Escalation

A few lines I penned

The fight back against the entire system is the only fight that can offer a better future.

That’s right, all of it. The whole system, every aspect of the capitalist reality, economic, political social, all of it stands against us.

The challenge that faces us today is on two levels. On the first level, the daily reality of the capitalist crisis, the cuts, be they wage cuts, cuts in services however packaged, welfare cuts, hikes in exploitation, more for them, the capitalist class to keep up their stocks and shares their bonds and a constellation of impossible to decipher (for the outsider) financial tricks that keep the hundreds of millions rolling into the coffers of the best paid.

And on the second level, we face the struggle to respond to the crisis, a struggle which is blocked by a thousand and one political and Trade Union outfits preventing a real attack on the capitalist root cause of the economic nightmare unravelling every day.

Sure we need to combat every cut, every attempt to burden us with a crisis that we never caused, but unless we go beyond the individual issues, unless we put two and two together and come up with a class fight against capitalism, we are condemned to be on the losing end of a class war that capitalism has to fight to survive. Capitalism does not offer the possibility of a “fair” solution, no matter how much we struggle. Capitalism realises the profit it requires through exploiting us or it starts to fall to pieces, and we get mass unemployment. All the illusions have to be stripped away, the capitalist class have no choice but to cut our conditions, they cannot do otherwise. Capitalism without mass unemployment, without incrementing poverty, without a widening wealth divide, that is the fantasy that the capitalist left peddle to a working class who are ever more resistant to the idea that labour and the trade unions are with “us” against “them”.

The solution resides in one concept – escalation. It does not matter where struggles begin, either they spark off a massive revolt against all the attacks we face or they will be ground into the dust like the miners in fruitless isolation. Maybe the Trade Unions will cry victory when they get the bosses to reduce pay cuts and lay offs, but that is part of the game, the pay cuts and lay offs still happen. Perhaps a struggle will win, but all the time the working class as a whole is getting worse off, here and abroad, as the capitalist crisis only worsens, ensuring the future attacks.

Escalation without limits is our solution, the greater the escalation, the greater the lessons in self organisation for the whole class. No matter victory or, more likely, defeat, the real gain is the step towards the end of the system, the awareness that the entire system, root and branch is unfit for human consumption and has to be put down.Economic struggle beyond trade union limits of token days here and there, beyond trade limits of one section of the class on their own against the capitalist state, its legal teeth, applauded by the media of the rich, is only the start. The need is for a political fight back to bury this system which has only got worse to offer, globally, and threatens to bury all of us in a paupers’ grave.

There is but one, transparent solution, build the revolutionary party, root the idea of revolution in the working class and carry it out. The capitalist attacks cannot be voted out, bringing down this government will usher in a worse one, that’s all capitalism offers.

Building the Revolutionary Party is the task of today so revolution may be possible tomorrow, otherwise, the capitalist future is all we have, worse, worse and worse again, to the destruction of the environment, and humanity itself as the crisis and war escalate if we do not escalate our class war.

Forum: 

I think I cannot disagree with a single sentiment in Stephen's article but I am not convinced that this is the best way to communicate the ideas in it. In some ways to call escalation a concept is a mistake since it is the process of increasing class struggle. This has to be a material fact if revolution in our terms is to occur. Stephen has posted this on the website (forum) so it would be good if people discussed it there.(from J)

This got me (OP) thinking. Correct me if I am wrong. A concept is a way of representing multiple real examples. A concept is a general idea. Is "class" not a concept? a concept does not have to be simply a thought with no basis in material reality. similarly "theory" - a theory does not denote non reality- theories of gravity, electricity, communism refer to very real phenomena. J mitigated his critique with "in some ways..." but I think there may be a slight problem in the framework he is using. (Or with my framework).

Dialectical materialism may come to our rescue here. Not, A nor B, but both. Historical materialism is not enough. Dialectical materialism is our outlook. Now, i am sure some of you can spend pages and pages arguing, but I think we are going to be "paralysed by analysis" if we start to apply these semantic arguments. Where does it end?

Escalation in my mind is a concept because it covers a multiplicity of real and future events.

Anyway, feel free to contradict, I think there is something to be learned here. I'll put this on the forum for posterity.One thing for sure, anyone who denies the importance of theory is no revolutionary.

