STRUCTURE VS. MORALISM

In North America and much of the Anglosphere, when the left does not live up to its desires there is a great deal of hand wringing and mea culpas. “Why can't we convert the NDP (Canadian social democrats) to socialism? Why are some workers voting for Trump? Why is the labor movement so weak? It must be our fault and what did we do wrong? It must be the result of “identity politics”. ”

To an extent, such questions ARE necessary, but their over-emphasis and the total ignorance of an 800 pound gorilla in the room, shows an underlying and unacknowledged world view which is causing a distortion of reality. The emphasis on moralism and ideas comes straight from liberalism. A socialist and anarchist analysis emphasizes the STRUCTURAL aspects of the system, without ignoring ideas, but relegating them to a secondary level.

Liberalism in various forms is hegemonic in North American society. The “official” left, right and center are all variations of liberalism, no matter the labels they might give themselves. Whether self-styled social democrats or conservatives they are united by their neoliberalism. We should not be surprised then, that the “far left” is influenced by liberalism.

Now about the 800 pound gorilla that is being ignored. It is composed of the political-legal structure and trade union legislation.

Political structure – Both the First-Past-The-Post electoral system and the US Congressional system severely limit democratic input. The first puts enormous hurdles in the way of dissident parties such as socialists and Greens gaining seats in parliament and keeps them almost permanently reduced to a tiny minority if they should get in. The US political system with its duopoly is deliberately designed to exclude radical parties. (It is the only alleged democracy in which “third party” is a term of contempt and in which no Green or social democratic party has a seat at the national level.) Parties become “catch all” centrists and the radicals within them are marginalized.

Trade Union legislation. Given the weakness of the left, it is no wonder that a a host of unnatural hurdles are put in the way of organizing a union shop. Be that as it may, the existing system is “winner take all”, if after a union runs the obstacle course and wins a certification. The minority who do not want the union become members anyway. The only way you can change the union is during a legal “raiding period” . There is a dues check-off, which means the company automatically deducts the fees for the union. At first sight, this seems like a good system, but it has some deep flaws which serve to undermine trade union and general working class militance.

Due check off means that a union can become wealthy relative to unions which did not possess this privilege. Wealth means a highly paid, and increasingly professional (and self-serving) leadership. Having a large minority of members who are wishy-washy or even hostile to the union is a dead weight and a permanent orientation away from militance. Like political parties under FPTP, such unions are “catch-all” organizations and the permanent tendency is toward moderation. The union bureaucracy takes a dim view of radicals and does everything to isolate them and minimize their influence.

Now let's contrast the North American political and trade union system with a structure found elsewhere.

In most of continental Europe you have a parliamentary system combined with a proportional ballot. This means that any group getting more that four or five percent of the vote gets a seat. Thus it is relatively easy for new parties to get established, and hence socialist and Green parties in most European parliaments. Since the issues these parties raise are real issues, they soon grow in influence. They can then become part of a coalition government and the price for doing so, will be the enacting of certain of their positions. Thus parties to the left of the social democratic center can have an influence that they do not have in less democratic political systems.

The existence of functioning and influential radical parties, also means there will be media promoting these ideas, if not party journals and web sites, a milieu that is sympathetic to them and promotes many of their concepts. Thus, radicalism is kept alive among the population and is not completely smothered by corporate media.

In most of Europe, the trade union system is more democratic than in North America. Each workplace over a certain size is entitled to form a “works council.” In order to be represented they do not have to jump through a lot of hoops, to have a council is their right. The workers vote on who represents them on the council, and it can be from any trade union central that has members in the shop. Hence one tendency does not take over the membership and the various socialist, communist and syndicalist union representatives have to work together in some manner, without losing their independence. Class struggle and syndicalist unions thus have a chance at gaining influence. As such, in France we have the Solidarity unions, (the fourth largest union center), in Spain, the syndicalist CGT, (third largest union) the CNT and the base unions and in Italy the COBAs. (base unions). In the North American context these unions would be tiny and ineffective, whereas they have hundreds of thousands of members.

Note that “base unions” refers to the highly democratic, class struggle unions which developed in the 1980s in opposition to the more conservative bureaucratic unions. It also should be noted that in France, Italy and Spain, the “social union” tends to predominate rather than the US-style business union or right-wing social democratic unions. Social unions seek more than just the protection of their membership, but seek a “democratic socialist” reform of capitalism. One example of a social union is the French CGT, the largest of the union federations in that country.

What the labour structure means in practice is that unions are “poor” and the people in leadership positions are more likely to be there because they believe in trade unions than for a high paid position and cocktails with the bosses. Since there is no dues check-off, the shop stewards have to collect the dues, which means the rank and file have the leaders on a short leash compared to the American situation. There is no dead wood membership and those who belong to the union tend to be militants, this is further pressure to keep the union honest.

