Rev Left Radio - Revolutionary Strategy and the Industrial Proletariat

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

Chase from the Maoist Communist Union (MCU) joins Breht to discuss revolutionary strategy, both historically and presently, and the specific role of the industrual proletariat in that strategy. Together, they discuss communist organizing, different class stratas and their revolutionary potential, the science of Marxism, historical materialism, imperialism and its ideological and material impacts on the working class of the imperial core, the social divison of labor, the service industry, large scale v. small scale industry, trade unions, right and left deviations, and much more! Learn more about the Maoist Communist Union HERE Reach out to MCU at [e-mail] Join the MCU Open Study group by contacting at [e-mail] Reach out to Chase at [e-mail] Get 15% off any book at Left Wing Books HERE --------------------------------------------------------- Rev Left is and always will be 100% listener funded. You can support the show and get access to hundreds of bonus episode in our back catologue HERE Follow Rev Left on Insta    

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, we have a big conversation with me and my friend Chase, who has been on the show, I think multiple times before, is behind mass struggle and is behind the podcast Faith and Capital and is part of the emerging pre-party formation called the Maoist Communist Union. And together we talk revolutionary strategy and the role of, of the industrial proletariat. So this is a theoretical but also practical guide to revolutionary strategy, what has worked

in the past and what it would take to work here for revolutionary movements and organizations to embed themselves within the industrial proletariat and unions. It talks about why the industrial proletariat in particular is an essential formation within the working class for a communist or socialist movement and references to his historical movements, particularly in the Bolshevik attempt to organize the industrial proletariat, and is overall just an important, practical, and theoretical deep dive into revolutionary strategy, which is ultimately what this is about. And I really love Chase, and every time he's on, you can tell the amount of time and dedication

and heartfelt work that he puts into this stuff. And it's just a really principled comrade and a genuinely, good human being with a big heart and I love him and I love that he's on the show again and I hope that you find this enjoyable and educational and also inspiring. Also we're working with our friends over at Left Wing Books to get 15% off any book in their store. If you type in Rev Left at checkout, it's just a little way that we can promote left wing books that puts out important books that are completely in line with what we talk about here on RevLeft Radio, so we're promoting them and their publishing house and their

store of wonderful material. And at the same time, we're helping our listeners get a little bit of a discount so you can go into that store, get 15% off, and just all around everybody benefits and the overall ecosystem of left wing and radical revolutionary outlets, whether they be books or podcast or anything else, can continue to cohere and support one another. So I will link to, in the show notes, I will link to left wing books, and I'll already have the code embedded. So if you just go to the show notes, you click that link, you

pick out a book, it'll automatically generate the 15% off code for you. So shout out to our friends at Kirsteble Deb and left wing books. They're good comrades, and they do a good service. And to be able to put those books in the hands of our listeners at a 15% discount is just

something I, of course, said yes to. So go check them out. And without further do, here's my conversation with Chase on revolutionary strategy and the industrial proletariat. Hey everybody. My name's Chase. I'm a member of Maoist Communist Union. Mous Communist Union, or MCU, to keep it short, is a pre-party organization based in the revolutionary science of Marxist, Leninism, Maoism. And if what I share with y'all today clicks or seems to make a lot of sense, I really want to encourage folks who are wanting a more serious but basic introduction to Maoism to reach out to us

and consider joining our new MCU Open study, which we are kicking off really soon. This study is for people who really do want to develop their knowledge of Marxism and see the need to make a revolution in this country. So for those interested in the study, you can message us at MCU study at proton.me. Beautiful, yeah. And I know some of the comrades involved in this, and they're all very principal. I'm going to have a couple more representatives from MCU on in the next week or so. So people will get a couple episodes with members talking about MCU. This conversation is going to be about something different,

but we're going to really focus on the pre-party organization as a whole, with our next guests from MCU. So something to look forward to. I'm really hopeful about it. Just knowing the people involved, I know that at the very least it's going to be an incredibly principled organization. And so, yeah, I'm excited about it,

encouraged by it, and I hope more people check it out. And if that is sort of the slice of the Marxist left that you fall into, it's definitely worth checking out and seeing how you can possibly contribute. So, yeah, have fun. And just to say, like, today we may not be talking about MCU,

but hopefully we are putting forward ideas and the politics that represent MCU's understanding of our present situation and really more so the general strategy for making revolution in this country. Which is obviously incredibly essential and it was what we're going to be talking about today. So that's a perfect segue. So let's go ahead and just get into the conversation at hand. And I'll start off by asking you this. What are we discussing today and why do you think it's important for listeners to consider?

