Anarchist Black Cat

Comrades,

I am posting to inform comrades that the WSA has revised its 24 year old "Where We Stand".

Go to http://workersolidarity.org/ and click on "About WSA".

Your comments are invted.

Is the old one still up. Or could you tell us what's changed.

The below section is a pretty good summary of what platformism is about in my opinion. Was that always there?

the only quibble I have is as always I prefer intercommunalism, globalism or intercontinentalism over internationalism.

Its just a pure if anarchos claim to be anti nation-state types its important to use words that reflect it.

At Syndicalist's suggestion I'm going to repost a censored/abridged version of the comments I sent to him in private. These were made in a personal capacity, and in the spirit of constructive, friendly criticism between comrades.

For comparison, the WSA's previous Where We Stand statement can be found here:
http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/hill ... incip.html

***************

1) Why has "Exploitation" been eliminated and replaced with
"Anti-Capitalism"? I kind of liked how the old document took the
exploitation of labor as a starting point and worked outward from there.
In other words that it started with "we" and then branched out to the
bosses. The new document starts with oppression, then capitalists, then
"our work", and immediately back to capitalists in order to establish that
there are actually two different classes of capitalists.

2) I don't think there are two different classes of capitalists. "Capital"
isn't named after "capitalists"; "capitalists" are named after "capital".
Nothing about "capitalist" implies a distinction of "person with their
name on the legal title of a given unit of capital" over "person who is
contracted to effectively, legitimately, control the use of that unit of
capital". The relationship between these roles has varied throughout the
history of capitalism -- sometimes united; sometimes close; sometimes
distant. But both roles have existed for as long as capitalism has, and
will continue to exist for as long as capitalism will. The relationship
between bigtime owner and bigtime manager is similar to that between
bigtime lender and bigtime borrower; all are capitalists. A bigtime
borrower who murders his lender is still a capitalist; a bigtime manager
who "expropriates" the owner, and replaces him on paper with the legal
shortcut of either his dead uncle's, or "state," ownership, is just as
much still a capitalist. A bigtime state bureaucrat whose job it is to
fill perform the tasks of that capitalist manager, even while "state
ownership" stands in for private ownership, is also every bit as much a
capitalist. The previous version of the WWS statement was a little
ambiguous, but was at least compatible with an understanding of the USSR,
etc as state-capitalist. For example, it viewed conflicts such as the
US/USSR cold war as being, at their base, an inter-imperialist struggles
over profit. The new version is incompatible with such an understanding.
For me, this isn't a minor technical point. It shows a basic confusion
about what capital is, and how we can rid ourselves of it. [....]

3) Whereas the earlier statement identifies the state as "rest[ing] upon
domination and exploitation", the new one only identifies it as an
"institution of class domination." Without an understanding of the modern
state as a specifically capitalist institution, there is nothing
supporting the assertion that "there is little hope for the liberation of
the working class through the capture of the state". For example, if the
state were no longer "controlled by... politicians drawn from the
capitalist and bureaucratic classes", if its armed bodies were no longer
strictly "top-down", etc., why couldn't it be an effective instrument of
working-class domination of the other classes? The answer is that the
material basis of the state is the exploitation, not just the
"oppression", of the working class. They only "oppress" us in the first
place so that they can exploit our labor. That relationship, the
alienation of the product of our labor, is capital. Part of it goes toward
building a state, an organized monopoly on the legitimate use of violence,
capable of supporting, regulating and sustaining the overall function of
capitalist ownership and capitalist management. Capturing and using the
state is useless, because if we are capturing and using something that has
our exploitation as the basis of its existence, we are depending on our
own exploitation. We are maintaining capitalism, and whomever we hand the
reins to becomes, in effect, a capitalist. Our exploitation, not the
"hierarchies of managers and elite professionals", is what really
"separate[s] the state from authentic popular control". The hierarchies of
managers and elite professionals are just opportunists, culled from either
class or sometimes from neither, happy and willing to fill in that
already-existing gap. At the bottom they merge with the working class; at
the top they merge with the capitalist class.

4) The "Anti-Imperialism" section is OK, but it doesn't really logically
follow from the previous sections. Since you have done away with an
analysis of exploitation in favor of the more general "oppression", who's
to say that the local elites in peripheral countries aren't as "oppressed"
as some of the better-paid workers in the core countries? How is the
"unequal power in trade" between core capitalists and peripheral
capitalists qualitatively different from the unequal trade of labor-power
for wages that goes on in the core? If capitalism is simply "a system of
oppression", that "has always been based on imperialism", shouldn't we
support whoever gets the job of kicking out the imperialists done?

