Yellow Vests, Class Struggle and Spontaneous Revolution
by Gaither Stewart
This is a crosspost with Dandelion Salad, a fraternal site
Wherein the author reminds us (and cautions) against the probable mirage of spontaneous revolution without a dedicated vanguard party.
Rome, Italy
January 18, 2019
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n What Is To Be Done of 1902 Lenin opposed revolutionary spontaneity because it “strips away the disciplined nature of the Marxists idea of revolution, leaving it arbitrary and ineffective.” True to himself, Lenin then returned to opposition to spontaneous revolution after WWI during the German Revolution of 1918-19 when in a spontaneous uprising against the post-WWI system Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacist League failed in an attempt to overturn German capitalism.
Similarly, in November 1918, when Kurt Eisner, a politician of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), became Minister-President of a newly proclaimed People’s State of Bavaria—which Eisner considered a socialist republic—distanced himself from the Russian Bolsheviks and declared that his government would PROTECT property rights, he in effect declared his personal spontaneous revolt. Thus he had no external backing whatsoever and a faulty, and still capitalist program.
In the following January Eisner’s party lost heavily in the Bavarian Parliament elections and in February he was assassinated by a right-wing nationalist. As a result bedlam exploded—guns firing, people dying—in the Parliament palace overlooking the city of Munich. Movements for change and government broke down in Bavaria which has henceforth been dominated by Bavaria Catholic Christian Democrats. The Eisner People’s State thus vindicated Lenin and substantiated his fears of the devilish waste of spontaneous revolution. Things do after all go around and around but do not always return … a boomerang gone astray.
Revolutionary spontaneity is the belief that revolution should begin below, without the guidance of a revolutionary party, or a vanguard party as was said in Lenin’s times. Lenin’s fear, borne out by German events, was that a spontaneous movement could be infiltrated and taken over by reactionary forces. The Yellow Vests in France face similar issues today.
The dedication and tenacity of the people wearing the Yellow Vests (Gilets Jaunes- GJ) are wonderful. Their initial goals of lowering taxes on working people in general and bringing down the capitalist exploiter, French President Emmanuel Macron, are meritorious and revolutionary: Even their boasts of having no leadership may at first seem convincing.
However, there are many howevers. For as Lenin wrote, “Revolution is (always) brewing and is bound to flare up.” Because revolutionary threat is frequently brewing, Capitalism is always as fearfully afraid as it is vigilantly alert to threats to its existence. For Capitalism’s ultimate fear is the people. The Yellow Vests are the personification and manifestation of the people.
To me personally the real “people” in command implies the ultimate arrival of some form of Communism, the specter of which haunts not only Europe of today, as Marx warned, but the entire western world. For the fundamental struggle today, as it was yesterday for Marx, is class struggle. And class struggle is what the Yellow Vests movement is thus far apparently and hopefully all about. The only identity of the Yellow Vests we can be relatively sure of for now is that it is representative of the people. Which people is to be yet determined. But I believe in the French case, in the cause of the real people.
At this point in time the Gilets Jaunes claim to have no leaders. True? Maybe. Maybe not completely. Who decides today, this Saturday, what is to be done? When yellow vested marchers-protesters reach the Arc de Triomphe, they can’t just mill around the arch all day. They have to do something. They have to go somewhere. Twelve avenues depart like spokes from the Arc de Triomphe on Place Charles de Gaulle, the Etoile. Shall they take Avenue Hoche or Avenue Foch, Victor Hugo or Avenue de la Grande Armée? Someone will shout over a megaphone “Let’s head for the Trocadero!” And off they go. Someone is leading. At the very start, now over two months ago, someone suggested that protesters meet at Place de la Concorde and march up the Champs Elysées carrying placards against President Macron’s gasoline tax “And hey, let’s all wear yellow vests, you know, like those in our car trunks in case you’re standing on a road at night changing a tire.”
So at that point certain persons step forward from the masses. First they are urban guides. Yes, take Avenue Foch. Prompters. Then they act as spokesmen of the movement to provide answers to petty-bourgeois journalists’ questions as to what it’s all about … or perhaps to a government arbiter who wants to propose unacceptable offers.
