"The middle and upper classes are the revolutionary element in society"

[JanMichael]

George Bernard Shaw, a long time ago:

"Marx never got hold of him for a moment. It was the revolting sons of the bourgeois itself - Lassalle, Marx, Liebknecht, Morris, Hyndman, Bax, all like myself, crossed with squirearchy - that painted the flag red. The middle and upper classes are the revolutionary element in society; the proletariat is the conservative element."



Truer words have not been spoken...At least on this issue...

Yea or Nay?



PS~ I have very mixed feelings about this. For one it's amazingly depressing...For two it's elitist...For three it's probably not far from the truth...

[Clark2008]

1. Well, the poor are struggling too hard to survive to take time off

to even concern themselves with this stuff.

It's sad, really.

[Comandante_Subzero]

2. Class Warriors

A half truth. The proles & peasantry have been active (see for example anarcho-syndicalism in Spain, the Landless Movement in Brazil, the IWW, etc. but since these groups are made invisible in our society (which is controlled by the NON-radical bourgeoisie) they don't get the credit. When's the last time you saw a working class representative on a TV public affairs show? Even on public TV? It's necessary to be at least a millionaire to open one's mouth in the US corpmedia.

[manic expression]

3. Not true

It depends on the circumstances. During the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the lower classes were virtually alone in their uprising; same thing in Haiti. What about the slave rebellions of the south (Turner, Stono)? Of Rome? Were they fueled by the upper classes? I don't think so. The revolution in El Salvador was done by the peasants who wanted to own some of the land they toiled on.
(on edit) Also, the Black Panthers were founded and led by people from the deepest levels of poverty in America; they fought to change the conditions they came from.

It's much more complicated than upper, middle and lower classes (another reason why Orwell is wrong). At any rate, the upper is usually reactionary; the middle can go either way but can help fund and support a revolution; in the end, the real power lies with the masses. Again, it depends on the case. Using generalizations don't work, period.

[JanMichael]

9. Three points. One his use of "painting the flag red" means, to me...

...the ongoing perpetual pushing of these ideas, not necessarilly the actual events. Secondly this was written prior to most of the Socialist, not just the uprising of the oppressed those are a related but distinctly different topic, revolutions, no all of the Socialist revolutions to date.

Thirdly his comment on the conservatism of the classes not in the upper incomes. I would generally agree with that assessment especially when it comes to the U.S.of A.

[manic expression]

15. Well,

No matter what the ideology behind an uprising, the purest of revolutions come from a group of people wanting something, and taking it by force. No one needs a Communist Manifesto to do this. Some people say the lowest classes are too busy making ends meet to think about revolutions, but when they can see that the ends will meet when they simply take what they should have, a revolution naturally occurs.

If I understand him correctly, I think he is spot on. The more educated paint the flag red, but it is the poor who fight the battles that it will be carried into. No revolution needs a flag; no movement needs the middle or higher classes.

However, it is a boon to a movement for the participation and support of those who have more refined ideas, a greater idea of what should happen and those who have the means to contribute to such a goal. It is not necessary, but it doesn't hurt.

[QC]

4. Nope.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1987788

[JanMichael]

11. While I was rooting like a banshee for Hackett he hardly constitutes...

..."painting the flag red".

I should remember how far right this country really is though...You're right he's a Socialist Revolutionary in the making:-)

[QC]

18. My point was that in this case, as in many others, it's the McMansion

crowd that is highly reactionary. They have a little bit and want to protect it. (They also tend to identify with the people above them and not give a rat's ass about the people below them.) While it's true that revolutionaries generally come from the bourgeoisie, it's not true that the bourgeoisie is, as a whole, revolutionary.

[Darranar]

44. The Democrats and the Republicans...

are hardly anything close to revolutionary.

