“Degenerate youth! Guttersnipes! Pimps! Bums! Thieves! Plunderers!” was
the headline appeal of a Communist Youth newspaper in Germany in 1923. Had
it been produced 50 years earlier in Marx’s day, it might have read: “Street
Gamins! Riff-raff! Vagabonds! Beggars! Spivs!” Today: “Joyriders! Ram raiders!
Pushers! Junkies!” would undoubtedly figure prominently.
In pitching their invitation, the Communist Youth authors did not attempt
to offer any judgement on the accuracy of the epithets, beyond expressing
their contempt for the bourgeois press that applied them to street gangs known
as ‘cliques’ and it’s ‘gibbering’ about the “moral degeneration” of ‘youth’.
This appeal represented the beginning of a campaign by the German Communist
Party (KPD) to try and organise and politicise the sections of society previously
referred to by Marxists as the ‘lumpen proletariat’. Their reasons for so
doing were many. In the first place, the KPD claimed as its strongholds the
very neighbourhoods in which the cliques were at home, and the milieu of the
cliques was reflected in its own composition. Secondly, while the KPD had
a disproportionate number of manual and unemployed workers in it’s ranks,
the main Social Democratic Party (SPD) retained the allegiance of the great
majority of organised workers; which forced the KPD to seek recruits outside
the ranks of the organised and employed working class. Thirdly, the KPD then
was an avowedly insurrectionary party, which adopted and even welcomed the
role ascribed to it by its opponents and rivals as a ‘party of outlaws’. The
SPD regularly accused the Communists of having brought an unheard of coarseness
and brutality into political life on the streets and in parliament, while
for it’s part the Communists were known to be relatively tolerant of ex-convicts
in its own ranks and whose chief political newspaper named spies and traitors
to the movement and urged readers ‘to teach them a lesson’. Last but not least
in the battle for the streets, as a result of the Brownshirts attempting to
establish itself in strongholds of the Communists, knives and guns were being
brought into the conflict as well as fists. Given that the credibility of
the combatants depended on their displaying an active and effective response
to the physical and political threat posed, the advantages of mobilising the
energies and abilities of the cliques ‘in their own cause’ was fully apparent.
However to pretend that the strategy of orientating, organising and recruiting
outside of the realm of the ‘idealised worker’ outside of its ‘proper’ constituency
went smoothly, without controversy or contradiction, would be wrong. In fact
the KPD never fully reconciled this departure from the orientation to the
‘point of production’. Indeed when the communist movement approached the worker
outside the workplace or the working class child who had never known work,
it always did so with suspicion.
Tellingly, when the party leadership thought of the gangs it saw them as
possible allies rather than as bone fide members of its own constituency.
A party less constricted in its vision of class and of politics, might have
been expected. Indeed may have felt obliged to develop an analysis of the
street gangs and their role within a progressive movement. It was never attempted.
Logically there were only two lines of argument open to the Communists: on
the one hand, they could acknowledge that the cliques and all they represented
were marginal to the working class, or even that they were a symptom of the
actual ‘pathology of the proletariat under capitalism’, but that the party
while recognising them as degenerate nonetheless regarded them charitably.
On the other hand they could have concluded that the fact that individuals
or groups were categorised as criminal, was the result not of intrinsic qualities
that disqualified them from participation in the revolutionary movement, but
of belonging to a single and universally (if not uniformly) oppressed working
class, all of whose members were subject to the same pressures, processes
and categorisation. In terms of the cliques this would have meant the KPD
accepting they were no less representative of the working class for not being
in work. In fact the KPD attitude on such related questions as anti-social
crime, youth and so on, forever hovered between these two approaches. This
ambivalence was particularly vivid when young Communists behaved like clique
members. For instance the active and fighting formations of the Communist
youth (with an emphasis “on ace lads only”) were often characterised by a
style and mentality strikingly similar to those of the cliques. Inevitably
this led not only to renewed concerns about the dangers and values of the
latter, but interestingly, also became a source of conflict between the leadership
and the rank and file. In 1931 this led to one of the most explosive moments
of the conflict within the party as a whole. In an attempt to hold on to its
tenuous legality, the definitive statement issued by the leadership in November
1931 of it’s rejection of ‘individual terror’ and ‘adventurist tendencies’
within the movement ended its insurrectionary phase. Which in turn led to
open accusations from activists of the leadership having abandoned their revolutionary
ideals, as well as betraying any effective defence against Nazi incursions
into ‘Red’ neighbourhoods.
The leadership countered, that tendencies to ‘individual terror’ reflected
a mood of ‘desperation’ and ‘revenge’, motives that characterised ‘the uprooted,
insecure, petty bourgeoisie gone mad... alien to the socialist working class’.
This depiction of the street fighters as ‘petit -bourgeois’ only exposed the
inability of the party to describe, or accurately put into words activists
who were in its view, neither perfectly disciplined Communists nor members
of an alien class.
