Nandini Shah and Brendan Duncan-Shah

This article contains three internal Red Ant documents circulated over the last year. The first, Five-Tasks for Red Ant in the Medium Term, is a proposal passed at our recent national conference in July of this year. It outlines a set of ultimate, long-term and medium-term goals for Red Ant, including five tasks that shape all current Red Ant activity, given our current level of development. These are: (1) develop our organising skills through mass work; (2) develop our internal education; (3) develop our understanding of the Australian conjuncture; (4) develop our organisational culture; and (5) develop our numbers. The second document, The Way Forward for Red Ant, written by two Red Ant comrades before the July conference, is an attempt to apply the principles of the Marxist-Leninist theory organisation to Red Ant’s current situation. This document is where the aims outlined in the first document were originally formulated, although careful readers will notice that the long-term goals originally outlined were modified during discussion at the July conference before being adopted. The third document, The Marxist-Leninist Party, by the same authors, is a theoretical document circulated before The Way Forward for Red Ant. It outlines the authors’ views on the function and principles of a Marxist-Leninist party, which informed the perspective outlined in The Way Forward for Red Ant.

The only material that should be considered the perspective of Red Ant itself is that in section 1 of Five Tasks. Everything else, including the theoretical explanation in the second section of Five Tasks, should be considered the views of the authors alone.

By publishing these documents, Red Ant hopes to make our revolutionary strategy clearer. A socialist organistion should be able to explain itself to others—especially to other socialists. These documents, however, by no means represent the final word on Red Ant’s strategy. Other documents and contributions have been equally important in forming our current outlook. We hope to make these available over time as well. Conversations about theory and strategy can never be quietly settled once and for all—instead, they must be constantly renewed.

Five Tasks for Red Ant in the Medium-Term

1. Description of your proposed goal/broad strategy/orientation:

We propose that we understand Red Ant’s ultimate goal in the following way:

Organise the workers and their allies to overthrow the capitalist mode of production and begin the transition to communism.

Since the emancipation of the working class must be carried out by the working class itself, and since the working class emancipates itself only if it attains class consciousness, we propose that we understand Red Ant as having three long term goals:

(1) Carrying out the work needed to develop class consciousness: organising people in struggle and spreading Marxist ideas;

(2) Building our capacity to do the work needed to develop class consciousness—in short, party building.;

(3) Developing a genuine connection with the masses: whether by winning tangible leadership of movements/unions, moving outside of left/progressive spaces, etc.

Since, at our current stage of development, our capacity to carry out the work needed to directly develop class consciousness is limited, we propose that Red Ant focus on the second of these tasks. In particular, we propose that Red Ant cohere around five concrete tasks in the medium-term:

1. Develop our internal education;
2. Develop our understanding of the Australian conjuncture;
3. Develop our organising skills through mass work;
4. Develop our organisational culture;
5. Develop our numbers.

2. Any justification/explanation:

We have fleshed out the ideas behind this proposal at length in two pre-conference discussion pieces: The Marxist-Leninist Party and The Way Forward for Red Ant. The basic argument outlined in these PCDs can be put, in a very truncated form, as follows.

Class consciousness is consciousness of the irreconcilable antagonism between the class interests of working people and the whole society founded on capitalist relations of production. Class consciousness does not arise automatically among working people under capitalist relations of production. For this reason, it is necessary for there to be an organisation devoted to the development of class consciousness among the working class. This organisation is the party.

For working people to attain class consciousness, two things are necessary. First, working people must be brought forward in struggle against the capitalist system in all its manifestations; second, working people must be equipped with a basic understanding of historical materialism. These two elements in the development of class consciousness are absolutely inseparable. On the one hand, through struggle, working people come to be exposed to the class interests and class forces that determine the shape of existing capitalist society; on the other hand, working people can only grasp the class character of the struggle if they are equipped with concepts that bring into view the class basis of existing society—that is, if they are equipped with the basic concepts of historical materialism. It follows that, if the party is to develop class consciousness among working people, it has two inseparable tasks: to organise working people in struggle, and to spread among those very same working people the basic concepts of Marxism.

If, however, the party is to effectively carry out this dual task, it must be composed of members in possession of certain skills. In order to bring working people forward in struggle, party members must be the best organisers; and in order to spread Marxist ideas among the working class, party members must have a thorough understanding of Marxist theory and, moreover, be the best conversationalists and explainers of Marxist theory—they must be able to, at the same time, meet people where they are at and bring them toward a Marxist perspective. The party must therefore be able to systematically train people in these skills—in other words, the party must be a cadre party, capable of producing members able to bring increasingly wider strata of working people to class consciousness. The five concrete tasks we propose in the medium-term are intended to build Red Ant in this direction.

The Way Forward for Red Ant

Red Ant is at a decisive moment of its development. In the last six months, we have formally committed ourselves to an anti-imperialist and Marxist-Leninist perspective; we have put in place essential internal infrastructure (the March conference); we have looked to the future and began to develop our understanding of the Australian conjuncture (the July conference); and we have made the first tentative steps, on the branch level, toward organising.

At this crucial juncture, it is more important than ever that every member of Red Ant is crystal clear about what our project is. No one should be feeling lost, uneasy or unsure about what is to be done and what we are doing about it. Instead, every comrade should feel confident that all our work is grounded firmly in the principles of Marxism-Leninism.