But simultaneously the legitimate question arises: Are those first spokesmen really representative? Are they elected. Or selected? That is often where the problem lies. Not always, maybe not even often, do the best step forward. Ambitious persons do. Well, it takes a bit of ambitious leadership too. For as Lenin and Marx always insisted: leadership is necessary. As the New York Occupy Wall Street Movement that began in September 2011 showed: without leadership popular movements wither away.
The anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist movement of 1968 that swept across the world confirmed Lenin and Marx’s warnings that the threatened bourgeois reactionary class always lies in ambush, always trying to infiltrate such movements and to deviate them from revolutionary goals and vitiate them of their anti-capitalist nature. Secret services work that way. That’s their job. After all they work under cover.
Do rabid protesters-hooligans undermine their own movements by devastating shops and burning cars? Or do undercover agents do the dirty work to sully the name of the protest movement? For secret services of the world know how to use the “strategy of tension” and false flag operations: secret agents burn ten cars and blame it on protesters and then crack down on the whole movement. Secret agents were at work in Berlin in 1933: “Burn the Reichstag in Berlin, blame it on a Communist and establish the Nazi dictatorship.”
Infiltrators come from all sides, government agents on the one hand, political opposition on the other, support and join protest movements, and attempt to take them over from the inside and deviate them from their original goals. Example: Italy’s two government rightist parties, the Fascist Lega and Liberal Five Star Movement have tried to gain a foothold in the Yellow Vests in France. Wisely the Yellow Vests have thus far rejected such offers.
Is the Gilets Jaunes Movement spontaneous? Is that possible considering the national spread of the movement? If the movement is spontaneous I want to believe that it is developing a leadership internally, and that it can remain true to its goal of bringing about the collapse of the French government. In that sense it is a positive sign if certain members step forward as guides and spokesmen so as not to display the inherent weaknesses of just another fly-by-night movement without leadership.
Still, as always, the question is complex. Who will become the leaders? And will these leaders move in the direction indicated by the demands of the base of the movement: “Down with the government and the system it represents.” If the emergent leaders are true leaders then the revolutionary demands by necessity will be anti-system, i.e, anti-capitalist, not just for another variant of capitalism: free market capitalism, finance capitalism, state capitalism, welfare capitalism, democratic capitalism, corporatism or fascism, each and every one of which is ultimately based on capitalist exploitation of labor.
Therefore the necessity of anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist leaders for any movement aimed at the overthrow of the system which ultimately means the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by something else. Therefore the necessity of a leadership—vanguard or revolutionary specialists—to guarantee the original goals of the anti-systemic, anti-capitalist movement. Hopeful emergents from the underworld of the unrepresented protesters of forgotten classes with their besieged hopes, observers of class relations, journalists and writers, and political leaders must keep in the front of their minds: class struggle, working class, class struggle, capitalism, working class.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Revolutionary wisdom
Words from an Irish patriot—
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AN AGE OF STRANGE BEDFELLOWS? Published on Dec 22, 2018 Revolutionary wisdom
By Darwin Holmstrom [dropcap]W[/dropcap]e live in a fluid world. The air we breathe is a fast-moving fluid; the ground we walk on is a fluid moving at a more sedate pace. And nothing is more fluid than life itself. We haven’t even properly defined life; the best we can do is protoplasm feeding on protoplasm.Eventually this glutinous protoplasm developed into us humans, the most complex form of glutinous protoplasm, protoplasm with the rudimentary capacity for speech and at least a hint of the capacity for abstract thought. But what really separates us from the simpler forms of protoplasm is the concept of self—we are far more aware of our own selves than, say, a cockroach or a turnip. The projection of self—ego—has motivated pretty much everything that’s happened to the human animal, from the evolution of the first primordial protoplasm into President Donald J. Trump to the creation of market-based capitalism. Human achievement being driven by human ego is not a new idea; Homer’s contemporary Hesiod believed that only jealousy, hatred, and envy spurred mankind to activity, and looking around today, nearly 3,000 years down the road, it would be hard