| The contemporary political proletariat |
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| Written by Ianko Stoianov |
| Saturday, 27 September 2008 20:54 |
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The contemporary political proletariat
One of the immortal ideas of the great Marx deserves to be quoted in full here: ?For the revolution of a nation, and the emancipation of a particular class of civil society to coincide, for one estate to be acknowledged as the estate of the whole society, all the defects of society must conversely be concentrated in another class, a particular estate must be the estate of the general stumbling-block, the incorporation of the general limitation, a particular social sphere must be recognized as the notorious crime of the whole of society, so that liberation from that sphere appears as general self-liberation. For one estate to be par excellence the estate of liberation, another estate must conversely be the obvious estate of oppression.?1 Today?s society is still as divided into two classes fighting each other as it has ever been since the origin of the institution of private property ? the class of the politico-economic capitalists, i.e. the owners of the means of production, financial capital as well as the public good and the class of political proletarians, who neither control the means of production nor possess any public property, i.e. the class of people who are deprived of any economic and political capital. The modern political proletariat will incessantly continue to fight; this conflict will continue to determine the long historical processes, in which the human generations are bound to participate. Of all contemporary classes only the revolutionary power of the middle class is actually enormous; when it begins to fight for a humanist future, it will change the world. Having strong leaders willing to start to develop its political organizations, it will overcome its present reality and achieve its world-historical goals. Near is the day! Paradoxically enough, however, a large number of modern left thinkers fail to address today?s reality and understand which modern class has a tremendous revolutionary power ? now and here. The middle class is definitely the last one they would dare to call a revolutionary one; this idea is still impossible for them to be thought of, imagined or believed. In a way they are right but partially right. True, a certain part of it is without doubt a bourgeois proletariat ? a proletariat poisoned with the omnipresent neo-liberal ideology. Yet, on the whole it does not change the fact the proletariat is a giant with a great historical mission. Never are revolutionary classes the same. The downtrodden working class, which existed when Marx was alive, ceased to exist. It is not true that the "outcasts and outsiders" of today ? homeless, unemployed or badly-paid people, ? are becoming a new revolutionary class whose rebellion, as many left thinkers hope, would be one of the factors which could contribute to the downfall of capitalism. These thinkers are utterly wrong. The modern proletariat ? the working class plus the middle class, ? is materially as affluent as never before. At the same time it is that particular class of the society which does not own and control the means of production and, consequently, in complete line with the Marxist theory is as proletarianised as all previous classes have been before it. The members of the middle class still deserve to be called proletarians and we definitely need the term as much as ever before. Historically speaking, it was used as early as in ancient Rome to describe the lowest social class of citizens, whose members possessed no property. Today the term has such a derogatory meaning that for the huge majority of people it is absolutely unthinkable to acknowledge the fact that they are proletarians. So powerful are today?s omnipotent neo-liberals, so successfully have they created the tale of modern classless society and duped the deprived of any public property middle class into building the utopia of infinite consumerism that nobody dares to say that the emperor is naked. Yet, we are not cowards. We will to revive the term in order to show the shameful position of the self-contented middle class and we are determined to revive it. The proletariat of today is light years ahead of the ancient Roman proletariat whose members belonged to the poorest class and their only contribution to the prosperity of the state was their progeny for they had nothing else but their proles, i.e. offspring. As for Marx, he used the term in its humanistically-minded doctrine as a political category to refer to the working class, which was tremendously exploited by the bourgeoisie. However, we do not want to use the term only in the spirit of Marxian theory according to which the proletariat is only understood as that class of society which is deprived of ownership of the means of production. In fact, in no way is proletarianization a process uniquely associated with capitalism. Not only was the proletariat an integral part of the societies of Ancient Rome, feudal Europe and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics but it is also a part of today?s highly developed capitalism. True, the proletarian workers of today?s advanced industrial capitalist society have been brainwashed and fooled into thinking that they are members of the petit-bourgeoisie. Yet, their labour and their political capital are being exploited as much as the labour and the