In our previous contribution on the Marxist-Leninist party, we began to answer the question of what is to be done at the most general level. We argued that the ultimate aim of the party is to organise the working class to abolish the capitalist mode of production and that, to do this, it is necessary to develop class consciousness among working people. But if fundamental theory is to provide us with guidance in our daily work, it is also necessary to construct a series of middle steps—steps that bring us from the most general theory to the most tangible practical work. In other words, Red Ant needs a direct line from Marxist-Leninist theory to the most concrete of our day-to-day activities. The purpose of the present contribution is to trace such a line.

In this document we propose a general strategy for Red Ant in the medium-term. The general strategy takes the form of five intermediate objectives. The objectives are “intermediate” because they sit midway between the general theoretical basis of our project (the Marxist-Leninist theory of organisation) and our concrete daily activities. But they are specific enough to give us guidance for what we should be doing on a daily basis. The objectives are as follows:

1. Develop our internal education;
2. Develop our understanding of the Australian conjuncture;
3. Develop our organising skills through mass work;
4. Develop our organisational culture;
5. Develop our numbers.

In this document, our approach is to begin with the general theory and move to the specific. In section 1 we once again go over the aim of a Marxist-Leninist party and argue that, to achieve this aim, it is necessary to develop an organisation with certain capacities, composed of cadre with certain skills. In section 2 we outline how the five objectives we propose contribute to building an organisation with the needed capacities, and to developing cadre with the needed skills. In section 3 we consider how our approach—which we think is grounded in the principles of Marxism-Leninism—differs from the approach of other socialist organisations in Australia.¹

1. Developing class consciousness: what does a party do and what does it take to do it?

The ultimate aim of a revolutionary party is to organise the workers and their allies to overthrow the capitalist mode of production and its attendant forms of oppression and begin the transition to communism.

On the one hand, it is the historical vocation of the working class to overthrow the capitalist mode of production: because the working class is structurally exploited within capitalism, its interest as a class consists in abolishing capitalism. This is why the working class is the revolutionary class.On the other hand, the working class does not always act on this its class interest, and is therefore not always revolutionary. For the working class to act in a revolutionary way, it must be conscious of itself as a class and of its interests in relation to the capitalist economic structure—that is, it must attain class consciousness. But the working class does not spontaneously or automatically develop class consciousness in capitalist society. Instead, because bourgeois ideas are propagated in every sphere of life and throughout every institution of society (in schools, the media, the workplace, etc.), the working class in capitalist society remains generally unaware of its objective interest as a class. The role of the party is to counteract this tendency: its task is to develop class consciousness throughout the working class and thereby bring them forward as an actively revolutionary class.

Class consciousness is a seriously misunderstood term. Class consciousness does not mean understanding that you as a worker have an interest opposed to your boss, that your boss is trying to get one over on you. Instead, class consciousness means understanding that your interest as a member of a class is opposed to the whole organisation of existing capitalist society. This kind of consciousness does not automatically arise from the trade union movement or from any other struggle for social justice. These sorts of struggles on their own invariably take place within a framework that presupposes capitalist relations of production: they call for better wages, for example, instead of for the abolition of the wage-relation. In order to attain class consciousness, working people have to understand that their interests don’t just lie in this struggle in the here and now—for better wages, working conditions, housing, etc. Instead, they have to understand that their true interest, their interest as a class, lies in abolishing the whole of capitalist society. Every single thing that we do as a party, up to the point where it is a real possibility for the working class to take state power, must be directed towards this superordinate goal: developing genuine class consciousness among working people.

Because class consciousness is consciousness of the irreconcilable opposition between your interest as a worker and the whole of existing capitalist society, for a worker to have class consciousness they need to have a clear understanding of capitalist society as a whole. Accordingly, if the aim of the party is to develop class consciousness among working people, then the question is: how can the party develop an understanding of the system as a whole among working people?

For this, struggle is absolutely essential. Through struggle—by confronting the forces of capital and fighting them—the working class is exposed to all the manifestations of the capitalist mode of production. Through struggle, working people come to develop a lived, visceral sense of the system lying behind the struggle over wages, over working hours, over working conditions, for secure housing, for climate justice, for healthcare, against racial injustice, against discrimination based on gender, and against war. Through struggle, working people are brought forward as a people with revolutionary agency, who are conscious of the fact that, to solve their daily problems, they must abolish the capitalist system, and who most importantly act on that understanding.

This means that members of the party must be the best organisers. They must be able to mobilise and bring forward people in struggle, so that working people come into confrontation with, and are thereby comprehensively exposed to, the capitalist system in all its aspects. Members of the party must be, not only skilled organisers, but the most skilled. Party members must win leadership over the various struggles against the capitalist system by being the best organisers, so that working people support them, and so that they can more and more bring people forward in conflict with the capitalist system and thereby expose it.