[QC]

46. See post #18. n/t

[Glorfindel]

5. Yea, of course...

the "proletariat" are too concerned with putting bread on the table to think great revolutionary thoughts. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, etc., who led the American Revolution, were of the upper classes. Why should this be depressing? As long as their condition is bearable, the (for want of a better term) "lower classes" are going to cling to the status quo. When their condition becomes unbearable, they're ready for a revolutionary leader to strike the spark. Let's hope such conditions are not TOO far away in this country. O, Marat, where art thou when we need thee?
:dem:

[Face_in_the_Crowd]

6. I agree to a point

Marx, Engels, and even Lenin said that revolutions are headed by the educated and politically conscious leaders. The proletariat is either too ignorant or too occupied with the grueling work day to recognize the ins and outs of the revolution. It is those who have the education , which is much easier for the bourgeois to obtain because he/she has more time and capital to lend to the development of their minds, that take up the fight for the proletariat. They must educate the proletariat and show them the path to freedom.

[newyawker99]

49. Hi Face_in_the_Crowd!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Hardrada]

7. But the only people who really like a slave rebellion

are the slaves!

[RandomKoolzip]

8. When you're working 60+ hours a week just to make rent....

It's hard to give a shit about abstractions like "revolution."

[The Magistrate]

10. There Is Some Truth To It, Sir

For several reasons.

One is that workers and laborers have a tremendous stock in a stable order, in some ways even more than the rich. Disorder threatens their everyday lives; they have no safety margins. Their most general response to difficulty will be to try and see it through somehow in straitened circumstances. Things have to have gone horribly, almost inconceiveably wrong, before the great mass of working people will be willing to hazard an adventure.

Another is that the conditions of the workers' lives generally closes down imagination and initiative. None of these things pay: "The tastes and habits of a Duke would cost a clerk his situation." So they are done without. But they are necessary ingredients to any such desperate enterprise as revolution, and essential to the leadership of revolution.

Thus it is generally the case that revolutions are led, and often inspired, by bourgeois elements, sometimes persons who have been driven from their class by adverse circumstances, sometime by persons fired with empathy for the plighgt of those they know their class exists by exploiting. None of this will actually lead to revolution unless certain other elements are present in the situation. The two most important of these are a tremendous precariousness of life for the mass of working people, and a tremendous degree of incompetence in the government of the place.

[JanMichael]

12. Thank you! A reasoned reply.

Of course as a far left fringe DUer I cling to the belief of revolution from below. However the reality is murkier than most of us would ever want to admit.

[The Magistrate]

16. Revolution, Sir

Is a subject worth serious thought.

In my view, oppression is not really the "cause", in the sense that oppression is a constant, and revolution an exceptional occurence. The question that must be answered is what makes the cases where revolution occurs different from those where it does not.

[JanMichael]

28. It is a serious subject that nobody should take lightly.

I don't.

My concerns are chiefly sustainable economics and reduced consumption that the Soviet Union, in it's race to beat the US in GDP output, stupidly ignored. Or maybe it wasn't "stupid" just a bad decision? i don't know. All I do know is the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR has been a catastrophe for most workers. Not that the preceding system was utopia but then again I'm no Utopian. There's a reason that Gorby is suprememly disliked in today's Russia, he fucked everyone other than the Oligarchs.

[PassingFair]

13. "Things have to have gone horribly,

...almost inconceiveably wrong, before the great mass of working people will be willing to hazard an adventure."

OR, their TV's would have to be turned off or taken away. OR priced beyond their reach. When the great media pacifier is pulled from their mouths, they will take to the streets.

[Face_in_the_Crowd]

17. "When the great media pacifier is pulled from their mouths"

Know that here at DU we are a minority. We can actually recognize the Conservative movement's media push and we can recognize the ill effects it has on our people. It is our responsibility to let the truth out.

[The Magistrate]

19. Unfortunately Not, Comrade

Almost inconceiveably wrong was a phrase employed deliberately. You have to be stepping over starved corpses in the street any time you venture out to walk a block, and be willing to cut an elderly throat for a handful of beans before things have reached the necessary pitch. We are very far from that. Even in the depths of the Great Depression, a situation far worse than this, people were not willing to wage revolution, though there certainly was revolutionary ferment in some quarters.

