressed that "what distinguishes Marxism from the old, Utopian socialism is that the latter wanted to build the new society not from the mass human material produced by bloodstained, sordid, rapacious, shopkeeping capitalism, but from very virtuous men and women reared in special hothouses and 441 cucumber frames”. [441•* Failing to discover masses of such people, and being unable to deal with the real tendencies and actual properties of the minds and hearts of millions of working people which variously helped to draw men into the revolutionary movement for a radical restructuring of society, Marcuse and similar theorists tragically refer to the " integration " of all social groups and classes.
Marcuse admits, and this should be noted, that the general conceptions bearing on cardinal social change must rest on the tendencies of social development which spring within the framework of the present and which prepare these social changes. But he now and again merely pays lip-service to this correct idea. No wonder, his main book ends with these words: ”The critical theory of society possesses no concepts which could bridge the gap between the present and its future; holding no promise and showing no success, it remains negative. Thus it wants to remain loyal to those who, without hope, have given and give their life to the Great Reiusal.” [441•** This statement appears to be a logical capstone to the "critical theory ’ here being’ analysed.
In most of his writings, Marcuse frankly admits that he fails to see the real .social forces in the modern world that could carry out a radical and truly socialist transformation of society. This recognition naturally Hows from the content of his theory. It is true that in 1964, in his One-Dimensional Man, he made a very cursory and general reference to the destructive function in the USA of "the substratum of the outcasts and outsiders”, of "the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors”, of "the unemployed and the unemployable" [441•*** —all those who are outsiders in that society. Up to a point, this idea had no fundamental part to play in his theoretical conception. In 1965 he formulated the following conclusion: "Socialist theory, no matter how true, can neither prescribe nor predict the future agents of a historical transformation.” [441•****
In the last three or four years, the world has witnessed a powerful upsurge in the democratic, humanistic and antimonopoly movement in the developed capitalist countries, in which ever broader sections of the public are actively 442 joining. Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory takes note of all the changes in these movements seeking to understand their mechanism and to anticipate their advance, actively helping to realise their revolutionary potential. Lenin, a great master of the dialectical analysis of evolution in the minds and feelings of the broad masses of people, said that this awakening came in leaps and bounds and ran a zigzag course, with ebb and flow in the expression of massive revolutionary energy. "Each of these transitions,” he stressed, "was prepared ... by the profound changes that had taken place in the conditions of life and in the whole mentality of the working class, as well as by the fact that increasingly wider strata of the working class were roused to more conscious and active struggle. Sometimes these changes took place imperceptibly, the proletariat rallying its forces behind the scenes in an unsensational way, so that the intellectuals often doubted the lasting quality and the vital power of the mass movement. There would then be a turningpoint, and the whole revolutionary movement would, suddenly, as it were, rise to a new and higher stage.” [442•*
We are already aware that "radical-critical theory”, in this case the writings of Marcuse in the form in which they had taken shape by 1965, can and should be regarded as a visual illustration of this kind of “doubt”. The point here is how this theory has dealt with the obvious fact of a turning point in the masses’ revolutionary movement.
“Marcuse’s latest articles and statements to the press show some change in his views and in his assessment of the social forces now taking part in the anti-capitalist movement. For instance, in his One-Dimensional Man, he says nothing at all about young people, when dealing with the forces taking the most clear-cut stand against modern capitalism. We find the first mention of young people, students, to be more precise, in his introduction to a French edition of the book in 1967. But in his article "End of Utopia”, and in his report for the UNESCO symposium on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Marx,’Marcuse includes students of various educational institutions among the most active social forces opposing capitalism. In addition, he includes the most “ underprivileged” sections of the population, which have sunk to the very “bottom” of bourgeois society (racial minorities in 443 the USA, ghetto dwellers, unemployed, and so on), the masses of the neo-colonial world, and some "privileged sections" in the advanced capitalist countries, above all, the "middle class intelligentsia”. While welcoming the explosions of their social protest, Marcuse admits—and this needs to be stressed—that they constitute a minority of the population, that they are badly, organised, and that none of these groups constitutes the "human basis ’ of the social process of modern production. He draws the conclusion that "by itself, this opposition cannot be regarded as agent of radical change" [443•* (report at the UNESCO symposium).
But perhaps the most important conclusion in his latest writings is that social revolution cannot be carried out without the modern working class: "The student opposition will play only a secondary role if it fails to emerge from its own narrow little world, if it fails to mobilise the sections which in virtue of their status in society’s production process have the decisive role to play in overthrowing the existing system.” [443•**
We find, therefore, some changes in Marcuse’s latest writings, for he seems to be aware of the events of the past few years. However, even his recognition that a real social revolution cannot take place without the working class (this is the most important new element in his views) is repeatedly hedged with statements that the actual working class in the modern world is solidly “integrated”, or even "seeks integration”. It is true that during the May events in France, Marcuse expressed the idea that the working class could be politically radicalised in the preparation and at the moment of the crisis itself.
In other words, Marcuse makes no effort to conduct a scientific inquiry into or dialectical theoretical analysis of the real events taking place in the sphere of politics, ideology and economics in the modern world. He takes note of them as an aggregate of empirical and most glaring facts which can be seen with the naked eye. These facts either generate a sense of enthusiasm and faith in progress, or, on the contrary, plunge him into a mood of disappointment and despondency, as protest movements flow and ebb. Now and again, these facts make him admit that this or that 444 proposition of scientific socialist theory is correct (as the thesis that the collective working class has a leading revolutionary role to play). However, he fails to tie in these propositions with the basic content of his theory, because that would call for a rethinking of his starting methodological principles, and an analysis of the whole range of social contradictions and tendencies actually existing in the modern world.
We find in Marcuse’s writings essentially a flat statement of some empirical facts (like the fact that students’ riots have taken place and that some sections of scientific, engineering and technical workers have taken part in these riots). Whenever it comes to a theoretical comprehension of these facts, ideological cliches characteristic of the prevailing apologetic thought make themselves felt right away. Thus, in his latest articles about the large groups of workers by brain taking part in the anti-monopoly action, Marcuse inevitably designates them as "middle-class intelligentsia”. But what is the meaning of "middle classes”, a traditional bourgeois term? fs it an indication only of the relatively high living standards (the meaning in which " middle classes" is frequently used in the USA)? Or is it a designation of some "intermediate class" (in which case the question is: between which classes?)? Marcuse never even tries to give a theoretical answer to these questions or to analyse the objective changes taking place in the collective working class as science is transformed into a direct productive force and there is a growth in the army of workers by brain.
