By J. Boyden
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| Bizzarro Cartoon |
The other day, I was talking with a passionate youth activist about Walmart. This is a global mega company -- the world's third-largest corporation traded on a stock market, the largest retailer in the world, and the biggest employer in the world with over 2 million workers.
Walmart first invaded Canada in 1994, with the purchase of the long-forgotten Woolco chain. Walmart began by effectively closing all the unionized stores. Since then, Walmart has been locked in a hard battle with the labour movement in Canada.
Today, there are over 200 Walmart discount stores and 124 "Supercenters." (As we have reported, the Walmart "threat" has also been used effectively by employers like Loblaws to
force bad contracts on unions.)
In many cases, not only does the labour movement try to organize Walmarts, but also to block construction of new stores, working with coalitions of local activists, community groups and small business owners. These campaigns have come and gone, and often brought a lot of well deserved negative publicity to this corporate monster, becoming a sort of flashpoint issue in the youth and student movement.
As a
moral representative of bloodsucking monopoly capitalism, Walmart is a very weak link.
But in these campaigns, could there be a trap for labour and working‑class people?
Sooner or later, the point is made that shopping at Walmart is not such a good thing. Ethically speaking, the point is made, if you shop at Walmart you are supporting the beast. Many youth and students, brave and well intended but with somewhat limited experience by definition, can be sucked into this idea. Sooner or later, the conclusion has been reached that Walmart shoppers are ignorant but complicit schmucks.
The cost of living, mind you, is going up while wages stagnate. It is not hard to understand why people shop at these stores. But nevertheless this "idea" slips in. Walmart shoppers are also the problem.
In some circles they call this anti‑working class or 'blaming the victim.' Why don't they just buy from a local small business?
Never mind trying to find genuinely local produce and small businesses to buy from -- they all seem to be eaten up by bigger capitalists very quickly. The effectiveness of boycotts is also separate discussion. But the point is that, by working with non-working class elements like small business in coalition, their ideas and perspective also enter into the struggle and movement, and sometimes that petty bourgeois point of view isn't based on what labour union folks call "solidarity."
Now how often have the small business owners advocated for working class issues like raising the minimum wage? For example, when the Postal Workers' negotiations broke down over pensions, wages and benefits, what did the Canadian Association of Small Business do? They wrote an open letter to Canada Post urging the crown corporation to stand firm in their reactionary bargaining positions.
What about rightward-thinking social democrats in such coalitions, who invariably try to bring the unity of the movement down to tepid and weak demands, or even try to shut a movement down in favor of waiting for the next election?
So the call for a certain critical understanding when working people fight with other groups, strata or classes in society, like those forces linked more with small business, is not unjustified. Maybe truly progressive youth activists should be much more cautious and restrict or focus our alliance work to just working class people?
This might seem a very logical application of Marxist analysis: (1) Identify the working class forces, or members within a movement -- a community group, tenant's rights organization, peace coalition, or campus student union; (2) Drop some spicy smart-sounding language about bourgeoisie and proletarians; (3) propose that the true proletariat be pitted against the non‑working class elements.
The big and dangerous mistake here (however honestly made with good intentions) is to confuse the class with the movement.
What is the difference?
Marxists define a person's class according to the individual's relationship to the means of production: do they own the tools, equipment, machinery, natural resources, etc. used in making goods and services? The working class majority do not own any means of production and must work for a living. Those who own the economy, and can survive without working themselves, are the capitalists.
Working people are not just the largest class in society. They are also the future. As the 25th YCL Central Convention documents said:
...the working class is the only consistently revolutionary class in this historical epoch. It is the primary contradiction in our society – that between the social production of wealth and its private appropriation, which is ultimately maturing and leading towards the end of capitalist society. The working class, and especially its organized segment i.e. the trade union movement, is the only class which has the ultimate power to shut down the capitalist economy and [also] to seize state power.