[....]

8.) Why do the paid hierarchies "work to contain workers' struggles within
the framework of longstanding relationships with the employers"? If you
guys are really trying to argue that bureaucrats make up a third major
class, with their own class interests, wouldn't you see them as ultimately
trying to take over the domination/oppression of workers themselves?
[....] I like the concrete examples of your pragmatic stance, such as saying
half-timers are better than full-timers.

9) Cool that you added "community organizing" as its own section. People
are still making that stupid allegation that syndicalists want to ignore
economic struggles outside "the workplace"... One thing you might want to
add here is environmental justice (EJ) organizing at the grassroots level.
A lot of the best community work I've seen in the last few years starts
with really basic fights against polluted soil, siting facilities near
neighborhoods, etc., and branches out from there into popular education
about all the related issues. [....] The EJ movement is
slow-moving, growing, critical of the mainstream ecology movement,
oriented toward community organizing, and focused on drawing out the
connections between issues and struggles. I think that in the next few
years we class-struggle anarchists need to get involved in supporting EJ
groups on the premise that they're involved in the class struggle on a
very basic, material level. Most of the anarchists EJ folks run into on
the ground are probably Green-anarchists, which is a shame and a
setback...

10) I pretty much agree with the "for a self-managed society" part. I
would love to hear more about "re-designing jobs" because I think this is
at the core of why I want revolution, and it's not just about getting rid
of managers and pollution, or even just about integrating manual work with
"decision-making". On a separate note, the last sentence needs something
more. "The working class needs to make sure that when the dust settles
there's not some hierarchical armed power that can be used by an elite to
defend some new system of boss power" -- this kind of a simplistic
statement, because it implies that no "bottom-up" force would willingly
defend an authoritarian power. It ignores the role of culturally based,
voluntary support for elites, or for elitist principles. Most people have
common sense, but history has shown that we can get into mass hysterias
too. I don't think the Northern draft riots during the Civil War, when
Irish workers in NYC and elsewhere led an uprising to burn down businesses
and slaughter freed Black workers because they blamed all Black people for
conscription, can be described as a "hierarchical armed power" turning to
the defense of "an elite", but scenarios like this are just as relevant a
fear during a chaotic, revolutionary period. So I like that you emphasize
your opposition to "ANY armed bodies that are not under the direct control
of the working class mass organizations," but it's kind of a copout to
then explain this simply as not wanting "hierarchical" armies around.

11) Ecology -- This seems like an afterthought. Just as you went into some
detail between bottom-up and top-down visions of unionization, etc., it's
probably worth emphasizing that capitalism is also trying to provide
solutions to the problems it's caused, and that we don't see them as a
solution. Eco-business, global environmental bureaucratization, racist
conservation movements, etc. all contribute to reinforcing capitalism and
therefore leave the root of the problem intact. There are long-lasting
social ties between the traditional conservation and ecology movements and
the far Right. Focusing on negative population growth (by repressing
immigration, or spreading public health philosophies rooted in eugenics),
or enforcing private or racially restricted nature reservations (as in the
US South until the 60s, and South Africa until the 80s), or just building
up a huge "Green" capitalist NGO sector, are strategies that represent
steps back from the kind of free and equal world we need as a prerequisite
to transforming capitalist production into sustainable production.
Channeling ecological concerns into building the EJ movement at the base,
on the other hand, brings us forward on these issues.

[....]

the section on Political Organization is entirely new. It doesn't necessarily represent a change in viewpoint, tho. We just never added a section about the role of the political organization to the old Where We Stand. Sort of a hole.

In reply to MJ, expoitation hasn't been removed. The "Anti-capitalism" section still refers to exploitation. However, exploitation presupposes subjugation in the economy, and thus class oppression is more basic. Exploitation occurs when groups are able to gain an economic benefit -- income share, wealth, power -- that isn't merited by actual work but is derived from power they have over the immediate producers. It might have been better to explain this more fully, tho.

Thus Marx's theory of exploitation is problematic because it can't account for the way the bureaucratic or coordinator elements participate in exploitation even tho they do some of the work.

I find the view MJ expresses here about class too abstract. I tend to agree with EP Thompson that class structures evolve through conflict and struggle in history. There are various layers of society intermediate in power and economic position between the obvious capitalists and the people who are obviously of the working class. There are different ways of dealing with this. I think this needs to be based on looking historically at how the class system and economic system has evolved. Those who hold that there are only two (main) classes in capitalism tend to fall in two directions.

