oh, Lassalle.. [27/03/24]

everywhere i look i see his face. 

you know that quote in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte where Marx writes that « the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living » ? Lassalle embodies this quote in such an expansive and ever-permeating manner that some of his strongest soldiers don't even know his name !

tendency ? doesn't matter, you'll find him anywhere you look for him. kautskyites ? basically the same thing. marxist-leninists ? many follow him. trotskyites ? quite fond. hell, even outside of marxism, he and Sorel practically founded the Italian Fascist Party. he really is everywhere.

to that point, i was reading the 'Revolutionary Communist Manifesto' that the IMT (International Mussolini Tendency) put out the other day, and it was just ripe with Lassalleanism. aside from their inept yapping on about 'stalinist subversion' and their weird obsession with denouncing intersectionality (???), they write this on bourgeois-democracy :

« The free market was said to be a guarantor of democracy. But democracy and capitalism are opposites... Instead of democracy, we have the rule of a barely disguised plutocracy. Wealth buys power. Everybody knows this. Democracy means one citizen, one vote. But capitalism means one dollar, one vote. » 

sounds radical, no ? "hell yeah, capitalism and democracy are opposites ! democracy is severely limited under capitalism !" yeah, it sounds socialist-y, like all lassalleanisms do, but is it really ? astoundingly, no ! any seasoned marxist could tell you that bourgeois-democracy is democratic - democratic for and among the capitalist class, with a few nominal crumbs for the proletariat (more often than not being consequential extensions of bourgeois equal right). the reason that this democracy is solely for the bourgeois class is because the state in class societies are the political mechanisms for maintaining class relations - i.e. democracies will always have a class character, and, a fortiori, will always be forms of class dictatorship. democracy and dictatorship are not two opposite ends of a spectrum - they are two aspects that are unified in their opposition (you know, dialectics). 

when you obfuscate the form of class dictatorship with notions of 'generalised, universal' democracy - even if unintentionally - you will obfuscate the necessity of the class dictatorship of the proletariat. the immediate goal of socialism is now to "expand the democracy that had been present, but limited, under the bourgeois dominance of government" instead of entirely doing away with the bourgeois form of governance and replacing it with the dictatorship of the proletariat, guided by the principles (i.e. taking the form) of proletarian democracy. and voila - we're back to Lassalle ! even if those writing this political line don't hold this lassallean position, the fact that it is laid out in lassallean terms in a foundational document not only points to their ideological rigour, but will most likely result in them shooting themselves in the foot later down the line. 

near the end of the program, they write : 

« In essence, the aims of the communists are the same as those of the workers in general. We stand for the complete elimination of hunger and of homelessness; for guaranteed work in good conditions; for the drastic reduction of the working week and the conquest of free time; for guaranteed, high-quality healthcare and education; for an end to imperialism and war; and for an end to the insane destruction of our planet. »

the 'manifesto,' of course specifies that reaching these aims will, "by necessity," push beyond capitalism and into socialism. there lies of course, a very distinct lack of the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat, accompanied by this allusion to a 'transitory program' which will 'pave the way to achieving these aims', even further cementing the potential for right-deviations (this is, of course, assuming that the authors here aren't revisionists themselves, which at this point is a dubious assumption). the fact that a tipid "internationalist" social-democrat could claim to have the same aims is indicative that these aims are nowhere near sufficient for a communist manifesto. our aim as communists is communism : it is society without class and without the value-form which abides by the principle of production-consumption of « to each according to their ability, to each according to their needs ». any aim short of that is a half measure at best. 

the fact that with almost 150 years of hindsight, self-purported marxists still fail to actually grasp marxism is simultaneously really funny and really disheartening. today's lesson, kids : read Critique of the Gotha Program.