Fascinating Discussion about Working Class Revolution from the Democracy and Hip-Hop Project

There are few blogs out there right now that actually manage to combine commentary on a musical or cultural movement with informed discussion of political movements.  But this is something that is being done, with a lot of evident commitment and ambition, over at the Democracy and Hip-Hop Project.  I was very intrigued by a recent post over there, The Working Class is not a Paper Tiger.  This blog starts with a criticism of Grace Lee Boggs (former co-author with CLR James of Facing Reality, etc.) and what DHHP perceives (probably correctly) as her Maoist tendencies, tendencies that still maintain a strong influence on some left-radical groups in the U.S. 

One outstanding paraghraph in this post asserts a position that I would agree with in many ways, that many recent developments in U.S. capitalism - such as the advancement of outsourcing - are generally not a radical departure but a continuation of the same old things - that is, capitalism and imperialism.  Although the advancement of these capitalist tendencies is not necessarily good for capitalism itself - and I think this blogger nicely and succinctly points out that essential contradiction (especially in one sentence - emphasized below).  

The “outsourcing of jobs” is the export of capital, it is imperialism. It is the drive and motive force of capitalism to “[increase] profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries.” In this export of capital, the population of the imperialist country becomes isolated from production which is the origin for its own decay. “Post-industrialism”, “post-modernism”, “deindustrialization”, etc. are all modern, exotic terms for a phenomenon that has been in motion for over a hundred years and which has not undermined the presence of the working class, but, in fact, has drawn larger and larger pools of people into its ranks. 

I also especially appreciate the closing paragraphs in this critique, which remind us why many of us gravitated toward a libertarian socialist or a left-communist perspective in the first place:

In a book review from a 1980 issue of Urgent Tasks, an anonymous author wrote, “a distinctive autonomous working class culture will develop as part of a distinctive and autonomous working class.” The values that the working class supposedly lacks, but that I contend exists, though sparsely, cannot fully mature within the confines of the society in which we live. We cannot inject full “socialist” values into capitalist social relations that are necessarily in conflict….

We must dispense with the idea that workers or black people or whomever we consider as “degenerate” need some kind of overhaul in ethics in order to make concrete change. Those values already exist, but are merely fragmented and episodic as they exist in competition with the values of the decaying old society.

People are just as ready now to make revolution as any time. There is no way to anticipate the kind of change that comes in revolutions because they largely happen spontaneously. But this does not preclude sorts of intervention and conscious revolutionary engagement in the daily conflicts of working people that can accelerate the development leading to revolution. Whether we find a place organizing in our workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, etc., we can create the possibilities through decisive, direct action which can bring a different world closer, the kind of world without a ruling class to govern us, the kind of place where full relations and socialist culture can maturate.

I have complicated feelings, though, regarding when and how many of us can really “create the possibilities” simply by finding “a place organizing in our workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, etc.”   How much possibility really exists to make real changes simply by plugging into traditional unions, school boards, etc.?  I’ve gotten quite cynical regarding the idea that we can promote radical changes simply by finding a place in these same old groups.  We also have to keep in mind that groups that spring up in the U.S. specifically to promote and call for revolution (what few that remain) often are not organizations of the most directly exploited proletariat but, rather, groups comprised of people from some relatively privileged and affluent circles, often led by academics or others who have official positions of social or intellectual authority in the old system.  So, the whole process becomes very tricky, maybe especially these days.

Democracy and Hip-Hop seems to take a pretty straightforward left-communist position, which I can sympathize with extensively, especially when it comes to critiquing the capitalist system.  But as I’ve said before, I also favor the tendency of autonomists (whether or not this is contradictory to my sympathies with left communism) to discuss and look for new forms of organization and new ways of thinking about class composition.  Though the advancements (and decay) of present-day capitalism are in many ways a continuation of the same old thing, there are a lot of aspects to the present condition that call out for some new approaches.

This post from DHHP hasn’t really explored such questions, and I don’t know if those questions will fall within the province of the blog.  But this post and the blog overall are still admirable for the depth of discussion and for much of the perspective that they take.  Especially considering that this is supposedly mainly a blog about hip-hop, a musical and cultural movement…