So today I want to talk about why. any communist organization in the United States that actually wants to lead the working class and overthrowing the bourgeoisie has to base their strategy not just on the proletariat in general, but the industrial proletariat in particular. To get at the heart of the matter,

Marxism is the science of the proletariat for making revolution. And when communists reject really what are basic fundamentals of Marxism, we sever ourselves from accomplishing our task, of leading the proletariat in their immediate struggle for economic emancipation and political power and in their ultimate struggle for the abolition of classes class society and the various non-class forms of oppression that sprout up from its soil and honestly the topic of what it means

to understand Marxism as the proletariat science for making revolution could be the topic of an individual podcast show or in the least a very very long series there's just so much to unpack regarding what constitutes a science, how the various sciences differ from one another, how it is that Marxism is a science, how it became synthesized, right? It's three component parts, the stages of its development, and on and on. But for now, the main thing I want to stress is that organizations that are actually based on Marxism will place their strategy for making revolution upon a scientific basis. And by that I mean, their general strategy for leading the proletariat in a violent overthrow of the ruling capitalist

class must be firmly based on the correct knowledge of the history of class society, the history and interworking of capitalism, in the historical experience of the world's proletariat in its pursuit of its economic emancipation by means of the seizure of political power. There's a great deal of experience to be learned from. And if, If communists don't take seriously really grasping the lessons from past proletarian struggle, then at least in practice, we are rejecting the Marxist theory of knowledge by acting as if the past centuries of proletarian practice can be discarded, and by doing so, condemning the proletariat to repeat theoretical and practical mistakes that can and should be avoided.

But the absence of a communist organization in this country really rooted in Marxism and equipped with a deep grasp of the basic lessons of proletarian social struggle has steered us not only toward unscientific strategies for making revolution, but it has also left many would-be revolutionaries vulnerable to annihilism about making revolution in this country. I was on my lunch break the other day getting a coffee at Dunkin' Donuts when I struck up a conversation with a few of the workers behind the counter. One of the young workers seemed interested in discussing,

capitalism, Marxism, but then quickly turned to suggest that we could never have socialism here. And it was like his default mode of thinking can't happen here. But this idea is simply unscientific. It doesn't reflect reality. This country can be transformed fundamentally. There is nothing inerrant about class society. and capitalist imperialism specifically that makes them impossible to topple. Listen, for the vast majority of our existence, modern humans or homo sapiens have lived in classless

societies. Anthropologists believe that modern humans have been around for nearly 300,000 years. Agriculture emerged some 10 to 12,000 years ago during the Neolithic era, but it wasn't until literally six to seven thousand years ago that classes in class society emerged. And within those seven thousand years, historical materialism has demonstrated that class societies have passed through an ancient slave mode of production, a feudal mode of production in a capitalist mode of production. It was also by the end of the 19th century that capitalist imperialism had developed. But within the last hundred years, exploitative modes of production,

were consciously transformed into the socialist mode of production. The point here is that human societies and everything we know in the universe has been in a constant state of motion. Capitalism has only been around a few hundred years, and it won't be here too much longer. On the contrary, a study of capitalism shows us that socialist revolution is not only possible, but that the very forces capable of carrying out, this revolution, are created by the ever-expanding nature of capitalism itself.

The bourgeoisie is constantly creating more and more of its own grave-diggers, though it's not doing so consciously. And this is not to say that imperialism has no real impact on the objective and subjective conditions in imperialist countries. It does. Anyone who denies this is stirring up the old right opportunism of Katsky and Browder. Briefly recall, for a moment, Kotsky's concept of ultra-imperialism in which he believed that the threat of economic stagnation would gradually force the imperialist powers to

lay down their arms and unite at the contradictions between imperialist powers within capitalist imperialist and imperialist countries could be resolved without revolution. And that a peaceful transition out of capitalism was possible. Browder, too, an entire decade before we heard the same shit from Khrushchev's mouth said that imperialism abroad and monopolization domestically were themselves resolving the contradictions between countries and classes. He believed that following World War II, a long period of so-called class peace would be realized. And therefore, it was in the interests of the workers to lay down the shift.

strike weapon permanently, lay down the aim of proletarian socialist revolution, and instead work together with the capitalists for their supposed common interests of democracy and monopolization. Why? Because capitalist imperialism itself was abolishing the basis for class struggle in the United States and across the entire world. But no matter how hard revisionists and petty bourgeois third worldists try, imperialism does not resolve the internal contradictions of capitalist society. It's a lie, and a lie that betrays not only the proletariat of capitalist imperialist countries, but the proletariat of the world.