Nor does Marcuse note the obvious facts bearing on the traditional sections of the proletariat which testify to the essential changes in the awareness and behaviour of millions of the working people, changes which are being concretely studied and theoretically analysed by MarxistsLeninists. When he looks at these groups of the proletariat, he sees only one thing: the various elements of the consumer individualistic ideology, conformist mentality, and reformist preconceptions among a sizable section of the workers in the USA and the West European countries. This horrifies him and makes him complain about the “transformation” [444•* of the proletariat. But, after all, these facts have almost always been in evidence under the system of capitalist relations and bourgeois economic, political and ideological 445 organisation, and they have always been considered by the Marxists-Leninists and the Communist Parties when elaborating their scientific programmes of socialist revolution, providing for the organisation of systematic effort to help the workers realise their true common class interests not only for overthrowing capitalism, but also for establishing a fundamentally new, socialist organisation. Marcuse takes a negative view of all the qualities, interests and requirements which could serve to tackle the latter task, and this clearly reveals his Lejt-extremist and essentially anarchist attitude. It is true that, over the past year, there appears to have been some change in Marcuse’s idea about the importance of organisation for the revolutionary transformation of society. His main writings formulating the basic principles and elements of his theory set out something of a "utopia of antiorganisation”, which echoes the traditional principles of anarchism. But after the events in France, the USA and West Germany in f968, Marcuse told L’Express: "I am not an anarchist, because 1 cannot understand how it is possible to struggle without any organisation against a society which is on the whole organised and is in a state of alert in face of any revolutionary movement.” [445•* His recent writings show that he opposes the "organisation of the revolutionary forces" (he admits that on this question his is an "anti-Leninist tendency”) and rejects any organisation capable of implementing the task of establishing and scientifically managing a highly industrialised socialist society.
When considering any organisational measures required to transform capitalist society into socialist society, Marcuse starts projecting reforms which fail to go to the roots of the society he criticises, like a "re-establishment of agricultural areas”, and "development of social service and medical institutions”, urban transport, and so on, or produces Utopian schemes designed to “’explode” the whole system of modern man’s needs (cars, refrigerators, washing machines, television, and so on), or again to effect a re-orientation of the whole system of industrial production meeting these needs. For this has to be done within a week or two, with all the plants closed down and everyone going into the countryside. [445•** This is obviously a primitive utopia, revealing 446 complcte neglect for the real requirements of the masses and the objective laws underlying the system of modern production development (one need merely recall that in the USA and Britain there is no longer a “countryside” for ’"everyone to go to).
We Imd Marcuse’s conception, therefore, to be a Utopian “programme” of action directly connected with speculative constructions of an idealist outlook and altogether out ot touch with objective scientific information on the contradictory dialectical processes characteristic of the concrete stage in the development of modern society.
This conception is neither original nor unique among the general theoretical schemes which have sprung from the specific conditions of modern capitalism and which variously express the idea about highly industrialised capitalism as an "’organised society" in which the antagonistic contradictions have been smoothed out and in which the proletariat (or a greater part of it) has ceased to be revolutionary and has been “integrated” with the system of state-monopoly capitalism.
Another indicative study has been produced by the French sociologist Alain Touraine, entitled ’1 he May Movement in France, or Utopian Communism, [446•* whose name itself suggests that it is a “Left”-bourgeois response to one of the most remarkable social phenomena in recent years—the May-June events of f968 in France. The unexpected scale and intensity of the class battles, the active participation in the revolutionary movement of new categories of workers by hand and by brain, the student appeal to the working class, and the sharpening of the problems of power and management in every sphere of social life had the effect of a bombshell on bourgeois and reformist sociologists. Touraine emphasises that the ideology of the “organised”, “ conflictfree” and “programmed” society did not collapse in the study-room or in the course of theoretical discussions and special inquiries induced by the May events. It was destroyed in the streets. Within a few weeks, the May movement simply swept away the “integration” ideology, whose advocates believed that in "dynamic and affluent" societies large-scale social conflicts were no longer possible. [446•** "It is 447 no longer possible to conceive our industrial society as a vast organisation concerned with its own development and pushing out the new poor and the unadapted somewhere out onto the periphery. The May movement made quite clear what some new type of conflicts in industry had indicated: the forces capable of waging the struggle are not on the periphery but in the heartland of this programmed society”. [447•*
With such an approach Touraine inevitably takes a firm anti-Marcusean stand. He holds that the connection between Marcuse’s construction and the idyllic pictures of modern capitalism is a fairly typical instance of the dependence between the immature social forms of criticism and the content of the apologetic doctrines it attacks. Touraine believes that Marcuseanism has emerged and spread widely because the internal contradictions specific to Western society at the stage of the scientific and technological revolution have yet fully to develop. He adds: "In this instance, criticism is not yet an expression and a result of the development of the internal contradictions in the new society.
“The May movement in France effected the switch from exalted denial to action which brings out the contradiction. In this case the revolutionary struggle was conducted not by those who are excluded from society, but by those who are at its very core, who are most intimately connected with its organs of economic change and development, and who directly experience the rule of large political-economic apparatuses.” [447•**
Touraine’s attitude to the “integration” ideology as a whole and to its "critical transvestites" of the Marcusean type is mainly expressed in his definition of the main conflict proper to industrial society, as brought out in the May movement, which Touraine characterises as a class conflict.
At the same time we find that Touraine’s claim to have completely done with the “integration” ideology remains a hollow one, because at least two conceptions constituting the very foundation of that ideology have safely migrated into his own. There is, first, the view of the capitalist class as a rudimentary social group which has given up real power over the economy and social organisation to a new elite of executives (technocrats and technobureaucrats). There is, 448 second, the assignment of the leading role in the " specifically modern" social conflicts to professionals.