The existence of social, class struggle and syndicalist unions along with viable socialist parties, though a minority movement with the exception of the social unions, means that class consciousness is kept alive. These groups are the “keepers of the flame” for class consciousness is based upon memory, of keeping alive the traditions of struggle. If this knowledge and practice is suppressed and forgotten, workers who are better paid merge into a fake middle class, or if they are marginal workers, become lumpenized. The existence of viable Green Parties (and even better, Red-Green Parties) means that eco-awareness and the possibility of reform is much greater than where such parties are minuscule. Class consciousness helps explain the “French paradox” - France has a small union membership (about 10% of the workforce) but when strikes are called millions come out and the country is shut down. Class consciousness is much more developed here and the political and labour structures play a highly significant role in its maintenance.

This does not mean the unions, socialist and Green parties are above criticism. Just check the revolutionary media in those countries! Where these organizations are of some impact, there are also groups to the left of them. The social unions have revolutionary syndicalists nipping at their heels. The socialist parties are faced with strong anarchist and horizontalist movements. The Greens are faced with eco-anarchism and de-growth militants. It would be very unlikely that these revolutionary movements would have a fraction of the support they do without the prior existence of the more moderate groups, keeping alive some of the basic class and ecological concepts. Nothing exists in isolation.

Where does that leave North American syndicalists, anarchists and socialists? I don't think we have enough time to go through the laborious process of democratizing our politics and labour relations. I would certainly welcome any changes for the better, but the problems facing us are so extreme and so pressing that they do not allow us this luxury. It would be better to stop the blaming and hand-wringing and to face reality – the cards are well and truly stacked against us. With that realization, we can attempt to find new methods that suit the adverse conditions we face.

 

STRUCTURE VS MORALISM – THE EXAMPLE OF “THIRD WORLD REVOLUTIONARIES”

We cannot say this enough – when examining a phenomenon you must look at the material conditions which underlie it and not simply reduce this to ideas and moralism. This is especially true when assessing the role of revolutionaries in the colonized and imperialized world in the post-War period.

In countries that were nominally independent – such as those of Latin America – it was soon evident that “regular” capitalism would not allow for development, or at best a distorted development in the interests of imperial capital. It was also evident that those countries that had developed, did so by ignoring the pleas of the political economists for laissez faire and minimum governmental action. The model that evolved, largely based upon the Mexican experience, could be called the nationalist, populist or social democratic model. The essential aspects of this model were infrastructural spending by government, national ownership of resources, land reform, tariffs to protect budding industry, import substitution, education and social reform.

Such policies were adopted in Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica and Mexico at various times from the late-1930s until the 1960s. The result was a great improvement in the living standards of the population. With decolonization, attempts were made to introduce similar policies into Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The nationalist model of development had a vicious adversary in imperial capital, chiefly US imperialism and its junior partners, the UK, Canada and France. Not only was there constant pressure to abandon the model and open one's country to imperial capital, but violence was commonly used to crush governments that seemed too independent. Thus the social democratic Arbenz government was overthrown as was the nationalist Mossedegh in Iran, Peron in Argentina, the populists in Bolivia, etc.

There was however, one country that had succeeded in the national form of development and had been successful in opposing the attacks by US imperialism . This was the USSR. You can understand why revolutionaries in the imperialized world, after seeking the brutal overthrow of social democratic or liberal governments by the US, might start to look closely at that model for national development.

Imperialism was able to take advantage of the looseness and complexity of a democratic system, by funding subversion and creating division within the state, leading to right-wing coups d'etats. The answer seemed to be to create an enforced unity through a one-party state, which would then organize the country to accomplish the necessary tasks of economic and social development. In the enthusiasm of the moment, the now-obvious drawbacks to such a model – corruption, sclerosis, paranoia and a population still powerless and therefore cynical, were not evident.

Thus, by the 1960s the Marxist Leninist model had become THE model of development. It had initially been a response to imperialism, but now this set of ideas had become a material force in its own right.

We now must examine the history of ideology in the imperialized countries, most especially – since they formed the vanguard – those of Latin America.

For the first 30 plus years of the 20^th Century the revolutionary movement in Latin America was anarcho-syndicalism. The movement remained strong in Bolivia until the 1940s, Cuba and Uruguay well into the 1950s, but in most countries it was a spent force by the 1930s, crushed out of existence by state violence. Had Che and Fidel been born 25 years earlier they would have been anarchists, since this ideology had hegemony at that time.

In the 1930s a new revolutionary force emerged and replaced syndicalism - populism. The model for the populists was the Mexican revolutionary process at its most radical. This was a form of national development with the nationalization of resources, state created infrastructure, land and social reform. All within a state which was at least nominally democratic.

