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Why Have the Intellectuals Failed to Make Connections with the Working Class?Contributed by Mohsen HakimiSaturday, 23 September 2006Last Updated Sunday, 29 October 2006
The ruling consciousness and thoughts of every society are the consciousness and thoughts of the ruling class of that society. The ruling class of capitalist society is the capitalist class, thus, the dominant consciousness of capitalist society is the bourgeois consciousness, and intellectuals and thinkers of this society in general are bourgeois intellectuals.Therefore, the answer to this question simply is that the intellectuals could not make a connection with the working class because they were bearers of the bourgeois consciousness.But the issue is not so simple. When there is a talk about the intellectuals who want to make a connection with the working class, inevitably it engages the Marxist left. And replying to the above question is impossible without studying this subject. In the Marxist left tradition, what is meant by the intellectuals who make a connection with the working classis conscious individuals who disconnect from their class, that is the capitalist class, and join the working class. Again, in this tradition, the meaning of the "connection" with the working class is not a simple connection, but an organic connection; meaning, the transformation of the intellectuals who disconnected from their class to inseparable parts of a living class, called the working class. This connection has usually been metaphorically compared to the brain and heart. This means that, like brain and heart which none of them without the other is the same as what it really is, the relationship between the intellectuals, who are detached from their class, and the workers, is alive, blossoming, and efficient, if and only if each without the other is not the same as when they are together. Consequently, the above question becomes like this: why have the intellectuals who have left their class for the working class failed to make an organic connection with the latter class? My brief and concise, yet at the same time clear and transparent, answer to this question is: it is so because the intellectuals have tried to make a connection with the working class not as worker-activists but as ideological_sectarians. I explain these two categories. By "worker-activists" I mean the individuals who, independent of their class background, put themselves in the heart of the living and ongoing struggles of the workers (which does not necessarily mean a physical attendance in the processes of production and distribution, unless iron necessity of making a livelihood requires so, which it does in the vast majority of cases.); do not view this struggle from outside; take part in this struggle practically and openly like other workers; view the self-motivated but anti-capitalist struggle of the workers for achieving the immediate demands as their point of departure and try to promote this struggle to a level which it becomes self-conscious and organized. These worker-activists might belong to a group, organization or party or might not. However, they make a distinction between the interests of the labour movement and those of this or that group and by virtue of conceiving the former as a social movement, not a sect; they make the former superior to the latter. They reach at the necessity of being active in the workers movement not because the ideology of this find someone of the same mind, rather they search to find militant-political comrades. These militant-political comrades may have different ideas from them, but they do not see this difference as an obstacle for a common political struggle. These worker-activists do not hide the differences of their ideas with those of other militant-political workers; rather they express their differences openly and want other workers to do the same thing. But they do not condition the militant-political unity with the others to converting the beliefs of the others to the same ideas. Thus, in a word, our worker-activists define their identities not by ideological-sectarian activity but by a worker activism that is movement-political.The left intellectuals who have attempted making a connection with the working class lacked this characteristic. They saw the theories of Karl Marx, which are nothing other than the theoretical expression of the essentially anti-capitalist movement of the working class, as an ideological system or school of thought called "Marxism" and "Marxism-Leninism" after Lenin that forecasted the general trend of society and history, and that society and history will get to that destiny inevitably. Marx put his insight precisely against this kind of system-making and determinism. Prior to Marx, scholars had contended that the genuine human activities were the theretical activities and that the duty of human beings was only to cognize or interpret the world, presented in the form of systems of thoughts. In the history of thought, Marx was the first one who asserted that "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it". This statement implied a new definition of human being in contrast to that of Aristotle who defined human being as the "rational animal". Marx did not characterize human beings with their rationality that is with their intellectual and cognitive faculty. He rather distinguished human beings with their "conscious activity to change the world". He expressed the genuinely human activity as a"practical-critical activity" (Theses on Feuerbach), an expression that implies both the activity of human beings to change the world and their thoughts to interpret and criticize the world. Thus, in Marx we witness an important and decisive turning point in the history of thought, a turning point that shifts viewing human beings in the sphere of mere thought to viewing them in the sphere of practical intellect, or Praxis. Praxis undermined all system-makings prior to Marx,on the top of which was the Hegelian system. This was possible because it showed the solution of all metaphysical mystifications. Im Anfang war die Tat : In the beginning was the deed. (Goethe's Faust) - in the light of Praxis,thought was emancipated from all mysteries and turned into an open-ended affair. But this insight, after Marx, and in the name of his thought, was replaced by a new kind of revisionist system-making. If before Marx we had dealt with the systems of thoughts such as those of Plato and Hegel, after