But the working class can only come to see local struggles as manifestations of the capitalist system if they are equipped with a basic understanding of the concepts of Marxism: concepts like class, class interest, class struggle, the relations of production, and so on—concepts which lay bare the inner workings and laws of motion of capitalist society, concepts which make it possible for working people to understand that what happens here, on the local level, is a result of the way the whole system is organised. It is not enough for working people to know that the boss is the enemy; they must understand that everything the boss does is because of the boss’s class position and class interests. Only by attaining an understanding of this kind can working people draw the necessary conclusion: that the class structure itself needs to go. For this reason, if struggle is to truly lead to class consciousness, it must equally be supported by propaganda and agitation,grounded in the concepts of Marxism, which draw working people’s attention to the big picture, to the real cause of their ills: society organised on the basis of the capitalist mode of production.

What this means is that cadre must be, not only good explainers of Marxist theory, but the best explainers. Party members must be able to link up every concrete issue of the day with the laws of capitalist society as a whole. They must be able to convert every instance of concrete struggle into an occasion for the political exposure of the whole capitalist system. And they must be able to spread the basic concepts of Marxism to others, who can themselves use these concepts to understand and expose the workings of the capitalist system in any situation.

It should be obvious that party members need two sets of skills to carry out this patient ideological work. First, members of the party must thoroughly and deeply understand Marxist theory themselves—they must be able to move freely within Marxist theory and draw from Marxist theory on every occasion. Their understanding of Marxism must be so solid that are able to explain it convincingly to those who they struggle alongside—so solid that they are able to consistently raise the level of consciousness in the struggles they take part in. Second, members of the party must have an extremely high degree of conversational skill. They must understand how to speak to and communicate with people; they must understand the consciousness of whoever they are speaking to and be able to push that consciousness in the direction of class consciousness. In other words, they must tarry with the following exceptionally difficult task: to both meet people where they are at and lead them somewhere else.

Based on what has been said, if we want to be a party that develops class consciousness among working people and brings them forward as a revolutionary people, as a people who act on their class interests, our two general tasks are clear. We have to organise people in struggle and we have to bring the basic concepts of Marxism to those in struggle—two tasks which are absolutely inseparable. But, as should be clear by now, in order to do either of these tasks effectively we have to develop ourselves in certain ways; each of us has to develop ourselves as cadre:

• we have to have a thorough understanding of Marxist theory;
• we have to be the best organisers;
• we have to be the most effective explainers and conversationalists.

These skills will not be gifted to us; we will have to develop them ourselves. That means we need to build party infrastructure that enables us to acquire a solid foundation in Marxist theory and in the skills of organising, explaining and conversing. More than this: in order to develop class consciousness among ever wider sections of the working class, so that as much of the class as possible is brought to higher and higher levels of class consciousness, we have to expand our reach and our presence among the masses. And that means expanding our numbers, convincing new comrades to join us and allowing them to develop their own understanding of Marxist theory, their own organisational skills, and their own conversational competency.

The question is: how do we do this?

2. Building the party: five objectives for Red Ant

Based on what has been discussed so far in this document, our activity as a collective should fall into one of two categories:

(1) carrying out the work needed to develop class consciousness: organising people in struggle and spreading Marxist ideas;

(2) building our capacity to do the work needed to develop class consciousness—in short, party building.

As things stand, we are seriously limited in our capacity to focus on (1), to develop class consciousness: we are limited by our size, our theoretical level, our level of presence in mass organisations (where these even exist in Australia), our organising skills, our conversational skills and by the level of our internal infrastructure. All of this is to be expected, based on the fact that there has not been a well-developed Marxist-Leninist organisation in this country for decades, and based on our own newness as an organisation. (In fact, we should feel confident in the fact that we are moving rapidly in the right direction.) What this means is that, in the current period of our development, we have to put the emphasis on (2), building our capacity to develop class consciousness.

What do we need to do to develop our capacities in the most effective way possible? In response to this question, we propose five main objectives in the medium-term for Red Ant:

1. Develop our internal education;
2. Develop our concrete understanding of the Australian conjuncture;
3. Develop our organising skills through mass work;
4. Develop our organisational culture;
5. Develop our numbers.

(a) Develop our internal education

By “internal education” we mean: (1) a Marxism 101 course and (2) a systematic study of what a comrade has referred to as the “four pillars”: the Australian political-economic context, previous and current socialist experiments, modern global capitalist contradictions and revolutionary theory. A 101 course is already in the process of being established, the purpose of which is threefold. First, it will allow us to train new recruits in Marxist analysis, meaning that we don’t just have to recruit people who are already Marxists, but can rather systematically train people in Marxism from the beginning. Second, it will allow us to solidify our own understanding of the fundamentals of Marxism. I think it goes without saying that, on average, Red Ant is extremely advanced theoretically, at least as far as the other existing socialist organisations go. Still, we need to be completely at home with the fundamentals of Marxism, so that we not only understand them for ourselves but can explain them to others in every context (all Marxists should return to the basics every now and again—we’re always reminded of Samir Amin, who said that by the time he was 80 he had read all 50 volumes of Marx and Engels’ collected works three times in his life). The third reason a 101 course is essential is that it will allow us to develop a shared conceptual vocabulary. Only on the basis of a common set of conceptual tools will we be able to develop analysis together—for this reason, it is essential for us to be on the same theoretical page. Terms like relations of production, means of production, necessary labour, surplus labour, use-value, exchange value, surplus-value, absolute surplus-value, relative surplus-value, labour-power, constant capital, variable capital, organic composition of capital, etc.—all of these need to be extremely precise in our minds, understood by all, and at our fingertips whenever we need them.