The KPD had no way to acknowledge that one might be working class, and
yet behave in ways considered undesirable. This was a genuine confusion that
arose within the Communist movement whenever a distinction had to be drawn
between what was proletarian and what the emancipated proletarian ought to
be, what the party had to deal with in terms of actual working class culture
and what it was meant to make of it: and this confusion was not irrelevant
to the party’s own capacity to carry out the political tasks it had set itself.
Chief among them being social revolution, which was its raison d’etre. Instead
of a social revolution what it actually got was a political counter-revolution
and fascist dictatorship.
Considering the many other obstacles the KPD faced (not least Stalin’s
own fears of the impact on Russia of a successful German revolution) it would
be a mistake to imagine that a coherent class analysis alone would have made
triumph possible.
Nonetheless if it was even to assess the prospects of change accurately
and present them convincingly to actual and potential followers, the party
had first to understand the reality it was aiming to change, and to confront
the nature of its own constituency in its totality. And this it could not
do with any consistency.
The party’s self image continued to be dominated by a view of class struggle
that implied it should not be and need not be, dealing with the cliques in
the first place. This view had no place in it for the analysis of working
class culture as it reflected the construction of collective interest outside
of the work place. There is no question that the elements of a new and inventive
approach to the politics of every day life were present in the theoretical
utterances of some spokesmen for the movement, and even more obvious in the
actual practices of the KPD.
But as long as the party’s leaders continued to argue as though the progressive
politicised culture it expected its members more or less spontaneously to
represent, was the only real culture of the working class, they ran the risk
both of blinding themselves to the points of vulnerability in class and movement
alike, and of alienating their own followers who knew better.
Though we are self evidently addressing an entirely different situation
in a different country, in a now different century, the lessons to be learned
remain critical. All importantly~ the main point of conflicts within the KPD,
have, due to time been resolved.
One, social democrats anywhere, pronouncedly in the case of New Labour,
can no longer count with any confidence on the allegiance of ‘organised workers’.
Two, the sections of the class most in need of organising are for the most
part no longer unionised.
Consequently ‘the point of production’ as the best or indeed only basis
from which to organise the working class in pursuit of its ‘immediate interests’,
is in a complete break with a century of socialist custom and practice, passé,
in Britain at least. It was on this premise that the Independent Working Class
Association came about.
Three, there is of course Red Action itself. Here is an overtly political
organisation formed by precisely the same social elements, who as a result
of a confrontation between leadership and rank and file fighters, were accused
of a propensity for ‘individual terror’ and expelled from a party riddled
with markedly similar contradictions to the KPD.
But unlike their predecessors, rather than drift out of political life,
they, rather impertinently, set themselves up in political opposition. Tellingly,
of RA’s initial modest objectives, ‘to accommodate ordinary working class
recruits within the then wider socialist family’, was one. To ‘celebrate working
class culture’ another. Because many of the founding members, who if not exactly
‘convicts’, were not entirely unfamiliar with a prison cell either, there
was never a danger of a conflict between the political rhetoric of the group
and the reality of working class culture coming into conflict - and Red Action
surviving.
Of course whether Red Action has marked an evolution or regression is dependant
on your opinion on the proper boundaries of both proletarian behaviour and
class, Suffice to say that up to the present, in line with tradition, the
consensus amongst the mainstream Left is that Red Action is not merely a ‘party
of outlaws’ but has, and continues to be for a wide variety of reasons, a
menacing ‘party of renegades’.
Interestingly despite said developments, the potential for conflict either
within Red Action, or between sections of the class on the question of class
demarcation has not altogether abated. For instance, by some distance, the
most heated debate at the RA Annual Conference in 1999, and the one which
drew the greatest number of contributions (24 in total) was in relation to
some proposals on the drugs issue. Since then, the debate has continued within
the pages of our publications. Off the record the respective positions have
been referred to (probably unsatisfactorily) as either ‘liberal’ or ‘reactionary’.
Quite properly all involved recognise that a) politicising working class
neighbourhoods and avoiding the issue of drugs and related issues cannot be
put off indefinitely and b) helping the IWCA define an appropriate strategy
is not only crucial in itself, but could in conquering what is considered
an insoluble problem, prove the lynchpin in progressive working class thinking
on related issues.
At issue is not whether drugs are a good or bad thing, but how the subsequent
problems should be managed. Personal behaviour, approval or disapproval, is
neither here nor there. The key is devising a strategy that works. And works
moreover in the interests of the real working class, politically and socially.
And here we get to the root of the matter. Are ‘junkies’ and indeed ‘dealers’
to be considered part of a working class constituency, or are they a key
component of what the 1848 Communist Manifesto referred to as the ‘most dangerous of classes’
opposed to it. How this question is resolved will be key in addressing the
problem on the ground.
Marx to whom the phrase ‘lumpen proletariat’ is attributed was totally
unambiguous in regard to the threat ‘the scum’ posed, in particular to revolutionaries.