[Alcibiades]

23. "people were not willing to wage revolution"

"though there certainly was revolutionary ferment in some quarters."

So the people were unwilling to wage revolution, except for those who were willing to do so.

I don't think you need to get to the point of actual starvation. Theodore Gurr has proposed a concept called "relative deprivation." This idea, which has been floating about for about 30 years now, offers some promise in understanding where the seeds of revolution will grow and where they will not.

[The Magistrate]

29. It Is, Sir, A Question Of Numbers And Proportion

As well as of direction of action.

There were a number of things that could be viewed as harbingers, but which occured in isolation. There were some pitched battles in labor disputes, particularly in coal country. There were onstances of local officials on country towns being kidnapped and roughed up over their executing foreclosures and such. There was some "revolutionary" color to some of the bank robbing sprees in that day. There was certainly a stripe of intellectual activist agitating for revolutionary action. No critical mass was reached; no more than a very small proportion of the populace was willing to engage.

Labor actions were aimed at gaining better wages, and even work itself; the sort of thing that woud have been called "collaborationist" in nineteenth century Socialist jargon: the strikes were not aimed at overthrow of the system, or as practice for revolution. Electoral politics continued to be viewed as a path to bettering the situation, and figures like Sen. Long incorporated a good deal of revolutionist color in their political activities: this had the effect of bleeding off a good deal of potential fervor.

Relative deprevation is a concept that can explain a good deal of resentment, but it is not sufficient to steel people to the desperate risks and measures of real revolution. It takes a good deal to move people to embrace serious danger and violence; there must be a real physical component to the urge....

[Face_in_the_Crowd]

14. Do you feel this could be the case in the US?

"The two most important of these are a tremendous precariousness of life for the mass of working people, and a tremendous degree of incompetence in the government of the place."


The more the gap widens between the classes and the more the current administration's blunders are brought to light the more the people will be at a state of unrest.

[The Magistrate]

22. Not Nearly Sufficiently, Sir

The widening gap you speak of, though, is certainly a damned serious problem. These people seem to be deliberately bent on transforming the country into something resembling Indonesia or Brazil in its socio-economic structures, with the whole middle of the sructure we are familiar with knocked out of it.

One of the great dangers of this is a genuine fascist outbreak. Fascism is the "revolutionary" expression of a de-classed bourgeois mass. Those who view it as an expression of the most wealthy, or a thing the most wealthy incite and control, miss the picture rather badly. It is the reaction of a straitened middle against the wealth they resent, and against a present that does not jibe with yesterday's dreams of what the future would hold....

[JanMichael]

26. Sadly I agree that an outbreak of disenfranchised middle-class Fascism

is the most likely future manifestation of the current drive toward Banana Republicanism. Your assessment is nearly identical to what David McReynolds has recently argued with me. (shhhhhh! Don't tell anyone that I converse with him on occasion!)

However I imagine, with the impending energy and consumerism collapse, the Iron Heel will be short lived.

It's after that ugly potential episode that I feel will bring about something akin to Dubceks "Human Face" socialism. It may arise out of the ashes from what is around the bend for now.

[wli]

33. I would argue that a fascist outbreak has already occurred.

The electoral system has been completely corrupted. The fascists have total control over the representative government and utter disdain for the rule of law (witness e.g. scrapping all constitutional rights under PATRIOT I and the passed-in-pieces PATRIOT II). The concentration camps were set up in 1984 (exposed in 1987), and the slave labor programs are frequently posted here. We've had a Reichstag Fire analogue and are witnessing an incremental imposition of martial law.

We're already staring fascism in the face.

[JanMichael]

36. This is mild shit compared to what could happen.

It may be evident to us but to the average citizen I doubt much has changed.

Yeah jobs are screwy but that's a cyclical occurance or so they're told. TV is about the same for most viewers so how could they know? Hell 405 didn't vote, what would they care, how has their lives changed? Unless you've been denied birth-control how? How would the Lower classes know that it's a Fascist regime in the making since they've been getting a boot up their ass since before Clinton?