“The central social conflict of our society,” says Touraine, "is the conflict between the technocrats, on the one hand, and the white-collar workers and specialists, on the other. The latter confront the former with their education and technical knowledge; at the same time, they feel themselves to be dependent on and governed by them (the technocrats —Authors] . . . through the mechanisms of career-making’, status-seeking and forms of social integration.” [448•* Elsewhere Touraine says: "The Italian sociologist Alberoni was right in pointing out that the condition of the workers today is analogous’to that of the peasants in the 19th century. This is a social category which is in a state of relative decline, which has to protect specific interests, and which is no longer . . . the privileged adversary of the ruling class.” [448•** He goes on: "The main motive force of the May revolutionary movement was not the working class but those who could be designated as professionals.” [448•***
The professionals (experts, white-collar workers, executives, high-skilled workers, and so on) are the main social categories to which Touraine attaches decisive importance in analysing the May-June events. Within the system of the present-day capitalist organisation this new category of workers by hand and by brain has a dual position. [448•**** The flaw in Touraine’s analysis is his inability to take theoretical account of this duality, and his failure to distinguish between the actual problems which are determined by the place of the professionals in the system of labour organised on capitalist lines, and the values, expectations, claims and illusions about themselves, which are determined by their place within the system of bureaucratised business, within the capitalist institutional structure, with a definite mechanism behind the individual career, and by definite conditions of struggle for a place and role in society. 449
Let us make a consistent examination of these two aspects : Ihc social condition of these professionally trained workers.
According to Touraine, the professionals are a special group of wage-workers displaying anxiety about how fully, adequately and effectively society makes use of their competence, skills and knowledge. Their main problem is that of employment, which is common to all working people. The expert whose opinion is given little heed to or is simply ignored; the executive who is not free to make his own decisions; the journalist whose reports are rejected simply because they are objective; the skilled specialist who has to perform unskilled work; all these do in fact feel, though at a new level and in a specific modern form, fundamentally what the “traditional” skilled worker feels, with his constant anxiety about his own industrial skills and experience. The working man’s right to the effective use of his knowledge and skills is a specific aspect of the right to work arising from the requirements of the scientific and technological revolution. The demands of those who are most immediately affected by this problem and who formulate it in the most acute terms, are essentially a reflection of the demands of all wage-workers which they make on the conditions and forms in wliicli the scientific and technological revolution is implemented in present-day capitalist society.
The protest against the social system which is indifferent to knowledge and competence is the old struggle by the working people, developed and expressed in modern terms, against the barbarism of the capitalist organisation of labour, and its irrational character. In this sense, the question of the destinies of professionally trained labour (competence, skill, intelligence, and cultural level of a worker) may be regarded in present-day conditions as an integral expression of the problems which in one way or another bear on the most diverse groups and categories of the working people.
It is indicative that this question, put forward during the May-June 1968 events by both workers and by the future professionals, that is, the students, had a strong impact on the whole of working France. The immediacy and vigour with which the masses stood up in that period for the demands dictated by their interests and by the professional rights of persons with higher qualifications, technicians, laboratory 450 assistants and so on; the sharp criticism with which they came out against the social organisation which was hostile to genuine competence and professionalism; the steadfastness and determination with which the workers and young people responded to the reprisals which exposed the government—all these commanded much more attention and sympathy than the vociferous revolutionary doctrines propounded by some extremist-minded leaders of the Trotskyite persuasion. Touraine declares that the student movement played the role of detonator with respect to the other sections, which joined the revolutionary process not when the students tried to act as an intelligentsia in the traditional sense of the word (as a category of men enjoying a privileged status with regard to culture and so claiming the role of "teachers of the people" [450•* ), but when they discovered with sufficient clarity that their struggle was close to the demands of the young working people, whose problems were close to those of the young people in the technical colleges and vocational schools. In these cases, says Touraine, the college departments operated as "the major suppliers of skilled workers of a definite type and as an essential element of the system of production ensuring the formation of men and their capacity to control the economy and bring about technical and economic change”. [450•**
The specific demands of the new categories of workers by hand and by brain are expressed more consistently and bring out the revolutionary possibilities of this social group more fully as the problems of skills, competence and independent decision-making are felt and seen to be a modern development of the problems of wage labour.
These feelings and ideas are now and again obscured by illusions (illusory notions and tenets) common among the professionals, but this aspect of the problem is essentially not dealt with at all by Touraine, although it is important for an understanding of all his writings.
Knowledge and competence are not merely new characteristics of labour (of the producers’ labour power, to be more precise). Within the framework of the present-day 451 bourgeois organisation and the system of commodity– capitalist relations, they also appear as a force impelling especially active participation in the intra-corporative competition.
The young professionals increasingly enter the modern bureaucratised business without possessing either wealth or connections. Their competence is in fact only a special characteristic of their labour power, their only possession as wage-workers. However, it is subjectively regarded as a basis for “advancement”, and as something that entitles its owner to a corresponding role in society and production.
No sooner does the professional pursue this socially– programmed motivation than he discovers that knowledge and competence are not at all the mainspring of the actual mechanism of career-making, and that his ascent up the scale depends much more on his capacity for adaptation, for display of loyalty to the “organisation”, and the interests and purposes of the ruling class in command of the key positions in the whole system of bourgeois institutions.
This personal experience suggests to the professional that human relations in the organisation arc not arranged as they should be, that they do not correspond to its nature and objective requirements. Accordingly, he often believes his enemy to be not the objective structure of the bourgeois bureaucracy, but the men, the type of men occupying the upper rungs of the corporate hierarchy and preventing the professionalisation of leadership and power, of which—-it is his enlightened opinion—the organisation itself is badly in need. The conflict between skilled labour and the whole system of bureaucratised business increasingly appears to the professional as a conflict between the “competent” and the “incompetent”, between the experts and the techno– bureaucrats, between intelligence and the "authoritarian type”. Let us note that his awareness may be fully dulled to the fact that the organisation, being a bourgeois-bureaucratic one, has in fact no need at all of any substantial correction of the underlying social mechanism of career-making, which appears to the professional with a technical or engineering education to be distorted and bad, and that the recruiting into the ruling section of men who are not so much competent as possess a definite socio-political orientation, and an enviable gift of refusing to understand certain problems, limited intellectual probity and an authoritarian cast of mind 452 in fact completely accords with its true essence and its social class character. Failing to understand these objective relations, the professional keeps coming up against obstacles in the way ot his advancement, and increasingly feels himself (o be a "technocrat without power”, [452•* a technocrat whose legitimate claims are trampled in consequence of abuses by the powers that be, that is, feels himself to be the lumpen of the bureaucratic organisation. This explains why among the technical intelligentsia, among the experts, the whitecollar workers and certain groups of skilled workers (that is men who are in no sense cast out into the outer areas oi industrial organisation, but are, on the contrary, as Touraine puts it, "most closely connected with the organs of economic change and development”) there are many who feel themselves to be outsiders. Their feelings often crystallise into the paradoxical form of a pseudo-proletarian consciousness which could be summarised as follows: "We have been deprived of the possibility of belonging to the ruling stratum, which is the legitimate privilege of the competent; so who are we but workers.” This sense of identity with the working class, which is an expression of the inferiority complex of the wash-out technocrats, of the "technocrat without power”, should in no sense be seen as an expression of the professionals’ awareness of being workers, fn fact, they come to realise that they are workers only when they put forward, with sincerity and dignity, the specific demands of high-skilled labour, and stand up for their knowledge and competence not as a privilege, or a title to privilege, but as a component part of the class anti-monopoly demands.
