Thoughts on organizing given the conditions of The American Working Class
Thoughts after reading "Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder" and thinking about how to organize a highly conservative American population for progressive causes.
Note: I’m not trying to say that what the right has to say is good, or that we’ve misunderstood them, etc. Yes, their ideas are dangerous. What I’m trying to say is that we need to acknowledge the political conditions of American society and find creative solutions to work within and around that so that we can start working towards a more just society immediately. My point is that we shouldn’t have to wait until everybody is progressive or until every politician is blue just to start; its about being creative about our conditions to get progressive wins, no matter the circumstances. Whether its for the liberation of the Palestinian People, providing homes, healthcare, etc for every *Human*, leaving no child hungry, or whatever other form of Justice that we MUST fight for, we shouldn’t have to wait until the conditions are absolutely perfect, we can always start now.
On Organizing
………………………………………
It’s no doubt that The American Working class is highly conservative. From an organizing standpoint, it’s one of the key conditions that we have to accept in continuing to push for progressive social change. But the most daunting task is pushing for progressive change knowing that The American Working class is highly conservative (even well-meaning liberals). So whats the solution?
Well, some may say that we need to vote! Join a political campaign, volunteer to register voters, bring your family out; anything to turn our government majority blue! And while I’m not necessarily against voting, I don’t think that’s the whole solution. What would be left of the world by the time we debate every single one of the 300 million Americans into being Socialists first before we can start pushing for change? What would be left of those who suffer and die under poverty by the time we vote in 100 socialist senators and 435 socialist representatives in the federal government and do the same in each State capitol and the same in each county and the same in each city? Pushing for progressive social change isn’t dependent on voting, and while having more progressive people in office can help, it’s not the solution. We shouldn’t get it in our heads that anything other than the organization of the working class (You) for the betterment of society is sufficient to achieve our goals. I’ll explain how this is possible using similar organizing tactics and philosophies of Unions, something I learned during my time spent as a Union Organizer.
Unions don’t need Girl-boss/Latino/Blue CEO’s to get what they want. Proper organization, bargaining techniques, and power grabs can get major progressive contract wins even with the most aggressively evil CEO’s or even a conservative staff. Sure, we can vote but we shouldn’t have to wait for every political cycle to get what we want. If we are well organized, we can bargain for progressive victories even with conservative politicians in office AND defend our wins when someone tries to attack them, instead of just saying “oh noooo, they want to take away women’s rights, whatever shall we do???”. If we play the “only vote” card, how long will it take for every politician to be progressive before we can get our wins? How long will the earth wither and wilt under the climate crisis, how long with the Palestinian people suffer, how long with our fellow Human being without homes struggle on the street, and how long will the working class have to suffer just to see any improvement? Organization of the working class is key, and with a properly organized proletariat, we can bargain, negotiate, and achieve highly progressive political wins even with conservatives in power or with a conservative population.
As for organizing with the right, it’s an absolute necessity, as unfortunate as it may seem to you. And organizing the right and incorporating them into the struggle is entirely possible. Don’t believe that every right winger is some Christian extremist who wants to genocide all LGBT identifying person. Talk to them and you’ll realize that, while some certainly are, most are working class people who want a solution but have been duped by society into putting blame on their follow working class siblings1 (relevant footnote if you want to read it). Even most conservatives are unaware that what they are angry at is capitalism, they just have been tricked into thinking otherwise. It’s important we try to show them the truth. Incorporate them into the struggle and maybe they’ll realize that immigrants aren’t suppressing their wages, their bosses are, or that “Gender-Ideology” isn’t whats increasing their taxes, and hopefully they’ll come around. And if they don’t, so what, we’ll still have our political wins. We cant have a powerful working class without complete solidarity amongst ourselves.
I believe that Socialism is the way forward for the working class, and if some conservatives may not believe so up front, they’ll definitely feel progressive victories taking a load off their shoulders as a worker. They’ll feel it. Hopefully that would be enough to spark a cultural change to the left for many conservatives, but if not, like I said, we still have our wins; and it will definitely set up the material conditions to push culture to the left.
Left Wing Communism??
………………………………………………………………….
All this was sparked after reading Left Wing Communism; An Infantile Disorder by Lenin. I’ll talk about the book here but if you’re not interested, no need to continue on.
Left Wing Communism is a pretty short essay, not much of a hard read, but I’ll quickly give a supeeeer brief explanation on one point in the book. Lenin’s argument is that we shouldn’t be what he calls “lefts”, or people who are so aggressively left that they refuse to work with or organize people to the right of them “on principle”. They are people who refuse to organize the right into a broader left wing movement or even cooperate with them to advance the goals of the left. Lenin is basically saying is that we shouldn’t have to wait until everyone is a leftist in order to start mobilizing for a progressive cause. We don’t HAVE to wait until every politician is a socialist, until every citizen is a socialist to even start towards our goal of building a just society. And he has a point! Looking at the conditions of the American working class, the global working class, the Urgency of the Climate crisis, the urgency of Palestinians who are being murdered, migrants who are forced to flee their homes, Black Americans who suffer under the terrifying force of the American government, and so on and so on, how much longer will we have to wait until we debate everyone into being a socialist, vote in all socialists in each federal, state, county, and city government institution until we can start building a mass movement? How many more African Americas will be murdered, Palestinians killed by genocide, how many more years will the earth have, how many more suffering the horror of homelessness, or migrants dying in the Sonoran desert, or families going without medical care, how many more people will suffer before we achieve a better society by going about this method of “no interaction with the right” or “no progress until we vote”? Like I said, societal change doesn’t happen by debating every single one of the 300 million Americans into socialism first and saying “but no wait, we can proceed, there’s one more person left to debate!! We still have 10 more politicians to vote in!!” We wont have a world left if we think like that. We need to be willing to organize in highly right wing spaces for progressive goals. And given that most Americans are highly conservative, it is especially so that we need to be willing to organize the right for our own good. Realistically, we can’t build a mass movement without them. We need to build and organize a broad and untied working class.
This isn’t to say that we compromise on our principles to appease them, throw them a bone to their dangerous ideas, but rather be smarter and learn to organize them for our benefit without lending them power to push their agenda. And it’s possible! For example, the Bolsheviks prior to the Russian revolution were incredible successful at organizing highly right wing spaces against the Czar. Thats the equivalent of organizing Mississippi Trumpers against Trump. Saying that we live in under highly conservative conditions isn’t an admission if impossibility, it’s acknowledging a major obstacle that requires creative solutions to get around. It’s about being smarter and out-organizing the upper class, and continuing despite that obstacle, not being scared by it.
Join a party and get organized. No amount of social Media posting or debates can bring about systemic change, only the organization of the working class.
Leave a comment, let me know your thoughts, maybe I didn’t properly explain things, maybe I’m misled. Let me Know!
Here’s a great example of this which I recently read from the Autobiography of Frederick Douglass. When he was transferred to a slave holder in Baltimore for the second time, he was sent to work in a shipyard to help build warships and what not. He mentioned that while there were slaves working there (Himself included), there had also been Free Black men working there as well under normal employment. He wrote about how the white workers, feeling the typical pressures faced under capitalism, organized and went on strike against their employer demanding the removal of all black workers, stating the black workers as the cause of their perils as workers. These White employees felt the pressures faced as a worker under capitalist society but had been tricked into believing it to be the fault of slaves and a class of workers also exploited by the capitalist system. Like I mentioned, these workers didn’t realize that what they were mad as was Capitalism; the same system that enslaved and exploited their fellow man. They just had been misguided by racism into believing the problem to be Black people, rather than the owning class.