to argue he was wrong. The thinking that leads to Hesiod’s grim prerequisites for spurring mankind to activity, the thinking that leads to Donald Trump and market-based capitalism, addresses the ego through appeals to fear-based thinking, thinking that Nietzsche might describe as “only night and terror and an imagination accustomed to the horrible.” Fear-based thinking drives us to get weapons to defend ourselves from Nietzsche’s generic terror. It’s what forces us to choose either Donald J. Trump or Hillary Rodham Clinton as the less fearful evil. Curiosity-based thinking presents a possible alternative to fear-based thinking. If we step back from the ego, if we don’t filter the experience of being alive through the artificial construct of fear, the world becomes a much-more interesting place, not a hell-scape filled with nothing but random terror, but a world that inspires and entertains. Fear-based thinking leads to what the Buddha called “misplaced desires,” desires that mostly fall under the categories of possession and control. When we engage in domineering or manipulative behavior, we’re succumbing to fear-based thinking. When looked at from outside the cage of ego, fear-based thinking doesn’t seem terribly appealing, yet it’s the predominant form of thinking in our world. The earliest organized hierarchical control systems imposed on humanity took the form of religion, which is the ultimate expression of fear-based thinking. Organized religions provided the mythologies that motivate fear-based thinkers to this day. Fluid metaphor might make the curiosity-based thinker go a big rubbery one, but concretized mythology spins the propellers of fear-based thinkers and nothing is less fluid and more concretized than religious dogma. Constructive science occupies the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum from religion. While the normalcy biases of fear-based thinkers often impede scientific advances—the Catholic Inquisition forcing Galileo to recant his theory of heliocentrism, for example—curiosity-based thinking has been the driving force behind most scientific advancement. Because our understanding of science constantly evolves, any scientific text must likewise evolve. A two-year-old text on computer technology is hopelessly out-of-date. Religious texts are a different kettle of fish. Hebrew priests began writing texts that eventually became the Bible like The First Book of Isaiah in the 8th century BCE. These ancient texts explain at great lengths the rules and procedures that preoccupied 8th century BCE Hebrews, like the proper method for burning stools upon which menstruating women have sat. The need for burning stools upon which menstruating women have sat is not a major concern for most 21st-century humans, nor are most of the other nuggets of wisdom presented in the Bible terribly useful today, yet this book is still considered the Official Word of God™, and God help anyone with the temerity to question His Official Word. Christianity has remained one of the dominant mythological systems for over 2,000 years because of brilliant marketing to fear-based thinkers. The initial marketers of Christianity addressed the primary consequences of ego by focusing on that which the human animal most fears—death—and that which we most desire: sex. Expiring and begetting are addressed in equal measure in the Official Word of God™, although over centuries the liturgies of most mainstream Christian denominations have moved away from the more entertaining begetting part to focus on the more fearful death part. Religion was the original product marketed through fear-based thinking, but others followed. By the time feudalism had given way to capitalism, science had advanced to the point where the Catholic Inquisition could no longer force the Galileos of the world to recant without looking like oddly-dressed buffoons and the ruling elite needed something more sophisticated than religion to terrify the peasantry into submission: the organized nation state. Like religion, the nation state marketed its product through fear-based thinking, though in a more sophisticated form than religion: a monopoly on the use of violence. Rather than the fear of burning in a lake of fire for sinning, the nation state offered torture, imprisonment, and/or death for disobeying laws laid down by the ruling elite. It also offered protection from the marauding forces of rival nation states, guaranteeing that any ruling elite with enough gumption to create a nation state would also create rival nation states to provide fear-generating enemies, justifying the existence of their own nation state. [dropcap]A[/dropcap]s the industrial revolution gave birth to our current system of market-based capitalism, fear-based marketing likewise evolved. By this time the fear of the nation state’s monopoly on the use of violence was sufficiently ingrained to keep the peasantry more-or-less compliant with the dictates of the ruling elite, so fear-based marketing evolved from an outright control mechanism into an effective tool for turning peasants into reliable