I want to return to this in a minute. There is no better testament to the truth that the old society of capitalism can be overthrown and the new society of socialism constructed than the, experience in historic achievements of the millions and millions of workers and peasants in Russia from 1917 to 1953 and in China from 1949 to 1976. Through studying and applying Marxism, the masses, led by each country's proletariat through their Communist Party, were able to consciously and concretely transform the class character of their states, their economic relations, their productive forces, the class consciousness of the mass of exploited and impressed people, the relationship between manual and mental labor,

the relationship between cities and countryside, the cultural norms of society, and much, much more. What's more is that we live in a unique moment in human history, where it is not just that class struggle and the internal contradictions of a given society produce revolutions that can then lead to fundamentally different class societies, their own new contradictions, as is what happened with the rise of feudalism and capitalism. But rather, society can be consciously transformed from capitalism through socialism to communism. It's not just that change can happen, but when the necessary objective and subjective conditions

exist and the contradictions are grasped and handled correctly, change can now be brought about intentionally. This is why the Chinese communists emphasized that socialism marks the beginning of the conscious history of humanity where for the first time in our existence as a species

we begin to consciously direct the development of society at a mass scale as opposed to said development being largely driven by things outside of our conscious control. Like natural forces humans didn't understand or couldn't

yet control, religious superstition, so-called market forces. Yet, in order for capitalist society to be overthrown and for socialism to be constructed and transitioned through, the working class must be made conscious of the inner laws of capitalism, as well as its relation as a clash to all other classes in strata and society and their various and often contradictory political interests. All right. So this point that socialism is only possible when the proletaria has been made conscious of its relation to

and the interests of other classes in strata is actually very, very important for two reasons. The first is because of the contradictory interests between classes and the second pertains to the need to understand the oppression of other classes in strata from a specifically proletarian worldview. Let's start with the first and look at the Petit Bourgeoisie and Leppin Proletariat, for examples. As a class, the Petit bourgeoisie does not have an undivided interest in proletarian dictatorship in the abolition of private property.

While the Petit bourgeoisie is excluded from political power under capitalism, this class also has an economic interest in preserving the capitalist system, which they do benefit from to some degree. Therefore, if the proletariat were to ally with the petty bourgeoisie without consciously understanding the contradictory class interests of the petty bourgeoisie and how they tend towards reformist half measures in the fight against the big bourgeoisie, the working class could begin to tail as opposed to lead this class. and the proletariat would be unable to win over the petty bourgeois Z for revolution under the leadership of the proletariat.

And the same could be said of the lumpin proletariat. Thinking specifically of the conditions in a developed capitalist country like the U.S., does the lumpen have an undivided interest in establishing a proletarian dictatorship and abolishing private property? no the lumpen is extremely divided in its ideas and material interests while the lumpen like the petty bourgeoisie is oppressed by capitalism sections of the lumpen make their living by oppressing members of other classes as well as their own for example drug dealers have a real economic incentive in keeping primarily and mainly the working class but also other lumpin people and even some of the petty bourgeoisie as well, addicted to drugs and in constant cycles of debt and dependent. When compared to the petty bourgeoisie, the proletariat are less protected from this sort of violence, and thus are the main victims, actually, of this form of oppression. Another section of the lumpen are pimps, right, these low-level enforcers of the sexual enslavement of women. Pimps have a material interest in keeping prostituted women trapped

in cycles of addiction and abuse. Then there are the sections of the Lumpin that are oppressed by other Lumpins, right? Prostitutes, homeless people, addicts who have lost their ability to hold a job. While this section of Lumpin proletarians are quite brutally oppressed, they do not play a key role in production. And unfortunately, have the most precarious and unstable lives. So in what way would it be strategic to center the lumpen in a general strategy for overthrowing the bourgeoisie? The idea that the most oppressed will be the most receptive to revolutionary theory and most likely to making revolution is not Marxism and has no basis in history.

That's liberal identity politics masked as Marxism. all this to say that in the same manner as with the petty bourgeoisie if the proletariat were to ally with the lumpin without consciously understanding its internal contradictions and how they have historically proven to be a vacillating unreliable ally against bourgeoisie's and imperialists the working class could begin to tail as opposed to lead this class and the proletariat would be unable to win over the lumpen for revolution under the leadership of the proletariat. So, returning to this idea that socialism is only possible when the proletariat has been made conscious of its relation to and the interests of other classes in strata, I also want to make clear that if the working class is to win over the elements of the various oppressed classes and strata of the United States

to socialist revolution, like the petty bourgeoisie and lump and proletariat, but also women, racial, social, groups, religious minorities, right? Then the working class will need to understand how each in every class and strata are oppressed from a specifically Marxist perspective, a specifically working class perspective, not a radical, liberal, or postmodern perspective. So as to clarify the true nature of their oppression, Lenin, in task of the Russian Social Democrats, I think makes this point really, really well. If you, if listeners want to to go check that out. But the only reason I took us down this trail in the first place

on why the proletariat needs to be imbued with a scientific understanding of itself and its relation to all other classes in strata is because of the defeatist outlook and petty bourgeois nihilism that plagues much of the working class in masses today. How many of us have heard, maybe even thought ourselves, that revolution couldn't happen in this country, because our bourgeoisie is just too strong. This is a lie. Marxists know that society can be transformed and can be transformed consciously.