Marx we encountered systems like "Marxism" and "Dialectical Materialism"- believers of which acted in such a way as if they had ready made solutions for every problem. This was a retreat to the past and transformation of Marx"s thought into a religious conviction, which undoubtedly had its roots in the theoretical attempts of a class society for delaying its inevitable death. The left intellectuals in Iran, like elsewhere, accepted this system-making and religious creation, covered their populist and nationalist goals with them, and under the name of "Professional Revolutionaries" undertook to implement these systems and religions. To do this, these intellectuals needed to make contacts with the working class. Their systems said so. But, for making this connection with the working class, they had to depart from an ideological point, rather than a militant-political one. Their aim for making connections with the working class, as they said it themselves, was to "penetrate" and "ideologically capture" the class. They would see socialism not as an actually existing social movement (which undoubtedly needed to become self-conscious), but as anideology or system of thought that should be taken into the class from "without" and by them("Professional Revolutionaries"). And the class had to be captured by this system. To them, the words "penetration" and "capture" were the concepts which expressed the imposition of their ideological-sectarian frame works on the social movement of the workers. The practical result of this "penetration" and "ideological capturing" of the working class by the "Professional Revolutionary" was that they gave the working class a peck and pulled out its activists, the activists who after being detached from their base had to either take up arms and turn into obedient soldiers to fight for the interests of this or that sect; or turned into servants of this or that group to leaflet; or instrumentally used by this organization or that party to decorate their displays. At any rate, the outcome of this kind of making connection with the working class was nothing but depriving the workers movement of its activists. In other words, the left intellectuals not only failed to make an organic link with the working class. They also deprived this class of its activists. And these intellectuals themselves became like a transplanted organ that has been rejected by the body: Cut off from the capitalist class but not linked to the working class. Hence, the fate of our left intellectuals. The question is: Isn't it high time that these intellectuals give up paying expensive prices, and emerge not as ideological-sectarian activists but as worker-activists who take part in the class war of the working class against the capitalist system?
Against Wage-Labourhttp://againstwage.comPowered by Joomla!Generated: 27 August, 2007, 17:28
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:Bh ... cd=9&gl=us (http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:Bh0JGogmo0wJ:againstwage.com/index2.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26do_pdf%3D1%26id%3D47+working+class+intellectuals&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us)
This is Lenin, yes? Perhaps in part?
This sucker required a bunch of editing to make it readable.
Why Have the Intellectuals Failed to Make Connections with the Working Class?Contributed by Mohsen HakimiSaturday, 23 September 2006Last Updated Sunday, 29 October 2006
The ruling consciousness and thoughts of every society are the consciousness and thoughts of the ruling class of that society. The ruling class of capitalist society is the capitalist class, thus, the dominant consciousness of capitalist society is the bourgeois consciousness, and intellectuals and thinkers of this society in general are bourgeois intellectuals.Therefore, the answer to this question simply is that the intellectuals could not make a connection with the working class because they were bearers of the bourgeois consciousness.But the issue is not so simple. When there is a talk about the intellectuals who want to make a connection with the working class, inevitably it engages the Marxist left. And replying to the above question is impossible without studying this subject. In the Marxist left tradition, what is meant by the intellectuals who make a connection with the working classis conscious individuals who disconnect from their class, that is the capitalist class, and join the working class. Again, in this tradition, the meaning of the "connection" with the working class is not a simple connection, but an organic connection; meaning, the transformation of the intellectuals who disconnected from their class to inseparable parts of a living class, called the working class. This connection has usually been metaphorically compared to the brain and heart. This means that, like brain and heart which none of them without the other is the same as what it really is, the relationship between the intellectuals, who are detached from their class, and the workers, is alive, blossoming, and efficient, if and only if each without the other is not the same as when they are together. Consequently, the above question becomes like this: why have the intellectuals who have left their class for the working class failed to make an organic connection with the latter class? My brief and concise, yet at the same time clear and transparent, answer to this question is: it is so because the intellectuals have tried to make a connection with the working class not as worker-activists but as ideological_sectarians. I explain these two categories. By "worker-activists" I mean the individuals who, independent of their class background, put themselves in the heart of the living and ongoing struggles of the workers (which does not necessarily mean a physical attendance in the processes of production and distribution, unless iron necessity of making a livelihood requires so, which it does in the vast majority of cases.); do not view this struggle from outside; take part in this struggle practically and openly like other workers; view the self-motivated but anti-capitalist struggle of the workers for achieving the immediate demands as their point of departure and try to promote this struggle to a level which it becomes self-conscious and organized. These worker-activists might belong to a group, organization or party or might not. However, they make a distinction between the interests of the labour movement and those of this or that group and by virtue