The populist model had some successes, Venezuela, Costa Rica, for a brief period in Brazil under Vargas, Peron's Argentina, and Paz Essensaro's Bolivia. But the movement was defeated in Guatemala and Cuba. Fidel and Che, up till then had been populists. The former as a member of the Orthodoxo Party, the latter as a left-Peronist. With the crushing of populism, like the crushing of nationalism elsewhere in the 1950s, the way was cleared for the ascent of Marxist Leninist ideas.

Thus not a situation of “bad people” with “bad ideas” but one of a situation posed and limited by material conditions.

But the dialectic did not stop with the ML model. As before mentioned, the failings of that system also became evident. (And I suspect no one was more aware of that than Fidel Castro) From the 1970s-on there was a continual attempt to combine anti-imperialism and development with a pluralist state. The top-down, one party state model was abandoned. Successes were few at first. Unidad Popular was brutally crushed in Chile, The Sandinistas held out for a decade, but were voted out of power. Cuba chose mass involvement combined with an ever-increasing openness of discussion and I suspectthat this is one reason for the strength of that government. The 21^st century saw the “pink wave”. In spite of imperialism's successes in eliminating relatively progressive governments in Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador, the recent (and overturned) coup in Bolivia, and the on-going attack on Venezuela, this movement is far from being defeated.

Other revolutionary, anti-imperialist, but pluralist systems can be found with the Zapatistas and the Rojava Confederalists.

I think they key is mass involvement in autonomous organizations. This allows both pluralism and is a strong force against subversion.

 

WHAT IS EXTREMISM?

Just because you have some ideal or goal which is – or seems - completely at odds with the world as it is, does not mean you are an extremist. Extremism is an attitude, not just a set of ideas or concepts. You can thus take any desire and tackle it in an extremist fashion or in a non-extreme way. Being, say an anarchist or a socialist, an atheist or a Christian does not make one an extremist, but there are plainly extremist versions of these world-views. So what is the extremist attitude?

The extremist is, first and foremost, a bully and an authoritarian. It is always “my way or the highway.” There is no respect for any slight deviation from what the extremist thinks – agreeing with half of what that person thinks is seen as wrong as complete disagreement. There is no respect for other views and no attempt to find a common ground. Tolerance and nuance are seen as weakness and decadence. People who hold somewhat different views are abused, called “sell-outs”, “revisionists”, “renegades” , “liberals”, “turn-coats” “wishy-washy” etc. When extremists hold state power, they will use that power to persecute, criminalize and punish those with different viewpoints. Extremists at the head of movements without state power will call upon their members to attack and even kill people whose viewpoints offend them.

Extremism is, of course, more than just an attitude. There are extreme doctrines. These doctrines are completely at odds with several hundred years of social progress and they are based not upon empirically varifiable data but conspiracy theories, “revealed.” religion and pseudo-science. Furthermore, the forseeable implementation of these docrines is part and parcel of those doctrines. Examples include religious extremists that are homophobes and misogyists, political economists who seek to abolish a century of social reform and go back to a Dickensian capitalism, neoStalinists who would round up and shoot anarchists and socialists, and fascists, Nazis, “alt-rightists”, and white supremists of every possible description.

Extreme doctrines are a magnet for extremist personalities, and of course, such doctrines have been constructed by such personalities to begin with. But this leads us to ask “where does the extremist personality come from?” The same place all bullies come from – emotional trauma. Is it any wonder then that extremism tends to develop in societies with a great deal of violence, or among groups that have been brutally oppressed within a violent society? There are, of course, relatively priviledged groups, who see the coming of equality as a threat. Much of white racism is rooted here.

Finally, it needs pointing out that imperialism has aided and abetted extremism in its war against national liberation movements and general social progress. Beginning in the 1930s the American Manufacturers Assn. bankrolled, “Christian fundamentalist” groups as a way of combatting the “social gospel” of mainstream Protestants. Fundamentalism has been promoted in Latin America to offset Catholic social teaching and especialy Liberation Theology. At home fascists are given kid gloves treatment – if the left was anywhere near as violent as these groups they would be swiftly suppressed. The fascists are capitalism's “useful idiots.”

In the Middle East no effort was spared by imperialism to destroy the secular nationalist modernizer regimes. It seems to have been forgotten that back in the 1950s and 60s there was a strong modernizing, secularist movement in the Middle East which included Communist and Socialist Parties. Islamic extremism has two roots, one is the destruction of the secular nationalist Mossedegh government in Iran and its replacement by the brutal Shah, the other is the US-engendered defeat of the leftist Afghan government. Britain encouraged the Muslim Brotherhood in opposition to the secular Nassar government and both the USA and the UK backed the reactionary Saudis with their Wahhabi extremist version of Islam which they have exported throughout the Muslim world. The US has added more fuel to the fire by giving Israel a complete carte blanche to do anything they want against the Palestinians.

And people wonder why there are extremist groups?