political capital of billions of their predecessors have been exploited for centuries by the capitalists, who own and control the means of production as well as the total political capital of the nation. There is no doubt that the modern 21st Century Proletariat does not defy Marx and Engels? primary definition of class division. Today?s deprived of any property class consist of agricultural, intellectual and industrial proletariat including the majority of people working in the service industry. They all belong to the social class, which possess no public property at all because ? forced to surrender unconditionally their economical and political power, ? they, de facto, have no other choice but agree their economical and political capital to be exploited without any conditions. The modern proletariat ? the working class and especially the more and more numerous middle class, ? with its misery of political will and political power, shamelessly usurped by the ruling elite, have the potential revolutionary power to change the world; it is predestined to change the world. This class still does not know what to want. Still lacking a powerful ideology and not knowing its historic mission, it does not dare to risk. Deprived of its political property and its political capital, the middle class uncritically adopts the thoughts of the dominating class. For the time being it is ruthlessly and totally brainwashed, manipulated and indoctrinated. However, when this sleeping giant wakes up, the world will never be the same again. A new civilisation will be created and its aim will be the universal, which is common for all people born and unborn ? all too often the living generations have not thought about the future generations. The nearest task of the humanist movement is to wake this sleeping giant, to arm it with a victorious revolutionary ideology and prepare it for its historical mission. Only a profoundly scrupulous analysis of the real contradictions of the society will make it possible to arm this revolutionary class with a new revolutionary theory, and in so doing, to prepare it to fight hard against the powers of the world financial circles, against the world powers of Big Capital. No potentially revolutionary class becomes an actually revolutionary class until it becomes class-conscious, realises itself as such and wills to be such. It becomes class-conscious and realises itself as a revolutionary class only when it creates a new revolutionary ideology; then it knows its world-historical mission and wills to accomplish it. Therefore, the task of the humanists is not only to criticise the dominating unjust social order ? nothing is easier than criticising, ? but to create a new vigorous revolutionary ideology capable of overthrowing this order and replacing it with a better humanist one. Nowadays not only is the middle class economically weak and dependent but it is also totally deprived of any significant political power. Our aim is to help it become an enormous class-conscious political power capable of forming a powerful independent party with a great historical mission and fighting for the public property, which ? in full conformity with its sovereign rational will ? belongs to it. Only when we show the middle class what it will gain when it constitutes the sovereignty of the people and a genuine juridical equality, will we be able to win it for its own cause. Now the task of the middle class ? of this political proletariat, ? is to appear on the political arena as an independent political party, to take possession of political power and win its freedom. Constituting the actual domination of the sovereign people and its most numerous middle class is bound to be the newest political development of power. Only when the people has no fear of the political terror of the Big Bourgeoisie and dares to want what belongs to it by right ? all political power to the people, will it make the Big Bourgeoisie to shake with fear once again. It will abolish the omnipotent financial circles and corporate capitalism, which enslave billions of people. The Political Will of humanism is true; it wills nothing else but the absolute ends of Humanity and has a great historical mission because its aim is to develop the constitution of freedom and create the republic of freedom. While Karl Marx?s proletarians and Lenin?s female cook were hardly interested in designing a state organisation and certainly lacked any practical experience in doing it, the modern politico-economic proletariat is as educated as the ruling class, which will find it more and more difficult to brainwash the proletarian masses of today. On the other hand, so powerful was the totalitarian dictatorship of the Red Bourgeoisie in the so called socialist countries of Stalinist type that no genuine political involvement of the citizens was ever allowed to materialise. Only when a doctrine able to unite human intellects and actions in conformity with the universal will and the common good is created, can the aims of the newest Renaissance of the world be achieved. We need a revolution, a real revolution of political will. True, the incredible achievements of the scientific-technical revolution have changed our material culture in a way never seen before; yet, the enormous majority of people is as easily manipulated by the ruling class as it has been for millennia. For this reason the mission of the latest politovolia is to educate people?s will. The humanists want to create a politovolia able to express the universal political