[The Magistrate]

38. You Could Argue That, Sir

But you would be wrong. In this instance, what you cite is rather a case of mistaking acne for measles....

[wli]

43. okay, could you give a more detailed rebuttal?

I truly honestly don't see the difference, and it may very well be due to a lack of understanding.

[Alcibiades]

20. These 19th century Marxist social categories

are increasingly irrelevant. Marx didn't fully understand or anticipate what the advent of a professional managerial class would do to the class structure, nor what the divorce of control from ownership in the capital markets would mean (or if he did, it's in volume III, chapter 29 of Capital, but it's one of those chapters that was incomplete, and had to be polished off by Engels, who probably had a better understanding of this particular aspect of the possibility of the socialization of the means of production, as he fulfilled his editorial function later and was himself interested in alternative forms of capital ownership and control).

As far as Orwell on upper, middle and lower classes, it's a pretty good description of Britain at the time.

As far as which class element is more important, it depends. Leninists would say it's clearly the vanguard, but most people on the left today generally would say it is the proletariat proper. Shaw must have realised that there were plenty of conservative folks in the middle and upper classes in the UK.

From what I've observed in history, in general, the middle and upper classes (i.e., the intellectual element of the revolution) tend to be more radical before the shooting starts, the proletariat tends to be more radical during actual strife.

[alcibiades_mystery]

24. Hey, what's with the friggin' name, man?

Come ON!

[Alcibiades]

37. The actual Alcibiades

had it long before either of us used it. I suspect that you are attracted to it for the same reasons I am.

I had no idea there was another Alcibiades_anything when I picked this name.

[alcibiades_mystery]

48. Cheers, then, mate

One love. :toast:

[Alcibiades]

55. Watch out for that Pharnabazus!

And Lysander, and those pesky Spartans and Persians.

[expatriot]

25. I think in general, Marx understood this "divorce of control" quite well

it's been a while since I have read the bits and peices of Das Kapital that I've read.... but the idea of a general manager of a factory acting in the interests of extracting maximum profit from the capital he is given authority over is the same no matter whether he acts at the behest of 5 invested partners in London or at the behest of 5 Board of Directors who manage the affairs of the corporation at the behest of 1,500,000 stockholders.

There is little doubt that Marx did not grap the totality of human economics just as Darwin did not grasp the totality of microbiology, but I think it is still very worthwhile and relevant to allude to his terminology and his classifications in discussing the social sciences.

[Alcibiades]

41. No, of course

he didn't understand all of economics, and I bow to his hours spent in the reading room of the British Museum.

Nonetheless, these 19th century categories are outmoded. In the first place, for simple polemical reasons, if you go on about "the proletariat this" and "the bourgeoisie" that, the proletariat won't understand what you're on about, but you'll alienate both the proletarian and the bourgeois, for sure.

In the second place, it does make a difference whether the bourgeois is an actual owner/operator or a managerial capitalist. In general, we have been far worse off under the rule of the managerial capitalists than under the old-style capitalist. If Marx taught us anything, it's that the relationship to the means of production matters. The managerial capitalist of today has such a monopoly of control, power, information and other resources that he is able to systematically screw all other stakeholders, including shareholders, in a way that is unappreciated either by Marx or mainstream economists, though it's no surprise to contemporary Marxist economists, of course.

[laststeamtrain]

21. Gramsci: organic intellectuals

""...He writes that "all men are intellectuals" "but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals". What he meant by that was that everyone has an intellect and uses it but not all are intellectuals by social function."
<snip>
"Gramsci, in his Notebooks, maintained that what was required was that not only should a significant number of ‘traditional’ intellectuals come over to the revolutionary cause (Marx, Lenin and Gramsci were examples of this) but also the working class movement should produce its own organic intellectuals."