As big business dominates all aspects of social life, it attacks in economic ways (ie. lower wages, longer working hours, busting unions). But monopoly capitalism and imperialism is also forced, in its drive for profit accumulation, to attack basic rights -- ie. democracy in the broad sense. Not just elections, but people's democratic right to have an effective say over their own future.
The organizations formed to defend, protect and expand these rights Marxists generally call mass democratic movements. They have a grievance that effects a large number of people, as well as a goal or demands.
Examples of mass democratic movements are legion and more and more forums of struggle keep opening up. Classic examples are the peace movement, the student movement, and the women's movement. But consider the Occupy movement or the Quebec student struggle.
(And by the way, according to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, basic civil rights enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms were violated during the violent 'evictions' of the Occupy movement in fall 2011 and also the attempt by the Charest Liberal's to smash the student strike through Bill 78 and police repression).
Who makes up these movements?
A large number are, of course, working people. But while the boss class and the workers are the two main social classes but they are not the only ones in contemporary Canadian society today -- there are also intellectuals, professionals, small business owners, farmers, lawyers, etc. that make up the so-called 'middle strata' or
petty bourgeoisie.
Today, it is difficult to find a mass democratic struggle -- other than the labour movement -- which is not in some way a class mix or "cross‑class."
Farmers, for example, are concerned about climate change. Nuclear war also threatens doctors, bishops, or the coffee shop franchise owner. These folks are not very common at labour conventions, but I have met all such individuals in community organizing. Here-in lies the difference between a movement and a class.
As anyone who has done real political work knows, folks who have certain qualifications, education or rank, who own a meeting space, or who can donate money can all be very helpful in struggle.
A lot could be written about the attitudes and contributions of non-working class or 'middle-strata' elements in struggle. They too have a tough go under capitalism. Small businesses from little restaurants to mid-sized farms are more or less constantly going under and into bankruptcy. Perhaps this can lead to a certain bravery in the face of adversity, individualism, or adventurism and despair -- which can be destructive.
These attitudes to struggle are, to be sure, found among working people as well. But in contrast with the "middle strata" the experience of working class struggle, like being part of a labour union, can also teach the necessity of organization, solidarity, collectivism and sober analysis.
The working class nevertheless has a lot to gain from participating in mass democratic movements, coalitions and alliances (temporary and long term) with other social forces. After all, the working class is not just most revolutionary class in an abstract sense, it also has the ability to lead society. It is precisely through alliances, Marxists say, that these lessons are learned.
Moreover, as the saying goes, "an injury to one is an injury to all." Therefore, the agenda of the working class embraces all progressive movements. In this it is unique. The interests of the working class ultimately include liberation from, and the defeat of, capitalism by socialism.
But a movement in itself can not embrace all struggles. Nor is one movement enough to defeat capitalism -- that requires the working class with its allies.
This, the Marxists say, is their role, to put forward an immediate and long-term strategy to defeat capitalism -- not just helping overcome organizational shortfalls, or building unity by convincing people to set aside minor differences and just sweat the big stuff, or helping create the political will for action, and to side with the working people but a political strategy and programme showing the way forward to socialism.
That requires a different vehicle, the Marxists say, that just a class or movement. It requires a political party -- a Communist Party, which has certain features: like unity in action or democratic centralism, internationalism, and a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist outlook.
Nevertheless the revolutionary categories of class, movement and party are frequently confused. For example, it is sometimes argued against such alliances and coalition and that the class war should be brought inside people's movements.
In practice, this sectarian route would be disastrous. It would undermine the fighting unity of these forces, orienting the struggle inward instead of against the main enemy.
Campaigns like the Young Communist League's "Charter of Youth Rights" branch out in the opposite direction, seeking the kind of broad, powerful unity that is needed to defeat the Harper government and win a new, progressive direction for Canada.
An earlier version of this article was published in the Sept 1st 2011 edition of People's Voice. Johan Boyden is the General Secretary of the Young Communist League