A study of the four pillars is a response to our need to develop our own class consciousness. Class consciousness is not just a matter of understanding capitalism in the abstract (which is what we get by reading Marx’s Capital)—it is also a matter of understanding the way in which the actual society in which you live as a worker is set up to guarantee your exploitation. This means that genuine class consciousness is also a matter of understanding:

• the dynamic of world capitalism at its current stage;
• the characteristics of capitalism within your own country—a concrete understanding of the way bourgeois rule operates in the society in which you live;
• the current political conjuncture within your own country—the current balance of class forces and the direction things are heading.

For this reason—that class consciousness is a matter of concrete and not just abstract understanding—we also need to:

(b) Develop our concrete understanding of the Australian conjuncture

Study of the four pillars overlaps with the objectives of the July conference. Both serve to develop our own class consciousness. The July conference has four major topics: social movements in Australia (pro-Palestine and anti-AUKUS), unions in Australia, Australian imperialism, and Australian political economy. These four topics address either Australian capitalism itself, or some essential feature of the Australian political conjuncture. By developing our collective understanding of these four areas we thereby develop our own class consciousness—that is, we extend our consciousness of the class basis of Australian society and therefore advance our understanding of the irreconcilable opposition between Australian society and the class interests of working people.

True, we must be cognisant of the fact that our consciousness will be limited as long as we do not participate systematically in mass struggle (how can we comprehensively understand the state of the union movement without being in every union?). For this reason, to develop our own consciousness, we need to participate in struggle at whatever scale we can. But even with our limited involvement in mass work, there is still some amount of prior theoretical work that we can and must do in order to raise our own level of understanding. Only on this basis can we contribute to raising the consciousness of others.

(c) Develop our organising skills through mass work;

The July conference serves a second function: to come to a basic understanding of the Australian conjuncture, such that we have a direction for our mass work. Without a general understanding of the contours of the Australian context, we will not be able to identify areas for effective intervention. We don’t need a comprehensive five-year plan for this—a broad sense of what is going on in this country will suffice to give our activity some shape. We should of course also note the limits of trying to come up with a plan without systematic involvement in struggle—we should expect our understanding to develop as we step up our organising. In any case, the outcome of the July conference should be a plan to do just this: to rapidly step up our organising.

Stepping up our organising is important for two reasons. First, as noted, we will not be able to develop our collective understanding of the Australian conjuncture unless we participate in struggle. Struggle brings us face to face with the class forces at work in existing society; through struggle, we feel the friction between our attempt to change the world and the intransigence of the old society, between our agency and the rigid capitalist structures arrayed against us. We thereby develop a visceral sense of the shape of class society, of its laws of motion, of the obstacles we must surmount to change it, and of the general direction in which things are heading—in short, through struggle, we arrive at conjunctural knowledge. Without participating in struggle, therefore, we will not be able to advance our own consciousness or the consciousness of the working class.

The second reason it is important to step up our organising is this: participating in struggle is necessary for us to develop our skills as organisers. Since our aim is to develop the class consciousness of working people, and since class consciousness can only be developed by bringing people forward in struggle, it is incumbent on us to develop our capacity to bring working people forward in struggle. What this means is that, as noted above, we must become the best organisers of the working class. We must learn to organise a picket, to bargain with management on behalf of a workplace, to organise, call and agitate at a rally, to occupy a building, to argue our points in a community forum, to leaflet a station, and to win over and join a co-worker to a union. These are things we can only learn by doing—poorly at first, and then later, better.

(d) Develop our organisational culture

In order to develop a shared analysis of contemporary capitalism, and in order to work together as the most effective organisers, it is necessary for us to be able to communicate with one another. This requires a serious look at the predominant norms of discourse within the left and especially within the existing socialist parties. Dogmatism, sectarianism and a poisonous organisational culture have been historical killers of the left, and the threat remains today. This is especially the case in the imperialist countries, where the partly justified reputation of socialists is as annoying, pushy, shouty and overly opinionated—in other words, unable to influence mass consciousness.

We must build an organisational culture which abolishes all of these defects. We must be extremely attentive to the way that we interact with one another. Highly important is the need to be a party that can sustain disagreement. Our approach should always be to organise together, build solidarity first, and then sort out specific issues of doctrine, rather than finding unity firstly on the basis of doctrine. Our anti-imperialist and Marxist-Leninist perspective is already sufficiently similar, and sufficiently distinct from the rest of the Australian left, for us to not worry too much about the problem of theoretical unity. Above all, we must be wary of the manifestations of liberal individualism within our own ranks—the tendency to construct our identities out of our politics, to engage in political posturing and performance, and to treat our politics as part of our personal profile or brand. A party is no place for pettiness and personal grudges—every single action must be directed towards building our capacities or furthering our work.

(e) Develop our numbers

It is a crude truth that we will not be able to reach the masses if we do not grow in raw numbers. The availability of labour is a serious issue for us at the moment. This is especially so because of our high percentage of workers: the Melbourne branch, for example, is 70% full-time workers. To do what we need to do, and what we know we need to do, we need more hands on deck.