One tendency is to enlarge the working class to take in the "middle elements" like supervisors, middle-managers, lawyers, professors, self-employed etc. You find this in the writing of Michael Parenti for example. But this is also the tack that Ralph Chaplin took in "The General Strike for Industrial Freedom." That pamphlet was heavily influenced by the ideas of Thorsten Veblen who had studied the conflicts between capitalist tycoons and financiers, on the one hand, and the newly emerging engineering profession and advocates of "scientific managment" in the early 1900s. There were in fact significant conflicts between the top corporate officers and financiers and the "middle elements" in that period. But this then led Veblen to advocate a technocratic vision of socialism in which the engineers and managers would end up incontrol in socialized industry, and workers still subordiate to them. In Chaplin's pamphlet in fact he talks as if middle managers and engineers would continue in the same roles after the revolution.

Now, there is an opposite way of dealing with the "middle elements", which MJ seems to take very far. This is to simply regard them as capitalists, because they have some control over the working class. This at least acknowledges the antagonistic class relation between managers, engineers, lawyers etc and the working class. But it fails to consider the conflicts between this bureaucratic or technocratic class and the capitalists in periods of social conflict or crisis. They don't really have the same interests. In particular it fails to acknlowledge that there is a possibility of a non-capitalist mode of production in which this class is the ruling class.

i don't think it's plausible to regard middle-managers, supervisors, lawyers, engineers etc as simply "capitalists."

EDIT:
One less extreme tendency in this direction would be to regard only the higher managers, corporate lawyers, top engineers, major media pundits etc as capitalists, with the lower middle elements in the working class. This seems to be the approach of Jeff Faux in "The Global Class War." I tend to follow an even less extreme form of this in that I tend to regard lower level professionals as a part of the working class objectively -- nurses, school teachers, community college instructors, application programmers, commercial artists who don't have employees or own their own businesses, etc. This would make the working class about 70 percent of the population in the USA. More narrow definitions of the working class put all "professionals" into some "middle class" (this is the view of Michael Zweig in "The Working Class Majority"). Zweig figures the working class is 62 percent of the population.

It is in fact ahistorical to suggest, as MJ does, that there has been no major shift in the relationship between the technocratic class role and the capitalist class role in the history of capitalism. In reality the emergence of the big corporation at the end of the 19th century brought very great changes to capitalism, including a vast expansion in the role of the state, and a very great change in the internal organization of work. The constant growth of the bureaucratic or coordinator class over the past century is bound up with this. Managers have grown from a mere few percent of the workforce in 1900 to 15 percent today. Prior to the end of the 19th century, engineering didn't really exist as a separate profession. Collecting the lore of production techniques and organizing this had been the responsibility of worker craftsmanship prior to the late 1800s.

In regard to point 3, I don't think the state is a specifically capitalist institution. I think Bakunin was right about that. The expansion in the state in the past century is surely related to changes in capitalism. But states existed prior to capitalism and would be needed by any class system, even a non-capitalist one.

In regard to point 4, it isn't true we've "done away with exploitation." Imperialism is a structure where particular nations dominate others by economic and military means and exploit them in virtue of this domination. Unequal exchange is a form of exploitation due to the superior power of concentrated capitalist firms in the world market, especially in the context of inter-state relations structured by differences in military and economic power.

in regard to point 8, in fact the labor bureaucracies during the Russian revolution did support moves in which a bureaucratic class system emerged to replace the capitalists as the ruling class. but within capitalism, this class is a subordinate class, and it has a conflict of interests with the capitalists.

the reference to making sure there is no hierarchal armed power in a position to dominate after a revolution states not a sufficient condition but only a necessary condition. so, yes, there are certainly other sources of danger of domination persisting in some way.

With all due respect, there is no point in arguing with you if you don't bother to even read what I write.



That part in bold is a straightforward misrepresentation of what I wrote. This is what I wrote:



I very clearly don't regard all social "middle elements" as "capitalists". Why do you feel the need to say I do?



I suggest what? Where? How? I think that there have been very, very major changes in capitalism. Capital has become immensely socialized and there has been a massive increase in the regulatory sphere relative to the sphere of private investment. This development is entirely historical. It has in fact been central to modern history. Since I don't think there is a "technocratic class" that is different from a "capitalist class," I am in no position to agree or disagree with the idea that the relationship between the two has changed.



The state is damn well a specifically capitalist institution if it participates, directly or indirectly, in managing the reinvestment of capital, i.e. dead labor, into production, and if it participates, directly or indirectly, in trading the surplus on the capitalist market. There were precapitalist states, and in a postcapitalist world there may or may not be postcapitalist states, which we will have to get rid of. But you don't gain anything by describing a capitalist state, in a capitalist world, as anything but exactly that.



