Our Task is to Organise the Proletariat

Written by By Ragnar Røed.

Originally published Ocotber 1, 2018.

“Changes in society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction between the old and the new; it is the development of these contradictions that pushes society forward and gives the impetus for the supersession of the old society by the new.”

– Mao Zedong

Our task is to organise the proletariat. The communist party needs to be the organisation of the most advanced and active sections of the proletariat. The highest form of proletarian organisation. And our organisation of the masses must be built upon organisation of larger sections of the proletariat. 

Our revolution isn’t based foundationally on “everyone who is suffering” or “everyone that experience marginalization and oppression”. Our revolution is to replace the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat – to replace capitalism with socialism, on the path towards communism. 

This isn’t a moral question. It is a question of the laws of developement in history. Human society is driven forward by class struggle. Class struggle is expression of basic contradictions in production, under capitalism between social production and private acquisitions – the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist acquisitions of the products. 

Furthermore, this is a question about political power and the state. All states in class society are class states. No state can exist if they are not an expression of the political organisation of a class, and represent the interests of a class (or multiple classes). The state of the bourgeoisie can not be replaced with anything else than a state led by the proletariat. No other class will lead a break with capitalism and a development towards communism. 

This is not relevant to us now. On the contrary. This is the foundation of our strategy. We must organise the proletariat for itself, by creating class consciousness and class organisation for revolution. Without this we will not succeed in our goal. This is the whole point of our existence.

The proletariat must be gathered around something common – around their common class interests. The proletariat cannot be gathered by “lumping together” all oppressed groups. One does not gather the proletariat politically by exclaiming LGBT people + women + people of colour + Muslims. All these groups consist of both bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie and proletarians. It is correct and important to fight for the liberation of all oppressed groups. And it is also correct and important with particular organisation within a number of fighting sections. But the main task of communists is to gather the proletariat for struggle, with their class interests as the foundation. 

We take the class standpoint for the proletariat. And we seek unity with those who have a proletarian class affiliation. These are two different things. The class standpoint can be taken on an ideological basis. The petty bourgeoisie can take on the class standpoint of the proletariat – precicely the same way they can take standpoint for the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state. But class affiliation is determined by objective conditions. It is determined by which group in society one is part of – it is determined by one’s relationship with the means of production (property owner or propertyless), one’s position in the organisation of society (superior or subordinate), one’s amount of social wealth (how much money and other goods one have to live on) and how one obtain this (wages, exploitation or other ways). We seek to organise the factually objective proletariat, in organisations who takes a real class standpoint for this class.

The hard nucleus of the Norwegian proletariat are those who work in low wage jobs, at the bottom of the social organisation, without much freedom in their labour, without a large degree of specialisation (higher education) and without ownership of the means of production. The typical proletarians are workers within industry, construction, public services (healthcare), private services (shops), transport and storage. By far most functionaries, office workers, intellectuals and academics are not a part of this class – they belong to the petty-bourgeoisie, the class “between” the proletariat and bourgeoisie.

We use Mao Zedong’s theory about the three revolutionary instruments; the communist party, the people’s army and the united front –  and we say that this is the three forms of the proletariats class organisations, with the party as the core and the leader of the army and the front. Our sole task is to politicise, mobilise, and organise the proletariat and its allies for and in these forms of organisation –  with the goal to seize the political power.

This is the common thread in our organising. This is our general political line. This must permeate our guidance, our focus and our plans. This must be put up against the tendency to treat politics like a buffet, where one can spontaneously pick whatever one would like. It must be put up against spontanitism, to hunt for popular and topical media pieces for a bark of attention. It must be put up against the tendency of playing the “privilege game” to find the least privileged, as if this was to provide any new insight on its own.

We must base ourselves on Mao Zedong’s class analysis, in his formulation of the general line for the revolution in China, in the mass line and his line of serving the people. We must take the starting point in the ideal that communists must swim among the masses like fish swim in the water. And we must take as our starting point Lenin’s line of going to the deepest and broadest of masses, that is to the normal proletarians and especially the poorest proletarians. This is a line of crucial strategic importance. It is not moralism, but marxism, which lay the basis for our class standpoint, and it must guide us in all political questions. 

“Our stand is that of the proletariat and of the masses. For members of the Communist Party, this means keeping to the stand of the Party, keeping to Party spirit and Party policy.”

– Mao Zedong