Furthermore, the view taken of social relations by the professional as an agent of bureaucratised business determines his view of social relations as a whole. He often sees the incongruities of social life as resulting merely from ignorance and lack of competence and scientific knowledge among the ruling elite. Accordingly, he is inclined to regard (he end goal of social change (whatever the concrete circumstances underlying the actual requirements) as consisting in a substitution of a competent and scientifically trained power for the existing incompetent power. 453
As the revolutionary working-class movement grows and intensifies its influence, as this movement begins to have a serious bearing on the problem of power, the global doctrines and schemes for the salvation of society nurtured by the “neo-technocrats” are invalidated and fall apart. It transpires that they are inapplicable to reality, that they do not contain any concrete answers to basic social problems, and that they arc frequently in no sense a response to them. The "professionally competent" aspirants to power suddenly discover that they are incapable of producing any truly new constructive programme for developing and transforming society to counter the ideology of the incompetent powers that be. Step by step, the revolutionary movement makes it obvious that professional qualifications and competence do not in any sense imply a capacity for social leadership, which entails a profound understanding of the requirements of social development as a coherent process, ability to rally the broadest masses of people round definite historical ideals, and so on.
The twisted forms of the professional’s self-consciousness, determined by his status within the system of bureaucratised business, and the most important expressions and the sequence of phases in the crisis of his notions about the aims of mass revolutionary action and his claims to hegemony and social leadership—all these were clearly expressed in the ideology of the student movement in France in May and June 1968. [453•* 454
Implementation of the important social task for which the French working people also fought—the task of giving revolutionary expression to the demands which spring from the profound conflict with the state-monopoly organisation and the whole system of bureaucratised business—was from the very outset blocked by the peculiar view taken by some student leaders of the essence of the policy pursued by the “technocracy” as a special socio-psychological type of men in power. Any clear and objective exposure of the existing system was drowned out by the abuses heaped on this section and even by the personal attacks on its individuals. Touraine gives very many facts showing that objective sociological criticism was transformed into socio-psychological criticism and even pamphleteering attacks, and adds: "The scandal or abuse which accompanies revolutionary protest is sooner a sign of social pathology than a means of struggle.” [454•*
These tendencies are variously expressed in the Western countries. In France, they were most pronounced in May and June 1968, as will be seen from this students’ handbill addressed to the workers: "At one time we were a handful of persons with future privileges, . . . Today we constitute mitcli too great a ’minority . . . . That is the contradiction facing us bourgeois children. We are no longer sure of our future status of leaders. This is the only source of our revolutionary attitude... . Henceforth we are working people like everyone else.”
This is a very valuable document for its ingenuousness and political naivete.
It would be highly rash to reduce the whole content of the handbill to the admission by the students (the future professionals) that they do in fact belong to the working people. The last sentence is not only a statement of awareness of the actual situation, but a conclusion following from a line of reasoning.
The paradoxical status of a "much too great a minority" is what the authors of the handbill are immediately concerned with and entirely concentrated on. This highly characteristic expression very clearly conveys the substance of the matter: the professional feels himself to be a member 455 of a privileged section, but already as a spurious and massively constituted "lumpen of the elite”.
The most revealing part of the handbill is undoubtedly the flat statement that uncertainty about their future status as leaders is the source of revolutionary attitudes among such professionals. That, too, is the real source of their awareness of belonging to the working people (their "identity with the working people”, to use the exact socio-psychological term). The working people, wage-workers, are not a group of which the authors of the handbill in fact feel to be members. They are a group in which the professionals include themselves because they are aware of their actual inability to belong to the ruling elite.
Social psychology tells us that the object of “ identification” is to some extent often idealised. For many young professionals, who took part in the May movement, the working people, the working class, were precisely the inner ideal, the ideal fostered in the mind of the "lumpen of the elite”, corresponding to their ideas of the revolution and the revolutionary spirit, their bitterness and hatred. Whenever the actions of the real working class failed to correspond to (his image, when it turned out that its actual interests were not identical with those it should have had in accordance with the conceptions of the "technocrat without power”, who included himself among the working people, the workers were instantly accused of opportunism, degeneration, and "failure as a class to be equal to its historical mission”. These charges were levelled when the bulk of the workers actively opposed the policy of the monopolies and when they displayed revolutionary realism by rejecting reckless schemes for revolution.
However it may appear paradoxical at first sight, the subjective and incorrect view of their “identity” with the working class prevented a section of the students from seeing the way to interacting with the working-class movement itself, the way of understanding the actual revolutionary possibilities, requirements and interests of that class. It also prevented the professionals themselves from realising that objectively they belong with the exploited, and from formulating the problems of professionally trained and competently skilled labour as being those of wage-labour. The excessive, ultra-revolutionary expectations of the "lumpen elite" and its extremist aspirations and claims were 456 obstacles in the way of shaping the professional workers’ revolutionary awareness.
Extremist ideas were represented in the ideology of the May student movement with unparallel completeness and diversity. The ecstatic calls and incantations, the impassioned speeches about armed uprising and overthrow of the government—hasty borrowings from Blanqui and Kropotkin, Trotskyism and other Leftist doctrines—clearly revealed some of the hesitations and the peculiar view of the question of power.
Tourainc insists (and this is perhaps one of the most interesting passages in his work) that the struggle of the university students and lycee pupils in May 196S was in fundamental content neither a student nor a youth movement in the conventional sense of the word. In this instance, totally new interests and demands—those of the professionals—were carving their way in the form of students’ and young people’s action.
However, this is clearly at variance with Touraine’s attempt to ascribe to the youth form of movement everything that he does not like or finds jarring in this movement and its ideology.
The essential contradictions of this ideology should logically be explained not by the fact that in this instance the young generation and the professionals were represented and clashed in the same person, but by the twofold character of the professional himself, the fact that he simultaneously belongs to the new type of wage-worker and to the " technocrats without power”. As has been said, there is not even a hint of any consistent explanation by Touraine on these lines.