will of our times, and in so doing, to liberate the middle class, to make it possible for everyone to cognise the truth and come into possession of their public property, the common good. Without all question, the middle class is the most numerous one in highly developed modern societies; at the same time it is a far less egoistical class than the Big Bourgeoisie. What is more, it is definitely capable of making decisions concerning the state affairs and the common good from the point of view of the interests of all. It has to demand its participation in the common deed and abolish the monopoly of the Big Bourgeoisie willing to stay at power and taking care predominantly of its own interests. If we want the middle class to play an extraordinary important role in state life, we have to educate it because the success of the new type of government and the ethics of its functioning political institutions depend on the quality of the political education of all citizens. Real equality can only exist as a triumph of the will of the genuine sovereign of res publica ? the people. And only when the modern middle class enter into possession of its sovereign will to fight and win the political battles with the Big Capital, only when the middle class arm itself with invincible will for political freedom, only then there will be a genuine democracy for the first time in human history. What is more, the living humanist constitutions of the future expressing and manifesting the fundamental laws of the common will are still to be written ? however, not without but with the participation of the middle class. Only when the common will of the people prevails over the selfish and greedy will of any ruling exploiting classes and makes their existence and dictatorship impossible, will the political community genuinely guarantee the ethical interests of each individual. Marx wrote that ?The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class?2 The spiritual revolution of humanism has already appeared amongst the members of the newest progressive intelligence; now their task is to make it the practically acting will of the middle class, to aim at the ultimate triumph of humanism in the world and implement it vigorously. Educating a new public property-oriented universal will is the immediate task of the neo-communists. If we do not fight, today?s uncontrolled globalisation will turn out to be the beginning of the times of new absolutism to come ? times of the absolute power of the Big Global Bourgeoisie, the terror of the new absolutists and the devastations their absolute globalisation will bring to Mother Earth and mankind. The modern capitalist society is based on the private interests of the wills of its members; it is an emanation of their infinitely egoistic desires. The capitalist state is an apotheosis and glorification of modern class violence; it legitimises the tremendous will inequality of the classes, the result being that the individual private wills of the members of the atomised and apolitical middle class do not have any chance in the unequal fight with the powerful will of the ruling exploiting class. Capitalism is a half-way realisation of the great principles of the French revolution ? Equality, Brotherhood, Liberty ? and cannot but be a half-way realisation because it was a bourgeois revolution. The Big Bourgeoisie took a lead of the revolution; it wanted to found and founded a social order aimed at forcing the people to sign a social contract sanctifying its right of unlimited private property and declaring it as sacred and inviolable: its highest aim was to sanctify its right to steal the surplus value of the labour of each employee, of the working class as a whole and to make the state a defender of capitalist sacred property, and in so doing, to privatise the public good ? the state. At the moment it is still the class of Big Capital, which is the sovereign of state power and exercises its class will with impunity. Without question, its sovereignty is only possible due to the fact that it has forcefully and successfully institutionalised the class inequality and lack of true and actual liberty of the sovereign people in its bourgeois state. Today?s capitalist state is still based on the bourgeois realisation of the slogan of the Great French Revolution more than 200 years ago: Equality, Brotherhood, Liberty. Equality ? yes, but equality only of the members of the Big Bourgeoisie, equality of those who dominate and manipulate the life of the capitalist state, and nothing else but inequality for all the other members of community who are economically exploited and deprived of genuine political rights and power, Brotherhood ? the only kind of brotherhood the bourgeois state can create and tolerate is the brotherhood of the exploiters, Liberty ? only the latter are to a certain degree free as long as the People tolerates them. No truly ethical system can ever be created if it is to be based on the capitalist principle of infinite egoism. The capitalist realisation of the principle of separation of powers has always been laughable and it is still more laughable today. The double standards and unethical nature of capitalism make it utterly impossible to establish a genuine democracy in a world run by the imperative postulates of international financial institutions and big global companies which are absolutely uncontrollable by the electorate in countries all over the world, in which they operate. They ignore the norms of international law, rob the peoples of their