J. knows, he wrote the book on class consciousness!

The issue is not about whether this is a valid concept or not but whether what you are describing is happening. Whilst the original post hits all the right buttons we are faced with the problem that there is no concerted class response in the UK just yet. When the TUC announced the demonstration on March 26th (about 6 months ago as I recall) I thought that there would be a more consistent class opposition which they (the unions) would be seeking to divert into their campaign to basically bring back Labour. I think this is what the TUC executive thought too. But what has become clear is that the cuts have been carefuly calibrated to be spread out and have not yet materially hit many people (unemployment as you note in passing has had a bigger impact than the cuts). A lot of workers are frightened by the spectre of uemployment (in the 1980s the ruling class found to their agreeable surprise that it disciplined the workforce a lot more than all the Thacherite legisaltion) Many workers are still receptive to the idea that if they keep their heads down (for the bourgeoisie's much promised recovery to take place) then all will be bearable. Those most militantly fighting cuts tend to fight on one front at a time (carers, libraries, forests etc etc ) as I think your original acknowledges when it calls for a united concerted action. The problem is that the UK state has been a lot smarter in its cuts programme than say the French state (the Sarkozy regime did not expect pensions cuts to mobilise everyone in the way it did) and because many of them are long term the response is fragmented and, lets be honest, as yet rather feeble. "Escalation" in this context seems wishful thinking as there is not much to escalate. Agreed that we should call for a wider fight against capitalism (and not just the cuts which is a Labour Movement con to bring back the other lot) and that we should call for a more united fight rather than the piecemeal campaigns which are usually just recruting stunts for the tradtional Left (as you also note) but I think we need to start from where we are first...

I think that we should always pose the revolutionary path regardless of the level of support for it.

Isn't this where we are today....

It does not matter where struggles begin, either they spark off a massive revolt against all the attacks we face or they will be ground into the dust like the miners in fruitless isolation.

There is no problem in stating the reality of the working class confusion, low level of response, etc, but today or tomorrow, however the class raises its head, the only hope lies in sparking off something bigger.

And that more become revolutionaries, globally.

What else is there?

And likely it is the uselessness of the previous modes of struggle developped over the post WW2 period which has led to the current low level of class response in some countries, whilst in other countries the deprivation has breached the safety level and the violence has broken out against all divisions, even if still not on the basis of coherent class politics.

The working class is being pushed towards the starting line everywhere, the balance between survival in silence through a managed crisis and "storming the gates of heaven" shifting to the latter as all conditrions are eroded, and not always gradually.

Where the struggles have broken out, they need to escalate, workers contemplating struggle need to realise that the starters gun can shoot anywhere, but there is no finishing line.

I also don't disagree with anything in Stephens article, which I think is very good and needs wider dissemination. But why it's content has sparked off a weird discussion about the idea of 'escalation' , and whether this is a viable concept or not, bewilders me. (But I think you guys are just talking to one another, aren't you, in a sort of closed off circle?) What you're talking about here is class struggle isn't it? And of course we want class struggle, and we want more and more, yes, we want it to escalate. We know what we want, but we don't know how to get it, and I don't think dialectical materialism is going to be much help here, even if it's better than the historical kind. There may be a low level of class response now, but surely it's going to explode sooner or later. If it doesn't then we are all defeated, and all the talk about the proletarian revolution over the last almost two hundred years will have been proved a waste of time. Interesting and fascinating, but finally just a way of passing time. We will have had the evolution of the species elaborated, but we will have failed in our selves, for ourselves, to have evolved sufficient revolutionary consciousness to to begin humanity's last and essential leap into communism. Is this to be humanity's undoing then? That the proletariat and it's revolutionary vanguards were proved incapable of developing the consciousness needed to build the new society? That the bourgeoisie proved themselves invincible, destroying not just humanity but maybe even the planet. I don't think so! You say the starter's gun can go off anytime - maybe it already has in some places - and that there is no finishing line. But there you are mistaken. In fact there are two finishing lines. Number one is the establishment of the proletariat's dictatorship. Number two, after the long and arduous period of transition, is the establishment of communism. Workers of the world unite!

Quote

You say the starter’s gun can go off anytime — maybe it already has in some places — and that there is no finishing line. But there you are mistaken. In fact there are two finishing lines. Number one is the establishment of the proletariat’s dictatorship. Number two, after the long and arduous period of transition, is the establishment of communism. Workers of the world unite!

Careful, you sound like one of us....

that is what I am saying, - no matter how a dispute starts, whether it is for an extra piss break or the right to wear jeans at work, no matter how pathetic, it has to snowball into something that breaks free of capitalism.

Actually i am not sure about the long and arduous period of transition, maybe it could be very fast.