of conceiving the former as a social movement, not a sect; they make the former superior to the latter. They reach at the necessity of being active in the workers movement not because the ideology of this find someone of the same mind, rather they search to find militant-political comrades. These militant-political comrades may have different ideas from them, but they do not see this difference as an obstacle for a common political struggle. These worker-activists do not hide the differences of their ideas with those of other militant-political workers; rather they express their differences openly and want other workers to do the same thing. But they do not condition the militant-political unity with the others to converting the beliefs of the others to the same ideas. Thus, in a word, our worker-activists define their identities not by ideological-sectarian activity but by a worker activism that is movement-political.The left intellectuals who have attempted making a connection with the working class lacked this characteristic. They saw the theories of Karl Marx, which are nothing other than the theoretical expression of the essentially anti-capitalist movement of the working class, as an ideological system or school of thought called "Marxism" and "Marxism-Leninism" after Lenin that forecasted the general trend of society and history, and that society and history will get to that destiny inevitably. Marx put his insight precisely against this kind of system-making and determinism. Prior to Marx, scholars had contended that the genuine human activities were the theretical activities and that the duty of human beings was only to cognize or interpret the world, presented in the form of systems of thoughts. In the history of thought, Marx was the first one who asserted that "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it". This statement implied a new definition of human being in contrast to that of Aristotle who defined human being as the "rational animal". Marx did not characterize human beings with their rationality that is with their intellectual and cognitive faculty. He rather distinguished human beings with their "conscious activity to change the world". He expressed the genuinely human activity as a"practical-critical activity" (Theses on Feuerbach), an expression that implies both the activity of human beings to change the world and their thoughts to interpret and criticize the world. Thus, in Marx we witness an important and decisive turning point in the history of thought, a turning point that shifts viewing human beings in the sphere of mere thought to viewing them in the sphere of practical intellect, or Praxis. Praxis undermined all system-makings prior to Marx,on the top of which was the Hegelian system. This was possible because it showed the solution of all metaphysical mystifications. Im Anfang war die Tat : In the beginning was the deed. (Goethe's Faust) - in the light of Praxis,thought was emancipated from all mysteries and turned into an open-ended affair. But this insight, after Marx, and in the name of his thought, was replaced by a new kind of revisionist system-making. If before Marx we had dealt with the systems of thoughts such as those of Plato and Hegel, after Marx we encountered systems like "Marxism" and "Dialectical Materialism"- believers of which acted in such a way as if they had ready made solutions for every problem. This was a retreat to the past and transformation of Marx"s thought into a religious conviction, which undoubtedly had its roots in the theoretical attempts of a class society for delaying its inevitable death. The left intellectuals in Iran, like elsewhere, accepted this system-making and religious creation, covered their populist and nationalist goals with them, and under the name of "Professional Revolutionaries" undertook to implement these systems and religions. To do this, these intellectuals needed to make contacts with the working class. Their systems said so. But, for making this connection with the working class, they had to depart from an ideological point, rather than a militant-political one. Their aim for making connections with the working class, as they said it themselves, was to "penetrate" and "ideologically capture" the class. They would see socialism not as an actually existing social movement (which undoubtedly needed to become self-conscious), but as anideology or system of thought that should be taken into the class from "without" and by them("Professional Revolutionaries"). And the class had to be captured by this system. To them, the words "penetration" and "capture" were the concepts which expressed the imposition of their ideological-sectarian frame works on the social movement of the workers. The practical result of this "penetration" and "ideological capturing" of the working class by the "Professional Revolutionary" was that they gave the working class a peck and pulled out its activists, the activists who after being detached from their base had to either take up arms and turn into obedient soldiers to fight for the interests of this or that sect; or turned into servants of this or that group to leaflet; or instrumentally used by this organization or that party to decorate their displays. At any rate, the outcome of this kind of making connection with the working class was nothing but depriving the workers movement of its activists. In other words, the left intellectuals not only failed to make an organic link with the working class. They also deprived this class of its activists. And these intellectuals themselves became like a transplanted organ that has been rejected by the body: Cut off from the capitalist class but not linked to the working class. Hence, the fate of our left intellectuals. The question is: Isn't it high time that these intellectuals give up paying expensive prices, and emerge not as ideological-sectarian activists but as worker-activists who take part in the class war of the working class against the capitalist system?
Against Wage-Labourhttp://againstwage.comPowered by Joomla!Generated: 27 August, 2007, 17:28
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:Bh ... cd=9&gl=us (http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:Bh0JGogmo0wJ:againstwage.com/index2.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26do_pdf%3D1%26id%3D47+working+class+intellectuals&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us)
This is Lenin, yes? Perhaps in part?
This sucker required a bunch of editing to make it readable.