We should of course not prioritise growth above everything else—we don’t just need bodies, but cadre: people who have a thorough understanding of Marxist theory, who are the best organisers, and who are the most effective explainers and conversationalists. Still, we cannot form a cadre out of nothing; cadre are human beings, not spirits, and so we need numbers.

The question is how to gain in numbers. Traditional Marxist-Leninist theory dictates that the social base of a vanguard party is the “advanced layers” of the proletariat. But this group is not homogeneous, and so we have to be selective about where we put our attention in order to most effectively grow our numbers. Comrade Motega has outlined four stages of recruitment for Red Ant which target different strata in Australian society: (1) self-identified Marxists; (2) students and the activist milieu; (3) trade unionists and others from traditional left bodies; and (4) the wider working class community, including the wholly unorganised sections. Motega’s suggestion is that at different stages of our development it makes the most sense to focus mainly on one stratum, starting with those who are most likely to be closest to our politics, and then branching out to those who are further from them. This is a very sensible approach in our view.

The most basic step, then, is to reach people who already identify as Marxists: those who are already convinced of the fact that capitalism must be abolished. How do we reach Marxists? Most importantly, we need to be where people are looking for Marxist communities. That means being online, but it also means being in Marxist cultural, intellectual and artistic spaces—knowing full well that we will not convince the vast majority of this petit-bourgeois strata to join us in struggle but that we will convince a few of them, and that these few will join us in building our project. The basic idea is that, everywhere anyone who identifies as a Marxist goes, any event that takes place under a Marxist banner, and any space that bears a Marxist name, we need to be there.

But we don’t just need to be there. When we are there, we need to be able to able to win people over to our project. We need to convince them that to overthrow capitalism a party is necessary, because capitalism can only be overthrown by the working class and the working class does not automatically act to do this. And we need to convince them that we are trying to build this party, and invite them to contribute to this project. Convincing people in this way requires an extraordinary amount of sensitivity and finesse. To convince people to join us, we need to be all around the fundamentals of Marxist theory, we need to show these people that we know what we are talking about, and we need to convince them that we are serious about building an organisation. This presupposes that we have a solid grasp of these things ourselves. We should keep in mind that, at this stage of our development, this process requires patience: winning people over will be done in ones and twos.

Our current level of development is starting to allow us to reach the second strata that comrade Motega identified: students and the activist milieu. On the one hand, to win this strata over we need to be equipped with the same things as for the previous strata of Marxists: we need to have a thorough understanding of Marxist theory and of the arguments for why a party is necessary. But students and activists are understandably less likely to be won over by conversation alone. They are more likely to be interested in joining a group because that group is organising. It follows that to appeal to this strata, we need to also engage in organising ourselves (yet another reason why it is essential to participate in struggle). One function of the July conference will be to identify areas of struggle where we can make a decisive contribution and thereby demonstrate our capacity to lead struggle in practice. The most important thing to win over this strata is to show that we are competent and effective.

Conclusion to sections 1 and 2

The argument of section 1 and 2 of this contribution can be summarised in a series of five questions:

• What is to be done? Develop class consciousness among the working class.
• How do we do that? Comprehensively expose the capitalist system to the working class.
• How do we do that? By organising working people in struggle, in confrontation with the system and spreading Marxist ideas which lay bare the inner workings and laws of motion of the system.
• What is needed in order to do these two things? An organisation composed of cadre who are the best organisers, the best conversationalists, and the best explainers of Marxist theory.
• How do we build such an organisation? By developing (a) our internal education; (b) our concrete understanding of the Australian conjuncture; (c) our organising skills through mass work; (d) our organisational culture; and (e) our numbers.

All signs speak to our ability to move in the direction of building a party. Red Ant has a great deal of momentum behind it—and we are of course living through a period of revival for the left, even in the imperialist countries, where this revival is moderate but significant. All the pieces are in place for us to develop into a powerful Marxist-Leninist organisation composed of genuine cadre. But we must keep in mind that a cadre party does not emerge naturally from the dynamic of capitalism—that is a crude, deterministic interpretation of class struggle. In fact, of course, the forces of capitalism work against the emergence of a Marxist-Leninist cadre party—the kind of organisation we need to bring the working class to power can therefore only be carved out against the grain. This places an overwhelming responsibility on us: we are each obliged to care for and cultivate our organisation and ourselves—something that requires only the old methods: sincerity, intention and patient labour. In this, there are no shortcuts.

The Marxist-Leninist Party

The purpose of this contribution will be to forward our view of what a Marxist-Leninist Party is. We answer four questions: What is a Marxist-Leninist party? Why is such a party necessary? What is the aim of such a party? And What means must a party of this kind use to achieve that aim?

1. What is a party? Why is it needed? And what is its aim?

The primary objective of a Marxist-Leninist party is to organise the working class and its allies to abolish the capitalist mode of production and carry out the transition to a classless, egalitarian, and rational organisation of society: communism. But if, as Marx says, ‘the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves,’ it is not obvious why a party is needed to abolish capitalism.² Because the class interests of working people lie in the complete abolition of capitalist relations of production, it is reasonable to expect the working class to act on its class interests and move towards abolishing capitalism on its own, without the need for any type of formal organisation. The question of the need for a party, then, boils down to the following: Does the working class act on its class interests spontaneously, or does it only act on its class interests under certain conditions?