You seem to have missed my point. If the only "exploitation" you see is the unequal exchange between "particular nations" and "others", you have failed to explain to the reader why elites in those other countries aren't on our side.

Ah OK, you added this edit while I was typing my previous response. If you'd read my initial post you would have realized that this is more or less what I said. (I see higher managers, corporate lawyers, top urban planners, politicians etc as capitalists; nurses, programmers, teachers, etc as usually working class. There are some people right in the middle who do just enough of both roles to be in neither class, which is fine because class isn't a sociological category by which we need to classify all people.)

Cheers. Having read the whole thing MJ is basically making my criticism more articulatly than I could, so i'll shut up.

MJ, I maybe didn't pay sufficient attention to everything you said. But you seem to be saying that the class I would call the coordinator class (we call it the "bureaucratic class" in WWS) is a part of the capitalist class. This class, as I understand it, includes supervisors, middle-managers, lawyers, cops, engineers. These are the groups I said it doesn't make sense to regard as capitalists. I wasn't here talking about the layer I call "lower level professionals" -- nurses, app programmers, teachers. if you agree this layer is part of the working class, then we agree on that point. But I think it's necessary to look at the power groups have over the working class. Class is itself about power in social production, and then spreading out through society from that.

The current state is an institution of capitalist society. But it has a certain degree of autonomy, as I see it, from the capitalist class. Not a lot, but some. Non-capitalist elements, such as the military, police, and admistrative layers have some influence within it. The state as such existed before capitalism, and could exist in a post-capitalist system if it was a class system, as you acknowledge. The current state exists to mediate conflicts between groups and hold society together. In times of crisis it has been the means to provide concessions to the mass of the population, such as elements of the social wage. the state is not always just "the executive committee of the ruling class." this is because the state must be able to govern, it must be able to ensure social peace. it won't be able to defend capitalist interests otherwise. but having a certain autonomy from the capitalist elite can at times help in being able to fulfill this essential state function.

Our Where We Stand statement doesn't say anything about unequal exchange, so any disagreement we might have about that isn't relevant to the WWS statement. However, i'd suggest it's a way the immediate producers are exploited in third world countries. As I see it, exploitation doesn't just occur thru the wage system. If an immigrant pays a huge chunk of their check to get it cashed, the check cashing joint, which is a part of the system of finance capital, is exploiting them. I'd say that landlords exploit tenants also.

In any event, my point was that the WWS statement didn't get rid of exploitation. The verb "to exploit" is still there. But exploitation can't occur if the immediate producers aren't subordinate to the economic power of others. This is why i say that class oppression is more basic than exploitation. Exploitation is based on domination.

EDIT:
In regard to my comment about the degree of change in capitalism over time, I'm responding to this comment of yours:


Since the beginning of "scientific management" in the early 1900s, the way capitalism is organized has changed greatly, and the coordinator class has only come to be a mass group in society through that change. There were some people playing that role earlier on but they were few in number. The changes that came with the emergence of the big corporation, vast expansion in the state in the early 1900s, and the huge growth and differentiation of the coordinator class groups, has changed the structure of advanced capitalism, and so I don't think it is quite right to suggest that "the roles have always existed." Scientific management concentrates expertise related to production techniques and their use away from the working class. This is a change in "roles" from the early 1800s. In the first half of the 1800s the capitalists had only advanced to the stage of providing a workplace, hiring supervisors, marketing the product, but the techniques and work organization were largely based on worker craftsmanship. Technology of production was largely based on craft tradition. Capitaliists were often dependent on skilled workers having the technology in their heads.

I think capitalism has evolved over time, and that the class struggle and the competitively driven search for profits have driven these changes.

Hey guys look I wrote stuff too.......

I think the idea of starting from exploitation as well Is Important.
Ive actualyl been thinking about how getting people to just agree to a basic policy to join an org might be putting the cart before the horse in some cases.

I wanted to add one other point: I think MJ's suggestion of looking at the environmental justice movement is a good one. The thing that's important about the EJ groups is that, unlike the mainstream enviro groups dominated by the "middle elements", the EJ movement focuses on the effects of pollution and environmental degradation on working class communities, especially communities of color.

to MJ-

1. I like 'exploitation' too. Are your points mostly stylistic about this topic? If so, I'd agree and hadn't thought about it. It would make more sense to proceed linearly and begin with exploitation. I think it is good to keep in mind though that the exploitation/oppression distinction is one that matters more to theoreticians (myself included), so is of lesser priority though is still important. That said I would agree to it.

