On the Communist Century Contribution
Zoltan Zigedy, MLToday
February 2007

Several issues are debatable in the Communist Century response: The authors see a growing primacy of "knowledge" workers over production workers in the revolutionary vanguard. This is a popular view with many academic leftists, yet lacking both clarity and demonstration. The authors charge the CPUSA with failing to move beyond Popular Front politics towards a socialist vision after WWII. They may be unaware of its anti monopoly strategy as an intermediate strategic stage on the road towards socialist transformation. I would agree, though, that the now almost thirty year defensive obsession with the "ultra right" danger and neglect of the struggle for political independence has left this strategy neglected and easy to overlook. The Editorial Group attributes the demise of the Soviet Union, substantially, to a failure "to meet the growing social and cultural requirements of the people". While there are many theories of the Soviet collapse, this theory strikes me as too simple. The Soviet people knew many periods of deprivation while remaining steadfast in their defense of socialist construction. Such a perspective harkens back to Khrushchev's economism. The authors claim that the two US bourgeois parties are composed of workers. While they are both supported by workers (what other choice do workers have?), their leading bodies are composed of middle and ruling class functionaries. Neither one is a party in which the party base democratically determines policy, but cadre parties and fundraising apparatus attuned to ruling class interests, first and foremost. The Communist Century contribution slights US workers: "… even in its most active "militant" sections, [it] is backward, acquisitive, narrow minded, chauvinistic, mired in religious obscurantism, and bigoted." While frustration with the pace of change in the US might lead to such negativism, workers in Russia before the Revolution, or Cuba before Fidel's victory, were reflective of the dominant culture of their respective countries as well. Religion, selfishness, ignorance and bigotry are not easily overcome, but a task for the vanguard party. We should neither romanticize workers nor sneer at them.

Communist Century Response

July 2007

Why do we emphasize that both bourgeois parties are working class in composition?

Zegedy concedes that the base of both parties is proletarian. At one time both parties were alliances of sectors of big capital, small local capital; i.e. real estate, construction, grocery and banks, as well as the proletariat and other toilers. Farmers, the skilled trades and truckers, mass production and marine workers were all important parts of these party alliances in the 20th century. Today, the old petty bourgeois professions and businesses have devolved to a

professional proletariat, just as the scientific and technological intelligentsia has been proletarianized. All that is left in the two parties and in society as a whole is a tiny class of capitalists and a massive working class.


There are many objective impediments to the working class taking full power. However, given the overwhelming numerical superiority of the proletariat these barriers would be easily overcome were it not for the subjective backwardness of the class as a whole. If we seem harsh in our judgment of the class, it is only in comparison to most self-described Marxists who either deny this obvious fact or absolve the working class of all responsibility for its condition. A class that cannot take responsibility for itself cannot rule society.



Why do we emphasize the role of knowledge workers in the revolutionary process?

There is no question that the application of knowledge at the point of production has become the leading edge of development. This is true not only in the sense that high tech is the new and rising sector of production, but also because it is the major generator of profit. Mass production is steadily being supplanted by high tech production and the social weight of the 20th century “blue collar” worker, whether unskilled, semi-skilled or skilled, is gradually being diminished just as that of the craft worker, the petty producer and the peasant was previously. Clearly the mass production sector of the working class, which is now in a permanently defensive position, can never again, at least in the developed capitalist countries, play the role of revolutionary vanguard, to use Zegedy's phrase. By “revolutionary vanguard” we assume Zegedy does not mean the party, but rather that section of the proletariat that leads the whole class to power and liberates humanity from class divided society.


Knowledge workers are scientists, engineers and technicians, and managers of various kinds, as well as workers in health care, education and culture who contribute to the direct reproduction of the class. They play the kind of critical role in modern society that manual production workers played before the scientific and technological revolution. Without them developed society could not survive, much less advance. It should be obvious that knowledge workers must, in the current epoch, play a leading role in the proletariat attaining power. To be sure, knowledge workers have not so far given much indication of a high level of political development or militancy. Their relatively high living standard engenders complacency. Nevertheless, their role in the leading sectors of the economy disposes them to have a broad view of social development. Moreover they have the most concrete experience of the inhibiting effect of private property on the development of the productive forces in the era of the scietific and technological revolution. Most of the current movements for social reform, as well as current day “leftism”, draw their support primarily from this sector.


While maintaining the primacy of the mass production workers, particularly those organized into trade unions, Sam Webb has essentially shifted his focus to the knowledge workers, whom he still views as petit bourgeois. Unfortunately, rather than struggling against non-Marxist and often backward trends within this sector, he panders to them.