The Marxist-Leninist response to this question is unambiguous: the working class does not act on its interests spontaneously. This is at least partly because it is possible for the working class to be unaware of its own class interests—and in fact this is the normal condition of the working class in capitalist society.³

The fact that the class does not spontaneously act on its interests constitutes one of the central problems of Lenin’s What is to be Done? Lenin’s explanation in that work relies on an account of two competing forces of spontaneity in capitalist society. On the one hand, the working class is ’spontaneously‘ drawn to class consciousness because socialist theory—the theory of the irreconcilability of class interests—best explains our daily struggles and the dynamics of our social life. On the other hand, bourgeois ideology—which in essence suggests that class interests are reconcilable—is ’spontaneously‘ imposed on the working class via the ideological institutions of society: the law, the media, educational institutions, etc.⁴ As Lenin explains:

It is often said that the working class spontaneously gravitates towards socialism. This is perfectly true in the sense that socialist theory reveals the causes of the misery of the working class more profoundly and more correctly than any other theory, and for that reason the workers are able to assimilate it so easily. … Nevertheless, most widespread (and continuously and diversely revived) bourgeois ideology spontaneously imposes itself upon the working class to a still greater degree.⁵

On Lenin’s view, without the influence of a socialist party, the second form of spontaneity tends to win out. Because bourgeois ideology, having control over the ideological institutions of society, ‘has at its disposal immeasurably more means of dissemination,’ it tends to be the case that the ruling ideas in society are the ideas of the ruling class.⁶ For this reason, without the influence of a socialist party, the working class movement and movements for social justice become limited to winning demands within the existing state of affairs, that is, within the system of capitalist domination and its attendant forms of oppression.

This, for Lenin, is confirmed by historical observation. In the case of the working class movement, for example, Lenin states the following: ‘The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.’⁷ But ‘trade-unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers to the bourgeoisie,’ because trade-unionism represents ‘the common striving of all workers to secure from the government measures for alleviating the distress to which their condition gives rise,’ and not the movement which aims to ‘abolish that condition’ entirely, that is, to ‘remove the subjection of labour to capital’ altogether, to abolish class society.⁸

In contrast to trade-union consciousness there exists what Lenin refers to as ‘genuine class consciousness’ or ‘social democratic consciousness.’⁹ We will refer to this kind of consciousness with the term class consciousness. Class consciousness, as Lenin defines it, is consciousness of the ‘irreconcilable antagonism’ between the class interests of working people and the whole system of capitalism.¹⁰ The fact that class consciousness is consciousness of the irreconcilable nature of the antagonism between workers and capitalist society is essential. The struggle for higher wages, better working conditions, affordable or public housing, social justice, free education, and so on, do not constitute the class interest of working people as a class, since all of these struggles take places within a framework that presupposes the capitalist mode of production. Instead, the class interest of working people consists in the abolition of their structural position within society, that is, their structural position as (1) dependent on the wage in order to live and (2) as therefore exploited. It is impossible for capitalism to continue to exist and workers not to be exploited, since capitalism is fundamentally based on the exploitation of workers (the extraction of surplus-value in production). Class consciousness is consciousness of this fact, and of the way in which existing society is constructed and operates on the basis of this fact.

The upshot of all of this is that the working class will only act on the basis of its class interest insofar as it is conscious of this class interest—that is to say, only insofar as it is in possession of class consciousness or genuine class consciousness. And since consciousness of this kind does not arise spontaneously from the trade union movement, the various campaigns for social justice, the struggle against the climate crisis, etc., it is necessary for there to be an organisation devoted specifically to developing class consciousness. This organisation is the Marxist-Leninist party: its aim is to develop class consciousness among the working class and thereby to bring about the abolition of the present system in its entirety.

2. How is the party to develop class consciousness among working people?

If the aim of the party is to develop class consciousness among working people, and class consciousness is understood as consciousness of the irreconcilable nature of the antagonism between the class interests of working people and the continued existence of the system as a whole, then it follows that for class consciousness to be developed it is necessary for working people to come to an understanding of the capitalist system as a whole—of its dynamic, the interrelation of all the classes that comprise it, and of the systems of oppression that it props up and are propped up by it. As Lenin puts it,

The consciousness of the working masses cannot be genuine class-consciousness, unless the workers learn, from concrete, and above all from topical, political facts and events to observe every other social class in all the manifestations of its intellectual and political life; unless they learn to apply in practice the materialist analysis and the materialist estimate of all aspects of the life and activity of all classes, strata, and groups of the population.¹¹

That is, conscious opposition to the whole capitalist system can only be developed insofar as the functioning of the system is grasped as a whole. But grasping the system as a whole is not only a matter of theoretical insight. It is also, necessarily, a matter of practical engagement: genuine class-consciousness can only be achieved insofar as the working class develops a practical orientation to all the various parts of the system—insofar as we develop a lived sense of the way the capitalist totality manifests itself in its various guises. Only by doing this can working people develop both the knowledge and conviction that their emancipation depends on the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production (and the modes of oppression and exploitation that accompany it) in its entirety.¹² Moreover, the practical comportment necessary for the self-emancipation of working people can only be developed through the experience of struggle. As Lenin puts it:

Working class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence and abuse, no matter what class is affected … The self-knowledge of the working class is indissolubly bound up, not solely with a fully clear theoretical understanding—it would be truer to say, not so much with the theoretical, as with the practical, understanding—of the relationships between all the various classes in modern society, acquired through the experience of political life.¹³

But there are two mistakes socialists can make here: we can overemphasise either the theoretical or practical aspect of developing class consciousness. On the one hand, a purely theoretical understanding of capitalism will not do: what is needed is not only an abstract understanding of the antagonism between the interests of hypothetical workers and a hypothetical bourgeoisie, but a concrete understanding of the way in which the actual society in which you live as a worker is set up to guarantee the domination of the capital-owning class. This is something that can only come through what Lenin calls ‘comprehensive political exposures.’¹⁴ On the other hand, it would be a serious mistake to think that Marxist-Leninists should just immerse themselves in practical work, or to think that class consciousness can be developed through practical work on its own. Lenin is clear that the type of practical activity that develops class consciousness is one in which workers ‘learn to apply in practice the materialist analysis and the materialist estimate’ of capitalist society.¹⁵ He argues that ‘Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained … to respond from a Social-Democratic [i.e. asocialist] point of view and no other.’¹⁶ In other words, practical work will not contribute to the development of class consciousness unless those who are involved in it are in possession of a basic understanding of the fundamental concepts of historical materialism, the theoretical concepts that make it possible for workers to analyse and lay bare the “inner workings” of capitalist society and to understand that society is organised along class lines. This is why it is necessary to spread Marxist ideas throughout the workers movement: they form the starting point for the development of class consciousness in struggle.

In ‘The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats’ from 1898 Lenin distinguishes these two dimensions of socialist activity, which are nevertheless ‘inseparably connected’: ‘propaganda’ (spreading historical materialism and materialist analysis throughout the workers movement) and ‘agitation’ (organising the workers in struggle)¹⁷; as he writes:

The socialist activities of Russian Social-Democrats consist in spreading by propaganda the teachings of scientific socialism, in spreading among the workers a proper understanding of the present social and economic system, its basis and its development, an understanding of the various classes in Russian society, of their interrelations, of the struggle between these classes, of the role of the working class in this struggle, of its attitude towards the declining and the developing classes, towards the past and the future of capitalism, an understanding of the historical task of international Social-Democracy and of the Russian working class. Inseparably connected with propaganda is agitation among the workers … Agitation among the workers means that the Social-Democrats take part in all the spontaneous manifestations of the working-class struggle, in all the conflicts between the workers and the capitalists over the working day, wages, working conditions, etc., etc. Our task is to merge our activities with the practical, everyday questions of working-class life, to help the workers understand these questions, to draw the workers’ attention to the most important abuses, to help them formulate their demands to the employers more precisely and practically, to develop among the workers consciousness of their solidarity, consciousness of the common interests and common cause of all of the international army of the proletariat. To organise study circles among workers, to establish proper and secret connections between them and the central group of Social-Democrats, to publish and distribute working-class literature, to organise the receipt of correspondence from all centres of the working class movement, to publish agitational leaflets and manifestos and to distribute them, and to train a body of experienced agitators—such, in broad outline, are the manifestations of the socialist activities of Russian Social-Democracy.¹⁸

That is, if the aim of the party is to develop class consciousness among the working class, and class consciousness is developed through the combination of (a) an understanding of the basics of historical materialism and historical materialist analyses and (b) organising the workers in struggle, then the immediate task of the Marxist-Leninist party is to spread the basic ideas of historical materialism and materialist analysis throughout the working class and, at the same time, organise them in struggle. We need to emphasise that these two elements of developing class consciousness should not be seen as distinct spheres of activity. Instead, they should be seen as necessarily connected. On the one hand, practical activity can only be an exposure of the capitalist system if those involved in the activity are equipped to identify the class forces at play—which presupposes a minimal level of materialist theoretical knowledge (the ability to identify classes, their interests, and how their activity is shaped by these interests). On the other hand, theoretical knowledge should not be seen as “pure.” Instead, it should be seen in terms of its application to the actual society in which one lives; in terms of its capacity to bring into view the class forces at play in struggle; and to that extent in terms of the role it plays in exposing the class basis of existing capitalist society and the role of the working class in abolishing that society. To summarise by adapting a formulation from a very different context: propaganda without agitation is empty; agitation without propaganda is blind.