He insists that the Left-radical feelings, the illusory “identity”, the social doctrinaire attitudes, and so on, prevented the participants in the movement from becoming aware of the basic class conflict of the advanced industrial society in France, and acting in accordance with its content and requirements. But this general assertion becomes meaningless as soon as we recall that Touraine takes the basic class conflict of modern society to be a clash between “ technocrats”, on the one hand, and white-collar workers and experts, on the other, a clash which develops on the basis of "career-making, status-seeking . . . and forms of cultural integration”. 457
However, a more profound and comprehensive analysis (which was done by the French Communists) shows that the basic class contradiction expressed in the revolutionary events of May-June 1968 in France is the conflict between capital and labour, involving highly skilled labour, competence and knowledge; that this conflict resulted in the greatest clash over the last few decades between the mass of working people and state-monopoly capitalism in that country. But because there is nothing of the sort in Touraine’s work, we are struck by this contradiction: where Touraine is critical, he is inconsistent, and where he is consistent, he is uncritical.
The thesis of the “integration” of the working class, and the “young-technocratic” ideology are both qualified as two types of utopia contrasting each other. The specific expectations of the ruling section (representatives of the bourgeois “technobureaucracy”) are the "utopia of modernisation"— hopes of a planned, conflict-free improvement of the functionally coherent social organism meeting the interests of all classes and groups. Touraine contrasts these hopes with the aspirations of the young professionals, which most clearly stood out in the last few days of the students’ disorders in the Sorbonne and hopes of a future society representing the maximum possible de-integration of individuals within a social entity. The latter is seen as a free association excluding any institutions, any form of hierarchy, any extra– personal, objectively anonymous relations between men.
This patently fantastic and non-constructive notion (it does not take any analysis to expose this) is very aptly designated by Touraine as the "anti-society utopia”, which he believes has the revolutionary-critical meaning of divulging the principal secrets of the existing society, of exposing violence, which lurks behind all manner of paternalistic measures, and behind action ostensibly dictated by considerations of rationalisation and concern for the welfare of the "social whole”. In the "anti-society utopia”, the vibrant urge for independent decision-making, freedom of personal initiative and responsibility neighbours on complete indifference to the objective difficulties of social development (in particular and above all, economic difficulties) and to the problems of the truly revolutionary transformation of existing society, an indifference which is in crying contradiction with the spirit of accusations which the advocates of the 458 “anti-society utopia" level at the ruling elite (“the power ol the technocrats does not accord with the inner requirements of economic and social rationality”).
How are we to explain this contradiction? Why is it that men who reproach the powers that be of failing to be equal to the objective social requirements do not even try to put forward any constructive scheme of social change meeting these requirements?
Touraine’s answer to these questions boils down to the following. The obviously non-constructive character of the "young technocrats’ " notions of the future is due to the fact that the professionals are merely an emergent new section which has yet to realise its actual place in the economy and its basic conflict with the "new ruling class" (“the technocrats”) which is why it suffers from the lack of self– confidence which all emergent social categories display. The professionals do not yet have their own forms of political class thinking, or social and economic foresight, but arc already unable to accept the constructive prognostications and theoretical notions of the future "formed on the basis of the class struggle against private property and private profit”.
This is the core of Touraine’s conception and demands tlie most thorough analysis.
The "anti-society utopia" undoubtedly reproduces (lie actual typical feelings of the new category of workers by hand and by brain who confront the difficulties of putting to use their highly qualified knowledge and competence.
However, it is a reflection not only of these feelings, not only of the professionals’ natural concern for the problems of independent decision-making, responsibility and initiative. It is also a reflection of their pathological fixation on these problems, and their unwarranted isolation of these problems from other vital ones bearing on all wage-labourers. 459
The "anti-society utopia" is a record not only of the legitimate specific demands of the professionals, but also of their claim to be a separate class distinct from the other categories of working people, and to having their social-group interests set up as universal interests. Therein lies the true cause of the non-constructive character of the "young technocrats’ " scheme of the future, and its detachment from the tasks of bringing about revolutionary change in the existing socio-economic system.
The "anti-society utopia” rests on another and more profound Utopian notion—the notion that the “neo-technocrat” belongs to an exclusive class, to a social category which is well ahead of all the other groups in social experience, which is why it has left behind the "traditional problems" of material existence, organisation of the economic process, and improvement of living conditions. This view is closely connected with the “neo-technocrats’ " hegemonistic claims and has the same origin: lost hopes to a privileged status are compensated by notions of a privileged position in the hierarchy of the main social groups and within the system of historical action.
Touraine’s explanation of the "anti-society utopia" once again reveals the basic contradiction in his work, the contradiction between the claim and the actual content of his conception.
Touraine seeks to take a critical and objective view of the "anti-society utopia”, and clearly delineates the limited and negatively critical character of this scheme of the future, warning of the dangerous tendencies which it could produce in the social movement today. He says: "Unless constructive aims, strategy and negotiation prospects arc outlined, the one-sided accentuation of spontaneity and direct democracy threatens to produce irrational reactions and manipulation of the crowd by separate groups and individuals.” [459•*
Nevertheless, in line with the objective logic of his conception, Touraine comes out in defence of the main utopian view which is at the root of the "anti-society utopia”, the view that the professionals belong to an exclusive historical class, that they are a privileged group distinct from other sections and groups of the working people.
He insists on a "deepening and development" of this illusory awareness of class independence, a deepening and development which in reality could lead only to more pronounced socio-group egoism, and a morbid fixation on overstated historical claims and expectations.
It is true that under the scientific and technological revolution the category of professionally trained workers, with their knowledge and competence, is a very rapidly growing group of working people, and that in the foreseeable future 460 it may well constitute the greater part of the population in the advanced industrial capitalist countries, so that as this process goes forward, the problem of professionally trained labour is bound increasingly to become an issue in the class struggle against bourgeois exploitation. But that does not at all mean that the professionals are crystallising into a new "vanguard class”, that they are entitled to enshrine their specific problems as universal ones, or to treat the universal problems of the working class as “specific” and “traditional”, and as "produced by the obsolescent system of social relations”.
The ideology of historical class exclusiveness, which breeds indifference to the requirements and needs of the bulk of the working people, has always been the main danger for sections and groups going over to more active positions in the revolutionary struggle. Lenin repeatedly warned against this danger. In his examination of the vanguard role of the most class-conscious representatives of the proletariat with respect to the working class as a whole, of the vanguard role of the working class itself with respect to the rest of the working people, Lenin showed that they could successfully play this role only if they were capable of giving consistent revolutionary formulation to the demands and interests of all Ific exploited.