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-gram.htm#organic_intellectuals

[alcibiades_mystery]

27. This a vanguardist argument, but it's silly at a certain level

The direction of revolutionary activity may come from the "middle classes," but the actual revolutionary activity must encompass the larger social body in order to be successful. The Czar wasn't overthrown by Lenin, but the masses of Russian workers and soldiers. But this has always been the vanguard argument: no such thing as "spontaneous revolution." One might say the same about the French and American revolutions (the first real revolutions of the modern period): it may have been the middle classes and the elite landowners that broke from the various regimes of rule, identified the conditions for uprising, and developed the plan of action, but it was ultimately the masses of workers that pushed these revolutions past the threshold of "planning" - that is, the mass of workers actualized each revolutionary moment, whereas the middle class and elite class could only imagine these moments as possibilities. In this sense, Shaw is quite wrong.

In another sense as well. Just as capitalism aims for "perpetual revolution" through the commodity form, the great masses of people are perpetually revolutionizing the forms of life in society. How one could look at the massive and constant transformation in social life since 1789 and see a "conservative element" among the people exposed to capitalist transformations is a mystery to me. They may be thought to be conservative because they are not waving the red flag in the street, but in fact the day-to-day of the people is always a balance between conserving those elements that provide a substratum of stability while at the same time engaging in massive creative endeavors that transform social life at large. BOTH...AND. That these endeavorsd rarely take the form of state politics says more about the terrified, conservative nature of political institutions than it does about the "political will" of people.

[JanMichael]

30. OT: You've got me puzzled! "alcibiades" and a mystery?

Please elaborate!

[alcibiades_mystery]

32. NEVER!!!!

:evilgrin:

(I suddenly remembered my Thucydides...)

[expatriot]

35. you've set the bar a bit low....

Heralding the people's ability to adapt socially to changed social conditions seems to me quite a gentry song of praise and an empty victory indeed... technical/societal adeptness does not political advantage make and the true tragedy lies in the establishment to master both tendencies to fulfill their various whims... they exploit the "conservative tendencies" of the mass society so to prevent them from aligning with various subterranean metropolitan/intellectual movements that would greatly increase the mass society's power over the ruling elements and on the other hand exploiting their "liberalities" in such a way to encourage the consumption of narcotic lies of how the freedom of compulsive consumption of the liberal festival of "perpetual excess" is liberating when in fact it is quite incarcerating. (increased indebtedness and servitude (via their labor) to the capitalist credit system).

[alcibiades_mystery]

40. Perhaps

But I'm not talking about "adapting." I'm talking about creating. That this creation is siphoned off is not really the concern of the creators, as a social operation.

[manic expression]

47. Exactly

the people actualize the revolutions. Parts of the higher-classes can merely formulate the ideas and hope for them. Although the support of the higher-classes is not essential, it does help the cause immensely.

If the educated point to the goal, it becomes easier for the movement to reach it.

[expatriot]

31. Class warriors are born in the halls of power

but as they walk down this hall and acquire the vestiges of the ruling classes... the honed intellect of an impassioned education, the the warm nostalgia of a secure nursery, the diversity of customs and scenes of a Grand Tour.... along this journey down this corridor... strange phantoms come up from the basement that infect his psychology... such anxiety and discontents and bewilderments cause this adolescent to shudder in the shadow of the long Hall of Heroes of His Father and he falls prostate on the ground and in stares through the cracks and sees his own psychological torment in the very real toiling struggle and suffering of the slaves he sees in the cracks who die and birth below the Hall of Heroes of his Father. Give a gun to a poet and he becomes a revolutionary, give a gun to a philosopher and he becomes a God. So these class warriors born in the King's house sought refuge in the catacombs and built empires in the darkness and rallied the oppressed and they spoke for the oppressed at the Counsel.... Like Prometheus, Advocate of Man at the Court of the Mighty Ones.

I could go on...

[JanMichael]

34. Did you just write that?

Or was it something that you'd written before and just copied it???

Or did someone else write it?

It's good.

[expatriot]

39. It's a "voice" I've developed over the years....

I wrote that just now but now and then I write these essays in pursuit of a "common anthropology" with a mythopoetic voice.

Thanks.