Lenin gives us a concrete description of how propaganda and agitation go together from 1909, after the ‘victory of the counter-revolution,’ after a ‘year of disintegration, a year of ideological and political disunity, a year of Party driftage’ in which ‘the membership of all the Party organisations [had] dropped’ or had ‘fallen to pieces,’ that is, in a situation very similar to the one we are in now in Australia:

Every party cell and workers’ committee must become a “base for agitation, propaganda and practical organising work among the masses”, i.e., they must go where the masses go, and try at every step to push the consciousness of the masses in the direction of socialism, to link up every specific question with the general tasks of the proletariat, to transform every act of organisation into one of class consolidation, to win by dint of energy and ideological influence (not by their ranks and titles, of course) the leading role in all the proletarian organisations. Even if these cells and committees be very small at times, they will be linked together by Party tradition and Party organisation, by a definite class programme; and two or three Social-Democratic members of the Party will thus be able to avoid becoming submerged in an amorphous legal organisation and to pursue their Party line under all conditions, in all circumstances and in all kinds of situations, to influence their environment in the spirit of the whole Party, and not allow the environment to swallow them up.¹⁹

It is clear that Lenin is not advocating for socialists to turn themselves over as helping hands to every spontaneous working class struggle. Socialists should certainly materially contribute to the success of such struggles by means of their labour, experience, and resources—and in fact socialists should aim to be the most effective organisers. But struggle should equally be an opportunity to expose the capitalist system politically, to demonstrate its bankruptcy and bring into view the class basis of society and the class forces at play behind the daily struggles over social issues, wages, working conditions, etc. By doing this, socialists can bring forward working class people as revolutionary actors in possession of class consciousness, as agents who recognise, and act on, the irreconcilable nature of the antagonism between their own interests and the whole capitalist system.

In the early twentieth century Lenin wrote that ‘the whole world is merging into a single economic organism.’²⁰ Today, in the twenty-first century, we have to recognise that this process has been completed. Consequently, an understanding of the capitalist system as a whole must be an understanding of capitalism on a planetary scale. Within the scope of class consciousness, then, fall the following aspects of the world capitalist system: relations of imperialist economic domination and exploitation between regions of planetary capitalism,²¹ the variegated but worldwide regime of racialisation, the struggles of indigenous peoples for self-determination, the oppression of people with marginalised genders, planetary ecological collapse, and the imposition of a heteronormative model of the family. All of these phenomena are supported by one or another dynamic within the capitalist system, and so must be counted as part of it. It is therefore incumbent on socialists to organise to fight these and other instances of oppression wherever they occur, and thereby to develop their own consciousness and the consciousness of those whose struggle they share in.

Notes

1. Section 3 is not included in this publication. ↩︎
2. Marx, ‘Provisional Rules of the International Working Men’s Association’, in Marx & Engels Collected Works vol. 20, 14. ↩︎
3. As Marx and Engels put it in The Holy Family, it is possible for the working class to not be conscious of its ‘historic task,’ something that does not change the fact that the abolition of capitalism and class society remains its task: ‘It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do.’ (Marx & Engels Collected Works vol. 4, 37.) ↩︎
4. This is not a fully worked out theory of ideology. We should also make room for the idea that capitalist relations of production themselves give rise to ideology—that is, they obscure class antagonism. ↩︎
5. Lenin, What is to be Done?, in Collected Works vol. 5, 386n. ↩︎
6. Lenin, What is to be Done?, in Collected Works vol. 5, 412. ↩︎
7. Lenin, What is to be Done?, in Collected Works vol. 5, 375. ↩︎
8. Lenin, What is to be Done?, in Collected Works vol. 5, 384; 387. ↩︎
9. Lenin, What is to be Done?, in Collected Works vol. 5, 375; 412. ↩︎
10. ‘Social-democratic consciousness’ [i.e. socialist consciousness] is consciousness ‘of the irreconcilable antagonism of their [the worker’s] interests to the whole of the modern political and social system.’ Lenin, What is to be Done?, in Collected Works vol. 5, 375. ↩︎
11. Lenin, What is to be Done?, in Collected Works vol. 5, 412. My emphasis. ↩︎
12. Lenin, What is to be Done?, in Collected Works vol. 5, 412. ↩︎
13. Lenin, What is to be Done?, in Collected Works vol. 5, 412-3. See also Mao: ‘If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the structure and properties of the atom, you must make physical and chemical experiments to change the state of the atom. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution.’ (Mao, “On Practice,” in Selected Works vol. 1, 273-4.) This is a standpoint that Lenin shares: ‘the standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge.’ (Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, in Collected Works vol. 14, 142.) ↩︎
14. Lenin, What is to be Done?, in Collected Works vol. 5, 413. ↩︎
15. Lenin, What is to be Done?, in Collected Works vol. 5, 412. My emphasis. ↩︎
16. Lenin, What is to be Done?, in Collected Works vol. 5, 412. My emphasis. ↩︎
17. Marx, ‘Provisional Rules of the International Working Men’s Association’, in Marx & Engels Collected Works vol. 20, 14. ↩︎
18. Lenin, “The Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats,” in Collected Works vol. 2, 329-330. ↩︎
19. Lenin, “On the Road,’ in Collected Works vol. 15, 345. ↩︎
20. Lenin, “The Draft Resolution of the Left Wing at Zimmerwald,” in Collected Works vol. 21, 346. ↩︎
21. In his time, Lenin already recognised the necessity of the theory of imperialism for understanding the social totality: ‘The problem of imperialism is not only a most essential one, but, we may say, it is the most essential problem in that realm of economic science which examines the changing forms of capitalism in recent times. Every one interested not only in economics but in any sphere of present-day social life must acquaint themselves with the facts relating to this problem.’ (Lenin, “Preface to Imperialism and World Economy,” in Collected Works vol. 22, 103) ↩︎