An important task of the revolutionary movement is to overcome these divisions within the class, to resist any attemps to subordinate the workers to capitalist “integration”, and to oppose the latter with a united front, that is, the united action of all groups and categories of the working people for their common, basic aims. The role of vanguard can in fact be played only by sections of the working class which are able to solve this task of uniting all the exploited.
* * *
A most important specific feature of the development of the scientific socialism theory, which distinguishes it from diverse varieties of utopianism, was characterised by Lenin in the following words: "Under no circumstances does Marxism confine itself to the forms of struggle possible and in existence at the given moment only, recognising as it does that new forms of struggle, unknown to the participants of 461 the given period, inevitably arise as the given social situation changes. In this respect Marxism learns, if we may so express it, from mass practice, and makes no claims whatsoever to teach the masses forms of struggle invented by ’ systematisers’ in the seclusion of their studies.” [461•*
In the real movement of social knowledge utopia is antithetical not merely to theory, but to the dialectical unity of theory and practice, theory summing up the experience in the class struggle of the working class, which is ceaselessly enriched and corrected by the revolutionary creativity of the working people. The struggle lor such unity, which makes proletarian ideology truly scientific, is a most important distinctive feature of Lenin’s approach to questions of theory.
He wrote: ’"The world’s greatest movement for liberation of the oppressed class, the most revolutionary class in history, is impossible without a revolutionary theory. That theory cannot be thought up. It grows out of the sum total of the revolutionary experience and the revolutionary thinking of all countries in the world.” [461•** In the modern epoch there is more urgency than ever before in Lenin’s idea that theoretical work by real Marxists is incompatible with any lorm of social utopianism. Lenin stressed: "The socialist intelligentsia can expect to perform fruitful work only when they abandon their illusions and begin to seek support . . . in actual, and not possible social-economic relations. Moreover, their 7 HEORE’flCAL work must be directed towards the concrete study of all forms of economic antagonism. . ., the study of their connections and successive development; they must reveal this antagonism wherever it has been con< ealcd by political history, by the peculiarities of legal systems or by established theoretical prejudice. They must present an integral picture of our realities....” [461•***
While urging consistent criticism of any Utopian conceptions, Lenin demanded that every concrete form of social utopianism should be given a differentiated objective class and political assessment, and insisted that a distinction should be made between reactionary Utopias slowing down revolutionisation of the masses, blocking historical progress and 462 fettering the initiatives of the masses, and the Utopian views and feelings which arc a product and a peculiar expression and even stimulator of revolutionary energy, new forms ol working people’s initiatives which spring from the objective logic of development of class contradictions and the class struggle.
An important task of Marxist sociologists is to make a concrete and critical analysis of the Utopian views and feelings of student youth and the sections of the scientific and technical intelligentsia which in fact actively join in the anti-imperialist struggle. It should help to make them aware of the theory of scientific socialism and communism and to invigorate their revolutionary constructive action.
The ideological struggle against modern forms of social utopianism, of which Marcuse and Touraine are influential spokesmen, is designed to help the revolutionary workingclass movement to make a correct assessment of new phenomena in the development of bourgeois society, to bring out its real contradictions, to give a scientific refutation in the light of creative Marxism-Leninism of the futile attempts to play down the mission of the working class in the revolutionary process, and at the same time to define the real forms of the hegemony of the proletariat in alliance with the anti-monopoly and anti-imperialist forces.
* * *
One of Lenin’s historical achievements is the theoretical formulation and practical elaboration of a number of cardinal problems connected with the definition of ways, means and forms of building the new society in the conditions of backward socio-economic structures in the East. Lenin was essentially the first man to raise the problem in the epoch of imperialism. Addressing representatives of communist organisations of the peoples of the East in 1919, he said: "In this respect you are confronted with a task which has not previously confronted the Communists of the world: relying upon the general theory and practice of communism, you must adapt yourselves to the specific conditions such as do not exist in the European countries; you must be able to apply that theory and practice to conditions in which the bulk of the population are peasants, and in which the task is to wage a struggle against medieval survivals and not 463 against capitalism.” [463•* Solution to these problems, as Lenin said, was not to be found at the time "in any communist book’ ; it was necessary "to translate the true communist doctrine, which was intended for the Communists of the more advanced countries, into the language of every people”. [463•**
Lenin’s writings in the post-revolutionary period sum up the early practical experience of socio-economic transformation in the former colonial outskirts of tsarist Russia, and outline the ways oi their approach to socialist construction.
Shedding light on this complex of problems, Lenin laid special emphasis on the need to take account in practical work of the initial socio-economic level of the countries of the East, where most peoples "are typical representatives of the working people—not workers who have passed through the school of capitalist factories, but typical representatives of the working and exploited peasant masses who are victims of medieval oppression”. [463•*** The switch of this mass of working peasants to the socialist way calls for a number of intermediate stages. And if "a backward country can easily begin because its adversary has become rotten, because its bourgeoisie is not organised . . . for it to continue demands of that country a hundred thousand times more circumspection, caution and endurance”. [463•**** In a letter to the Communists of the Transcaucasian Republics, which had "an even more pronounced peasant character than Russia”, Lenin insistently advised them "to practice more moderation and caution, and show more readiness to make concessions to the petty bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia, and particularly the peasantry”. [463•*****
These theoretical conclusions of Lenin’s, enriched with his concept of the non-capitalist way of development, have been borne out by the practice of social change in the socialist republics of the Soviet East and in socialist Mongolia.
In the new historical conditions, when there is a real prospect of an advance towards socialism by once backward countries, especial significance attaches to the creative 464 assimilation of this experience. There is good reason, thereTore, why the attention of Marxists and revolutionary– democratic parties and groups today is once again locusscd on Lenin’s ideas about the ways of developing the new society in the East.
A sharp ideological struggle is being fought over Lenin s propositions, which are opposed by the enemies of MarxismLeninism of every stripe, ranging from the Right revisionists to the “ultra”-revolutionaries.
The present stage of the class struggle in the international arena is characterised by the growing influence of the socialist system on the whole of world social development, and these arc the conditions in which the current upswing in the anti-imperialist, including the national liberation, struggle of the peoples is taking place.
Contrary to the assertions of various adversaries of scientific communism, the international working class and its main achievement—the world socialist system—are at the centre of our epoch. However hard the latest “critics” (notably the modern Right and ’“Left” revisionists) may try to play down or distort proletarian socialism, they will never manage to obscure for broad masses of working people in every continent the vast and growing influence of the revolutionary working class, and its policy and scientific outlook on the international situation.