sovereignty and deparliamentarise their democracies. Elections are deprived of any sense because it is the class of Big Capital, the private interests of the corporations that matter and rule the world, not the collective vote of political communities aiming at their common good and the common good of humanity just the same. Creating a humanistic class consciousness is a must today. Capitalism has always had only a transitional character; its radical revolutionary abolition is absolutely necessary in order to overcome the unbearable social injustice of a system based on private property over the means of production and natural resources, on exploitation and appropriation of the surplus product by a small and greedy privileged class of people arrogantly defending their ?sacred? and ?inviolable? right to steal other people's private and public property. Therefore, the task of the hired labour is to force its masters ? the masters of the world, the barons of big Capital ? to sign a new humanist Magna Charta Libertatum. With the necessity of the laws of Nature the class of hired labour will become conscious of the goals of its mission: creating a far more advanced humanist culture and a truly humanist law. For the time being the middle class with its implanted subservient and subject?s mentality is plunged into a state of apathy and political nihilism. It is from now on that it has to achieve its political maturity. Then and only then does the middle class use its political capital when it is engaged in activities of great political power and significance; getting into possession of political capital and using it freely is a sine qua non for achieving public happiness. Revolutions need great leaders and wise humanistic teachings capable of inspiring the huge potential power of the will of the oppressed and exploited classes to emancipate and free themselves; once inspired this will passes into its opposite ? the absolute actual rational will for freedom and justice. The time has come for the modern proletariat to manifest its ability to act, to do its job, to organise itself and fight for the ends of its class will. The question is: ?Why is the public will so weak?? It is often said that it is the worst people who have the big money and rule the world. But isn?t it true that they have the charisma, the courage to lead and steal? Wasn't Rousseau absolutely right to say that the the rich keep the laws in their wallets while the poor prefer bread to freedom? As long as you, a member of the supposedly morally and ethically higher and better part of humanity, are timid and intimidated and lack knowledgeable and charismatic ideologues, theoreticians and leaders, you will be just robbed of your public property and ruled. What is more, as long as you have a slavish public will, as long as you are passive and demoralised, as long as you neither fight nor fulfil your fundamental duty to resist, you deserve your fate. Your will for political freedom and public happiness must be actual and strong. Create a form of state in which the power belongs to you, the members of the sovereign people. Your will must will the absolute ends of universal will, to fight for it and be victorious. This is your duty to humanity. Stop whining that politics is corrupted and dirty. It is you to blame. YOU are corrupted for you do nothing to change the status quo. As long as you and your brothers do not organise, the wolves in sheep's clothing will do what they want; they will relentlessly exploit, brainwash and manipulate you. Delegating your public property to your political representative ? who serves the interests of Big Capital being practically beyond your control ? you, modern man go short of it, you lose everything, you become a voluntary vassal; such are the conditions of contemporary political feudalism. The duty to resist is fundamental. Courage, determination and great humanist ideas are a sine qua non for a successful revolution; there is no place for cowardly withdrawals. Your task, the task of the modern exploited class, is not only to organise itself into powerful trade unions and huge political movements in order to resist and fight against the consequences of the unchecked greed of all kinds of capitalists but to change the very capitalist state order with a view to abolishing the system of hired labour and exploitation once and for all. It is because of the unchecked greed and the infinite egoism of the rich that capitalism incessantly creates more and more problems, which it is utterly incapable of solving. Beyond all question, it is you, the political proletarians, that belong to the powerful historical subject of the revolutionary changes of today. History needs you; wake up the hero in yourself. You and your brothers have to mature and undertake your mission. The humanist idea of the economic enterprise ? firms, factories and companies - as a common good can be only implemented as a free union of humanists, whose supreme principle is the principle of private property of humanist type. You have to learn how to invest your huge economic and political capital. You will. The common good is the absolute final end in itself of the universal rational will, which aims at constituting a humanistic state; it will be ruled by the universal will. The middle class has to be raised to its historical role, to enter in possession of this universal will and begin its necessary political realisation as a humanistic state. This is a noble goal. NOTES:
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