2. Personally I don't think there are two kinds of capitalists. I think there are capitalists, managers, and workers. The categories are fuzzy, but the distinction is important because managers as a class are a force in history. The crucial addition is the analysis based on power. The third class is defined by it's role in decision making, and likewise our challenge to power will challenge the role of power in structuring the workplace.

"It shows a basic confusion about what capital is, and how we can rid ourselves of it."

I think we can disagree about the first part of the sentence, but what about the second? I mean you presumably would draw a similar conclusion about abolishing hierarchical management, and the dangers of the rise of a bureaucratic managerial state right? Say more, I'm interested.

Personally I have swung about on the USSR as not being state capitalist. I don't care what you call it, but it's different that say the social democratic states or other capitalists states, and we need some term to show that difference. It didn't operate in the same way with markets, so it is a stretch of the term capitalism (though markets operated at the macro level, excluding yugoslavia which was a mixed system). In the end I do think that that is terminological. Maybe if everyone used capitalism in the world systems theorist way I'd be fine with it.

3. I agree with most of this critique. I think Tom is right that the state is not reducible to its capitalist form, it has independent content. I think that's important to stress, because i don't think the state always acts in class interest. I think long term it does, but there are things that happen that contradict that general principle, and we explain them through an appeal to the role of power in shape the behavior of organizations. Most of the time people describe this as contradictions in the ruling class, but I think that skirts the issue somewhat.

That being said, I think you rightly show that we don't have enough of a material analysis of the specifically capitalist state, whose material basis is to be found in the dynamics of capital. But it is important to note that that analysis is inadequate. Otherwise you get leninist ideas, where once exploitation is gone the state loses its oppressiveness (which is incoherent, but with a critique of hierarchical power is fully disarmed).

4. these are important questions. I take the line Luxembourg does around these issues. Could you elaborate. I'm less good on this stuff, and it's something I've been meaning to read more on. I'm interested to hear what other WSA members would say.

8. "If you guys are really trying to argue that bureaucrats make up a third major class, with their own class interests, wouldn't you see them as ultimately trying to take over the domination/oppression of workers themselves?"

Not necessarily. It depends on the balance of capital and power. At the present place in US history, the main sections of the bureaucracy's interests are by and large with capital. This isn't true everywhere, and in different contexts it would play out differently.

10. point taken, and i think this is one of the most serious objections to anarchism, i.e. how do we deal with decentralized oppression or even directly democratic support for reactionary politics.

11. That makes sense, and maybe it would be better for logical flow to integrate it more with the suggestions you make. Personally I see the connection of ecology to anarchism through the lens of the democratic restructuring of decision making and the economy. An economy with meaningful work and self-organization should push us towards economies that are likewise regionalized and on a scale which can support ecologically integrated industry. These issues are controversial though I believe. I don't believe small areas can produce everything needed, but I do think that to reasonably address ecological destruction we need a reorganization of cities and industry. Centralized economies inherently tend towards unsustainable concentrations of waste and unnecessarily onnerous work.

I agree with the spirit of your comments, but I think we have to balance our ideas and how we get them across. communalism has weird rings to it. In India and many parts of the world it means something akin to racism- i.e. intercaste violence, hindu-muslim violence, ethnic violence, etc.

Globalism is too close to globalization. Continentalism implies a level of similarity on continents that is probably not true (i.e as if north america is similar enough and needs to be united with other continents). Not saying internationalism is great, but when all else fails I say go for the common words and explain yourself. If we say we're internationalist (which sounds weird to people anyway) and we believe in abolishing borders, government, etc., I think the ideas come across.

My area of least knowledge, expertise and theoretical understanding is the one being most crticised. I'm not real good with the theorectical aspects of this section of the document.

There was a lot of effort put into the document and I see it as a long term work-in-progress. My own views may vary in certain areas. None of which I will elborate on-line. A vote was taken and the WSA membership voted overwhelmingly to adopt it.

It has been 24 years since the original document was written, reviewed and changed. It is my hope that the document will be reviewed more frequently. That WSA will be able to apporiately review and refine the document keeping true to our basic foundations, while adopting our language and practice to the times we live in.

The posting here on ABC, from my perspective, was concious. It is my belief that we'll get good, honest and comradely feedback.

Perhaps all I can add is that our desire to write in a non-rethorical fashion is conscious. That our views on organization ("political"---i hate that word ) Unionism and Community organizing are based on our experiances, some going back to pre-WSA days.

I look forward to further comradely comments and discussion.