Of course, Marxists-Leninists do not close their eyes to the complex problems, including new ones, which arise as the world-wide revolutionary-liberation movement goes forward.
Leninism has always proceeded from the fact that the extension of the international front of anti-imperialist struggle, participation in the world revolutionary movement of ever broader sections of the population, and the consequent growing diversity of concrete forms of massive struggle for deep-going political, social and economic revolutionary change reflect the inevitable progressive phenomena connected with the advance of the socio-historical process. The Marxist-Leninist Parties believe that this natural extension of the social base of the world revolutionary process should in no sense result in a “dissolution” of the working class, and of its class demands and scientific outlook in the massive general democratic movement and the ideological conceptions expressing the interests of the non-proletarian sections. The 465 greater the consistency with which the working class and its organisations implement their principled ideological– political line, the greater the effect with which it combines the struggle for the vital needs of the masses with defence of its ultimate aims, the more successful is the proletariat’s class struggle itself and the massive general democratic movement (peasant action, anti-imperialist movements, mass struggle in defence of peace, and so on).
However, advocates of petty-bourgeois socialism of every stripe have sought and are still seeking artificially to contrast the interests of the working class with those of the nonproletarian sections of the working people. In this connection, there has been some spread of the ideas propounded by Frantz Fanon and his followers in the developing countries.
On the one hand, the latest type of "peasant socialism" theories do expose colonialism and “white” racism. Fanon, for instance, justly notes that "colonialism is incapable of procuring for the colonised peoples the material conditions”. [465•* He writes about the forced evolution of the forms of colonialism and racism, adding that since the Second World War the need to secure some approval and support, and co-operation from the natives has made colonial relations less brutal, and more refined and camouflaged.
But on the other hand, in his criticism of the colonial system, Fanon and his followers seek to set up against the Marxist-Leninist analysis of the socio-economic substance of the national liberation movement another doctrine mainly reflecting the over-sensitive nationalism of the oppressed “coloured” peoples.
The main idea running through Fanon’s writings is essentially that the “coloured” peoples’ revolution is “exclusive”, because in contrast to the white nations of a decadent Europe they can create a new civilisation without exploitation or oppression.
Those who spread these ideas borrow from Marxism its recognition of the need and inevitability of social revolution, but they often distort its class content, by substituting for the proletarian revolution a kind of racial revolution of "blacks against whites”. Fanon says that the Third World 466 has the historic mission of establishing a new human society. His theory of the "revolution of the oppressed coloured peoples" is based on the following propositions: (a) a call for a world-wide re-distribution of wealth; (b) designation of the national liberation movement as the “decisive” revolutionary force of our day; (c) characteristic of the poor peasantry and the lumpen proletariat as the social mainstay and motive force of the revolution; and (d) justification ol anarchy and unlimited violence.
While presenting to colonialism a harsh and heavy bill, ideologists like Fanon draw the false conclusion that the main contradiction of the modern world is not between world capitalism and world socialism, but in the discrepancy of living standards of the “white” and the ’"poor coloured" peoples. They see the "incorrect, unfair" international distribution of wealth as the root of all evil.
The extent to which some ideologists of petty-bourgeois extremism tend to confuse different conceptions is amazing. Their theoretical constructions ignore the demands for a scientific and objective analysis of their subject.
It is fundamentally wrong, says Leninism, to equate the imperialist countries and their ruling circles, which have plundered vast masses of the globe’s population (including the proletariat at home) for centuries, and countries which had once been oppressed by the imperialists, and had escaped their domination at the price of heroic struggle by masses of working people, headed by the working class and its revolutionary vanguard. Objectively, this non-class approach does nothing but play into the hands of the international reactionaries.
Ideologists of petty-bourgeois radicalism, like Fanon, assume that all those who do not belong to the oppressed peoples of the Third World are their enemies, including not only the foreign imperialists, but also the working class of the metropolitan countries; not only the European capitalists, but also the workers and intellectuals of European stock resident in the colonies. They turn the edge of their criticism against the international working class and against its unity with the national liberation movement.
Fanon’s followers insist that the whole working class in the metropolitan countries enjoys the fruits of the oppressed peoples’ exploitation. However, Leninism has shown, and this has been borne out by life, that the burdens of colonial 467 wars, the cost of maintaining the colonial machine of oppression always fall on the shoulders of the broad masses of working people. Only the imperialist monopolies, and the top privileged layer ol the "working-class aristocracy”, have stood to gain from colonial exploitation.
Fanon and his followers present the national liberation movement as virtually the only revolutionary force of our day, which is transforming the face of the world and is the chief and decisive factor of world social progress. In full conformity with this unscientific approach, they ultimately come to minimise the great role that world socialism has played and is playing in stimulating the victorious development of national liberation revolutions.
Spokesmen for this type of petty-bourgeois socialism believe the peasantry to be the main social force capable of carrying out the national and the social revolutions. They insist that it is least subject to the corrupting influence of colonialism, which is why it remains the “healthiest” and most revolutionary class of colonial and post-colonial society.
Fanon assures us that "in the colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain”. [467•*
Why is this so? Because the peasantry, Fanon and his followers allege, is much poorer than all the other classes, hence it has a stake in "a complete demolishing of all existing structures”. [467•**
Such theories clearly reveal the class, non-proletarian origin of petty-bourgeois socialism, of which Lenin wrote: "The chief representative, or the chief social bulwark, of this . . . bourgeoisie that is still capable of supporting a historically progressive course, is the peasant.” [467•***
The “Left”-wing opponents of scientific socialism quite unreasonably deny the revolutionary and vanguard role of the working class. Characteristically, they have the greatest sympathies for the lumpen proletariat. It will be easily seen that here again their “theories” mark a fundamental break with revolutionary Marxism, which has demonstrated that "the ’dangerous class’, the social scum, that passively 468 rotting mass thrown oft by the lowest layers ol old society, may, here and there, he swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution, its conditions ol life, however, prepare it tar more lor the part oi a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue”. [468•*
Such conceptions propounded by modern “Left”’ opportunists and extremists do not spring from the basic interests of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, which rallies all the oppressed masses, but most frequently rellect the aspirations of the many participants in spontaneous riots staged by poor peasants and lumpen elements.