[Darranar]

42. It is false on the whole, but has some truth to it...

Reform "from above" tends to be largely nominal; this is because the ruling classes, whatever their rhetoric, tend to want to stay in power. Reform is sometimes undertaken, but usually only because of pushes by popular movements.

That said, the weakest elements in society cannot produce a revolution; they lack the means, the time, or even the desire, because their short-term needs outweigh the prospect of long term gain. A socialist utopia ten years from now won't save you if you're starving in the street right now because revolution has disrupted the economy.

Social change can be achieved through popular movements, but these movements will never be composed of those who may end up benefitting most from them; the poorest of the poor lack the time or resources to involve themselves in this sort of thing. It takes those who are disenfranchised and are oppressed by the system - that is, those who are willing to do something about it - but at the same time are actually capable of doing something about it to form these movements and bring about these changes.

[durutti]

45. Nay, nay, nay!

And of course it takes a Fabian to say it...

More later.

[Tsiyu]

50. Yes, just check out the Persian Gulf, Israel/Palestine

all those rich folks becoming suicide bombers....like in Saudi Arabia!

[H2O Man]

51. Khmer Rouges ....

may be an exception to that rule, but certainly prove it is not always true.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

52. History certainly backs him up.

I'm hard pressed to think of any revolutionary leader that was from the proletariat.

Even the mythological ones like Spartacus and Zapata were middle class.

[Mairead]

57. Walter Tyler, John Ball, Jack Rakestraw (nt)

[Hidden Stillness]

53. Middle Class: Close to the Threat of Poverty, but w/ Leisure Time to Think

If you are really, actually poor, then you know that however bad things get, you never rise up or rebel. As things get worse and worse, they just crush you more and more. It would be nice to Romantically think that there is some moral justice operating here, where enough would be enough, and the oppressed would organize and win, but it doesn't happen. As others have mentioned, the burdens and worries of poor people, buried in debt, overworked, fearing anything breaking down--in the house, the car, etc.--because it can never be fixed, are all too crushing, and when your whole life is crisis and fear, and no means to deal with it, then there is no larger world. As the legal and Constitutional structures of modern society and economy are dismantled by the oppressor, and the poor lose all to a kind of complete, Medieval-style poverty, they will not react to stop it, because with all the pressure of bills and the rest, they don't have a moment to think, and are cut off from a way to act. They will only sink further, ignored, to the fate they cannot stop.

Sometimes this, "elitist"/"upper class" label is used to attack people when nothing else works: I remember during the '70s feminists were attacked because most of the popular, most perceptively analytical ones were not poor but were upper middle class--except Gloria Steinem, who actually did start life poor. This was used as an attack that they were "privileged" white women who "didn't suffer any of these things," etc.--bullshit. The important point about it, though, was that only people who had enough time during a day to think and read could eventually start putting things together and analyzing what needs to be done about it. It isn't "elitist," it is just a fact that thinking takes time. Note the number of poor revolutionaries who only developed their philosophies when they were in prison, where they suddenly had time, and access to books.

I believe the middle class is the true maker of modern, just civilization--they invented everything from labor unions to the modern anti-cruelty movements of many types, from trying to get the money of the rich out of politics to trying to get tax money used on the infrastructure; all modern democratic/"socialist" ideas of government's obligation to the people has come from the middle class--they are exactly positioned to understand both the fear and threat of corporate oppression and poverty, and, to have just enough good things from life to know where they came from and who was usurping all the rest of it from workers and citizens. They have a sense of things, whereas the poor are just cut off, hopeless.

[lonestarnot]

54. I'm poor and I rise up and rebel every fucking day!

I'm not homeless yet, but I'd make a sign out of my house if I get there. This poor shit is just an excuse for doing nothing.

[JanMichael]

56. That would be called the abyss that is Poverty.

You are correct that it does suck the fight out of a good deal of folks.

I also agree that the term "elitist" is simply the plutocratic way, no irory becase they ARE the elitists, of keeping those that do have the power to make change at bay.