As it happens, none of us are now, nor have we ever been, “academics”. However, Zegedy’s reference to “academic leftists” betrays an anti-intellectualism that is, unfortunately, quite common in this society and even in the communist movement. While it panders to the backwardness of workers, it actually manifests anti-working class prejudice – the notion that workers either cannot or should not develop their intellect.

We should like to refer the reader to Liu Shao-chi’s excellent work “How to be a Good Communist” (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/liu-shaoqi/1939/how-to-be/index.htm) for a communist approach to cultivation of proletarians.

Anti-intellectualism is foundational to the psychological make up of US culture and it is the duty of communists to fight against this within themselves and among the workers.


On the Popular Front and the United Front

The popular front is a multi-class alliance of the proletariat and non-proletarian elements, including the bourgeoisie. In the US it was an expression of the world front against fascism and the international alliance of the Soviet Union, US, and Britain. A united front is a working-class based unity of Communist and non-communist workers and/or Communist parties with socialist and workers parties. The “leading” parties in most central and eastern European people's democracies were of necessity “united front” parties – a result of merging Communist parties with remnant social-democratic and independent worker's parties (mostly nationalistic “socialist”) and even Bukharinites and Trotskyites in some cases.


The anti-monopoly-coalition strategy was an attempt to create a multi-class alliance rather than a class-based united front. It posited a struggle against a section of capital instead of a struggle for proletarian power. It sought to ally the working class with some poorly defined non-monopoly section of capital at a time when non-monopoly capital was rapidly disappearing. That strategy could not and did not produce victories that would shift the balance of forces between the capitalist and working classes.


The one important domestic victory of the post-World War II period was the destruction of legalized segregation that was the result of an alliance of finance capital with the Negro people and sections of the proletariat. With Negro toilers in the lead, large sections of the Jewish, Latino and other national groups were mobilized. Finance capital needed the end of segregation in order to modernize the southern economy and to integrate it more fully into the US state. This also removed one obstacle to export of capital and penetration of foreign markets. Non-monopoly capital in the South supported the maintenance of segregation.


On Democracy

There is a logical incongruence between the notion of the supposedly inborn attachment to “democracy” on the part of US workers and the “threat of the ‘Ultra-right.’” If this “ultra-right” threat is to be believed it must have attracted a mass base. If it is a “threat” it must be able to draw a significant section of the population to it. This would imply not an attachment to democracy but, on the contrary, a passion for smashing democracy.


Of course, neither situation prevails. There is no material basis for fascism at this stage of development. It is the partisans of democracy that represent extreme reaction in the US, with their policies of “export of democracy" and “democracy at the point of a gun.” In other words, militant democracy is the main form of the imperialist state.


Webb defines democracy as “the opportunity to shape one's destiny”. Democracy, in Webb's view, “has become a necessity of life for working people in the current phase of capitalism's development, much like food and shelter were in an earlier stage.” (RoS section 11). Democracy for Webb is a collection of individual rights, aspirations or needs, including “the right to peace (sic), the right to a living wage job, civil rights,...,etc” (RoS section 12). Bourgeois apologists conflate democracy-as-individual-rights and democracy-as-state-system. They insist, and many workers believe, that the satisfaction of all their material and non-material needs and the protection of their “rights” is impossible without a state system of bourgeois democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is only with socialism that the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole society can be achieved. This is the basic economic law of socialism.


Webb perpetuates the confusion of democracy with socialism, and he uses out-of-context quotations from Lenin to do it. Lenin was operating in a society where the bourgeoisie had not attained power and where bourgeois democracy had still not been established. His arguments cannot be applied to the US, which has been a bourgeois democratic republic for over 200 years and whose democratic political system is in an advanced stage of decay. Because it does not fit his argument, Webb ignores the fact that the strongest partisans of democracy represent extreme reaction. He reinforces the illusions of the backward workers and confuses advanced workers who recognize that democracy is not a system that meets their material and cultural requirements.



Concerning the setback for socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

It is not a question of the absolute level of the productive forces or living standards that is decisive. Rather it is the degree of satisfaction of the growing material and cultural needs relative to the possibilities. The Soviet Union and the CMEA were well aware of the scientific and technological revolution and in some areas were on the cutting edge of that revolution. However, beginning with Khrushchev, they failed to upgrade adequately their social structures to incorporate the fruits of the STR into production and distribution. At the same time they failed to develop fully an alternative model of consumption to bourgeois consumerism.