The facts indicate that in the last few years the young, rapidly growing working class has been ever more actively asserting itself in developing countries as the most consistent lighter against imperialist oppression and its consequences, and against colonial oppression and the policy of neocolonialism. [468•** It is the working class that has been doing most for these countries’ socio-economic progress, in a tremendous effort to overcome their age-old backwardness. The growth of the working-class movement is having a positive effect on social life in the developing countries, helping to overcome national strife and tribal dissent. There is convincing evidence that the working people of the developing countries are taking an active part in the general international struggle against imperialism, and for real social progress.
Defining the Communists’ attitude to revolutionary pettybourgeois socialism, Lenin warned that it was simultaneously necessary, "while criticising petty-bourgeois Utopias and reactionary views”, "to single out, defend and develop the revolutionary democratic core of its political and agrarian programme”. [468•***
At the same time, Leninism holds that petty-bourgeois radicalism is incapable of advancing and consistently 469 implementing any constructive programme. This inevitably demands sustained and organised effort by all the contingents of the international working class and their skilful support of all the anti-imperialist movements.
The states of the socialist community are the most powerful anti-imperialist force in the world arena. Despite all the obstacles and difficulties arising in the development of the international revolutionary-liberation process, they have been steadfastly working to consolidate the unity of the ranks of the world-wide anti-imperialist front, being guided by the Leninist principles of proletarian internationalism.
Notes
[429•*] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 16, p. 348.
[430•*] A critique of typical conceptions of this kind has already been made in earlier publications by the Institute of the International Working-Class Movement of the USSR Academy of Sciences, like the chapter in the monograph ’[he Great October Revolution and the World Revolutionary Process (Fifty Years of Struggle by the Working Class at the Head of the Revolutionary Forces of the Modern Epoch), Russ. ed., Politizdat, Moscow, 19G7, pp. 403–54.
[430•**] World Marxist Review, No. 8, 1969, pp. 42–46.
[431•*] Marcuse’s main ideas are set out in his One-Dimensional Man. Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (New York, 1964), which has had many editions and has been translated into many languages; his article, "Socialist Humanism?" in the collection Socialist Humanism (New York, 1965), and, finally, in his report at the symposium on the Role of Karl Marx in the Development of Contemporary Scientific Thought, organised under the auspicies of UNESCO (Paris, May 1968).
[432•*] L’Express, September 23–29, 1968, pp. 54–55.
[433•*] Socialist Humanism. An International Symposium, cd. by !".. Fromni, New York, 190,), p. 99.
[434•*] Sec, for instance, Mareuse’s interview to Lc Monde, May 11, 1968.
[434•**] Socialist Humanism, p. 101.
[434•***] Ibid., p. 100.
[435•*] Ibid., p. 104.
[435•**] Ibid., p. 100.
[435•***] Corricrc della sera, June 1, 1968.
[436•*] Marx and Contemporary Scientific 1’houghl, The Hague-Paris. 1909, p. 4SS.
[436•**] Mondo Nuovo, May 20, 1908, p. 14.
[436•***] Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man. . ., p. XII.
[441•*] V. I. Lenin, Collet-led U’orks, Vol. 28, p. 388.
[441•**] Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man. . .. p. 257.
[441•***] Ibid., p. 256.
[441•****] Socialist Humanism, p. 10.5.
[442•*] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 211.
[443•*] Marx and Contemporary Scientific Thought, 1969, p. 479.
[443•**] Mondo Nuovo, May 20, 1968, p. 14.
[444•*] H. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man. . ., p. 24.
[445•*] L’tixfrrt’ss, September 23–29, 1968, p. 50.
[445•**] Ibid., p. 58.
[446•*] Alain Touraine, Lc mouvcmcnl de mai ou Ic commimismc iitojiiquc, Paris, 196S. "
[446•**] Ibid., p. 279.
[447•*] Ibid., p. 282.
[447•**] Ibid., p. 275.
[448•*] Alain Touraine. Lc inomiemciil tic intil on Ic rtiinmitnisinr nloplquc, Paris. 196’S, p. 177.
[448•**] Ibid.
[448•***] Ibid., p. 25.
[448•****] The methodological key for understanding this duality is provided by Lenin’s analysis of the contradictory position (and accordingly ol the contradictory mentality) of the intelligentsia, as a special group in capitalist society.
[450•*] Let us note that that is precisely the role Marcuse assigns to the students in modern social movements.
[450•**] Alain Touraine, Le Mouvemcnt de mai ou Ic communismc iifopique, p. 57.
[452•*] This expressive term was introduced by some US sociologists (representing social criticism) who had made a study of the condition ol some professionals—or as they designate them, "intellectual technicians ’—within the system of bureaucratised business.
[453•*] The purpose here is not to give an exhaustive analysis of the movement or to show the content of all the moods it expressed, but to describe the ideology of that section of the students and its sociallyprogrammed lorm of consciousness, which, first, prevented the young professionals from understanding their actual connection with the struggle of (he whole wage-labour army, and second, paralysed their immediate moral and emotional reactions to reality and their revolutionary and humanistic aspirations. The “young-technocratic” ideology not only hampered the students in developing a theoretically adequate conception of existing society and their status within it, but: also prevented them from remaining consistent democrats, and maintaining the strong feeling of social justice which was so clearly expressed at definite stages of the movement. The May-June 1968 events in France showed once again that when it comes to mass action false ideology is not only opposed to scientifically adequate theory, but also (something that is frequently underestimated) to the moral purity of the motives, the class interests of the proletariat, and the immediate humanistic motives of those taking part in the struggle.
[454•*] Alain Touraine, Le mouvement, de mai on le communisme f/ne, p. 216.
[459•*] Alain Touraine, Lc mouvement dc mai ou Ic comtniinismc uto[> iijiic, p. 50.
[461•*] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 11, pp. 213–14.
[461•**] Ibid., Vol. 21, p. 354
[461•***] Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 296.
[463•*] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 161.
[463•**] Ibid., p. 162.
[463•***] Ibid., p. 161.
[463•****] Ibid., Vol. 27, p. 291.
[463•*****] Ibid., Vol. 32, p. 317.
[465•*] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, New York, 1968,
[467•*] Frantx Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p. 61.
[467•**] Ibid., p. 11.
[467•***] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 18, p. 165.
[468•*] Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1969, p. 11S.
[468•**] For details see Section V of the present book (pp. 382–99); see also: The Working Class and the Anti-Imperialist Revolution in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Russ. cd., Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1969; ’1’lic Working-Class Movement in the Countries of Asia and North Africa at the Present Stage, Russ. ed., Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1969, (issued with the participation of members of the Institute of the International Working-Class Movement of the USSR Academy of Sciences).
[468•***] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 18, p. 169.
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