consumers, generating capitalism’s capital. Fear-based marketing now convinces us that we have to dress a certain way, drive a specific vehicle, and purge ourselves of the all the scents of humanity by using the correct toiletry products if we ever hope to engage in coitus again. Even then at least half of us had best consume the correct pharmaceutical products for maintaining erections if said coital act is to be considered even marginally successful. As market-based capitalism took over, the propaganda broadcast by corporate media supplanted religious dogma as the primary source of concretized mythology. Corporate media presents an immutable reality that we can use to identify our team. If we get our propaganda from Fox, for example, we are on Team Red and think Trump is the second coming of Christ. If we get our propaganda from MSNBC, we are on Team Blue and Obama makes our putters flutter. (By now Hillary Clinton just sort of makes everyone uncomfortable.) Which team we identify with is irrelevant; the important thing is that we identify one team as “ours” and internalize all the fear-based propaganda associated with that team, thus making it easier for the ruling elite to tickle our hot buttons. Substituting fear-based thinking with curiosity-based thinking could lead humanity down a different path, but we seem preternaturally disposed toward relying on fear-based thought as the defining factor in our lives. To get past this, we might need to repackage concretized mythology in a fashion that propagates curiosity-based thinking instead of fear-based thinking. Perhaps that means inventing a new curiosity-based religion. Inventing a curiosity-based religion means inventing a curiosity-based God as its figurehead. The ancient Greek philosophy of Cynicism, which stresses living in accord with nature and opposing convention, could be an appropriate foundation for a curiosity-based religion that embodies the zeitgeist of the 21st century, and that most illustrious of Cynic philosophers Diogenes of Sinope would make an allegorically perfect God to invent. Otherwise known as Diogenes the Dog because of his insistence on publicly defecating and engaging in autoerotic activities in the marketplace, he lived in a clay pot called a pithos and earned his living as a beggar. Diogenes abhorred conformity. He advised people to abandon the artificial desires that chain the masses to a continual state of madness. Diogenes might be a tough God to sell to the current masses who are nothing if not chained to a continual state of madness by artificial desire because, well, he was sort of a dick. When a listener demanded that Diogenes convince him to accept the philosophy of Cynicism, Diogenes responded, “If I could convince you of anything, I’d convince you to hang yourself.” Still, this masturbating philosophical dog gained such a reputation that he garnered the attention of Alexander the Great, who traveled to Athens to visit Diogenes. Alexander was so impressed with this brilliant philosopher that he offered to grant Diogenes whatever he desired. “I will give you anything,” the great man said as he towered over Diogenes, who was sunning himself on his clay pithos. “What do you want?” Diogenes, who seemed utterly incapable of fear-based thought, replied, “I want you to move and stop blocking the sun.” Illustration: Hell panel from H. Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, a triptych probably painted between 1490 and 1510, when the painter was in his late middle age, possibly around 50 years old. Things to ponder While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented. Parting shot—a word from the editors In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report [premium_newsticker id=”211406″] But that’s not where we are now. In fact, there never were any “good old days.” The USA has been a plutocracy thinly disguised as a democracy, ever since it was “founded” on genocide and slavery. In fact, ever since long before then. Capitalism is only a few hundred years old, but capitalism is just the current manifestation of private property, a cultural wrong turn we took 10,000 years ago. We've become accustomed to it, so it’s hard to see that we made a mistake when we decided not to share with our cousins, not to care about our neighbors. But the mess we’re in now -- with the ecosystem and the economy both falling apart, and a homeless beggar on every street corner, and some loner shooting up a school every few days -- were an inevitable consequences of our system of not caring. Those are not just superficial aberrations. No matter how you “reform” capitalism, it will still be based on not sharing, if it is still in any sense capitalism. There is no kinder, gentler capitalism. If you want to ban mean and vicious alligators from the swimming pool, you’ll have to ban ALL the alligators from the swimming pool. Things to ponder While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented. Parting shot—a word from the editors In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report [premium_newsticker id=”211406″] |