Time and time again he went in to bat on the subject. ‘Marginal, itinerant,
obsolete, downtrodden, dregs’ were just some of the metaphors attributed to
trades and livelihoods such as “beggars, vagabonds, rogue’s, police spies,
spivs, Street gamins, petty thieves, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds,
pimps, brothel keepers organ grinders, rag-pickers, brothel keepers”: those
who could not and were for the most part, unorganised, who contributed nothing
productive and so lived as a parasite on society. (Importantly. this view
does not extend to the ‘reserve army of labour’ the unemployed; who are ‘a
consequence’ but also all importantly a ‘condition’ of capitalist production.)
Significantly as a result of their intimate studies of revolutionary endeavours
across Europe over three decades their initial hardline view, only hardened
as time went on. In 1870 Engels evaluated them thus: “The lumpen proletariat,
this scum of all classes.., is absolutely venal and absolutely brazen. If
the French workers in every revolution inscribed on the houses: Mort aux Ouvres!
Death to Thieves! and even shot some, they did it not out of reverence for
property, but because they rightly considered it necessary above all to get
rid of that gang”. And again: “What all these elements, honest or dishonest,
have in common is that they are functionless outsiders, discards of the system,
or self discards”. Experience demonstrated to Marx and Engels that on the
whole, whether ‘honest or dishonest discards or self-discards’ the ‘lumpen’
tended to be inhospitable to social ideals and are typically moved by cynical
self interest on the most vulgar level, available to the highest bidder, untrustworthy
even when bought up, and dangerous not only as accomplices but even as tools:
“the worst of all possible allies”, as Engels commented. Consequently anyone
who “relies on them for support proves himself by this action alone a traitor
to the movement”.
In contemporary terms the casual drug user (either hard or soft) is not
automatically fitted into such a catchment. It is not a question of personal
morality. For our purposes, it is entirely dependent on how it relates to
wider society generally, and working class communities specifically. Nonetheless
it is evident that the historic character profile of the ‘discards and self-discards’
is an all to familiar one. Nor does it need a revolutionary conflict for their
malign presence to be felt. Their corrosive effect on the self esteem, morale
and material well being, once they have come to the fore within working class
communities is well documented. That their defining character is a decidedly
parasitic one is beyond question. Equally any progressive movement that had
serious ambitions would face a confrontation with them sooner or later: that
they are the enemy within is without doubt.
Clearly for ‘working class rule in working class areas’ to be made operable
the real working class would have to be master.
Thus the revolutionary responsibility is three fold. Social democracy has
ditched the working class, respectable and otherwise entirely, so all are
now subject to the same bourgeois ‘underclass’ categorisation. The upshot
being that the IWCA has the opportunity and moreover is obliged, to operate
under the principle of the “big tent”; in the sense of accommodating and organising
from the broadest class basis permissible (as against the position of the
Communists who had no choice but to concentrate exclusively on those sections
of the class rejected by social democracy).
Secondly, much like their employers, the police role in working class communities
such as it is, has been re-defined as one of de facto containment. Finally,
when the real working class counterpoise their interests in an organised
fashion (most visibly in Dublin) to those who are feeding on their children,
the state rushes quite brazenly in on the side of THEIR allies. In such circumstances
to confront or even execute dealers as the IRA have done on occasion is ‘not
out of reverence for the law’ but the opposite. Above all, for any progressive
movement to continue its advance within a working class neighbourhood it will
prove necessary ‘to get rid of that gang’. Get rid not merely as a by-product,
but as an end in itself. Given the stakes, not taking sides is not an option.
In practical terms this means, as the IWCA have done on Blackbird Leys
‘dealing with them’ at an early stage by organising the real working class
against them. This is not in itself a political solution but it is the foundation
for one. For on the matter of class demarcation there can be no room, not
least within Red Action, for any ‘ambivalence’.
Furthermore only when it is fully understood and accepted they are a natural
adversary can it be worked out how their influence is ameliorated and undermined.
But only when we ourselves are absolutely sure where we stand politically;
are crystal clear on where the demarcation line is drawn, then and only then,
can we allow any solution the luxury of the necessary liberal and charitable
ingredients; ‘the carrot’ undeniably required to make it effective.
In the meantime the existence of the contemporary ‘lumpen’ is a glaring
‘point of vulnerability in class’ and potential movement alike and we who
are best placed, the ones who ‘know better’, must not blind ourselves to this
reality, or indeed, in particular, to the implications of the current balance
of forces on the ground. For as the writer D.H. Lawrence put it:
“No absolute is going to make the lion lie down with the lamb - unless
the lamb is inside”.
(Research on KPD from an essay. Organising
the Lumpen Proletariat; Cliques and Communists in Berlin during the Weimar
Republic by Eve Rosenhaft, acclaimed author of Beating the Fascists. Material
courtesy of C. Price, Baltimore.)Reproduced from RA Bulletin Volume 4, Issue 5, Feb/March '00
