Socialist Day

I recently attended the Southeast Socialist Day School in Atlanta which consisted of a sort of church service worshiping the likes of Lenin. I mainly attended to see how the arguments about class were made, but much of the conference revolved around giving testimonials as to how bad the capitalist system was and how it exploited everyone. I had expected a tutorial on organizing, politics, and public engagement to which I left highly disappointed. As most socialist argue, theory and practice are intertwined creating a socialist praxis, which hinged on the idea of a large undifferentiated working class. I raised the question as to whether a chemical engineer or other professional position was the working class, and received that answer "of course," followed by a long testimonial in front of the congregation about the exploitation felt by such people.

Similarly, a discussion arose about farmers and the local food movement which of course peaked my interests. The ministers felt that the peasantry was too internally differentiated to be counted as part of the revolutionary proletariat, which contrasts starkly to the position on industrial and service workers (read urban). Of course, successful movements in recent years have focused on land reform and the end to the privatization - movements driven by peasant interests, notably the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. These still focus on ownership, but instead of seeing a form of collective ownership governed by worker's councils, they reorganize property rights in more complex and particularistic ways.

The problem with the approach is a failure to recognize an internally differentiated working class with wide ranging experiences. The experiences of a college educated chemical engineer contrast sharply with those of the janitor who works in that engineer's building, and, in practice, not appreciating that difference which organizing politically can be detrimental. To say that racism and sexism only serve the rulers is quite different from understanding racism and sexism as social forces that shape experience, and the latter is necessary for any organizing that builds solidarity and destabilizes social wall to be possible. Ultimately, socialist politics in the U.S. are caught in the adherence to 100 year old political views and strategies; strategies which have been refined and updated, but receive the pejorative of not being truly "socialist." The urban bias is also deeply problematic.

I have critiqued the failings of post-modernism, which I see as narrow and short-sighted, but the socialist line is broad and simplistic; both have much to add to the conversation but theorists and practioners of both sides of the debate could benefit greatly from a conversation between the two camps. Some of the theory is developing, hopefully to more productive effects.

P.S. According to socialist ministers there has probably been about two years of socialist revolution, the Soviets before bureaucracy.