Not because we believe in magic or think good vibes, you know, does shit, but because of the objective contradictions of capitalist society in the capitalist mode of production. And it's not just social Democrats and third-worldists who have confused us about whether revolution is possible in capitalist imperialist countries and about who is

the revolutionary subject in the United States and how we can actually overthrow our bourgeoisie. Perhaps the more insidious and dangerous idea among those who do see the need for revolution is the idea that U.S. imperialism has made the working class here too fat, too comfortable. Apparently, we've just got it too good to even think about working toward a proletarian socialist revolution here. And I want to be clear, imperialism does have a real impact on the objective conditions in the United

States, as well as its superstructure. Does a labor aristocracy exist within the United States? Of course. To deny any of these facts would be to deny reality in the same manner as Kotzky and Browder.

But neither the fact that the United States is an imperialist country, nor the existence of a labor aristocracy should lead us to absurd immaterial conclusions like, well, since World War II, the entire industrial proletariat was grafted into a giant labor aristocracy

or all unionized workers are the labor aristocracy and therefore we can organize the proletariat anywhere but the unions or all white workers are the labor aristocracy. So to organize white workers, workers is essentially right opportunism or even all wage workers in the United States economically benefit from imperialism to the extent that the country's primary contradiction isn't even class anymore, but is now between racial or nationally oppressed

peoples and a white nation. None of these ideas are the result of a materialist analysis of the United States. It's class relations and the actual impact of imperialism on our working class and oppressed peoples. These are all conceptions that serve the bourgeoisie. They pull would-be communists like the revolutionary communist party, right, the RCP USA in the late 1970s out of the labor union movement. They pit sections of the working class against each other. They mechanically confuse the present ideas in thinking of large sections of the proletariat for a permanent, immutable, unchangeable worldview, right? These stem from a fundamentally metaphysical worldview, not a

dialectical materialist worldview. And we need to call these ideas for what they are. They're bourgeois. Our revolutionary movement has no place for this petty bourgeois defeatism and bourgeois nihilism. Society can be transformed. The proletariat can forcefully overthrow the ruling capitalist class, but they need people who give a fuck, who take up their interests as their own to study the revolutionary science deeply, collectively, and give their whole lives to leading the working class in revolution through an actual communist party. So before moving on to defining the working class, Brett, any thoughts? Yeah, I think it's really, really important to clear up so many of those misconceptions,

which not only creep into the left broadly, but into the market. Marxist left specifically. And I totally agree with your delineations about, you know, the labor aristocracy and some of the confusion that can be caused around that, the over-focusing on imperialism to the exclusion of other contradictions, the sort of petty bourgeois identity politics masquerading as, you know, Marxism. You see this quite a lot. So, yeah, I really appreciate all that. And some of the things you said, I have a lot of notes here. I probably won't be able to get to all of them, but just a couple ideas is I really want to focus on the element of becoming conscious. Like, we all hear the word class consciousness. We all think,

like, yeah, that means becoming conscious of yourself, you know, as a member of a certain class, which is, of course, absolutely essential. But this bigger point of being able, once you understand the laws and motions of historical development of societies over time, to be conscious of that process and therefore take it into your own hands is not only something that's incredibly possible, and it has been happening to different people at different times and different cultures and histories and certainly socialist revolutions take this idea incredibly seriously. But you can see how it happens as other forces are demystified. And one of my favorite examples is, of course, evolution via natural selection or Darwinian

evolution, where in before we had that scientific understanding of how, human life came about we had all these other ideas most of them static and metaphysical about you know what what the terrain of plants and animals are and where they came from etc you know you either had the idea that god put all the animals and plants and people as they are or other ideas um that were sort of pre-darwinian trying to grasp in this direction but coming up false um but then of course after darwin had origins of species and people began to understand that, you know, this process of evolution via natural selection, the genome was unlocked. And that also helped not only reaffirm the theory of Darwinian evolution, but took it further to the extent now that we are beginning to develop

conscious, intentional control over the process of evolution. We're not there fully, but, you know, the dawn of technologies like CRISPR, the possibility of gene editing, the understanding of the genome completely at least offers the prospect that we might be able to no longer be helpless unconscious victims of a of a natural process but we can actually take that process into our own hands understand it at the deepest levels and to some extent be able to take control of it I think another realm that this is happening in is precisely on the climate realm like I think climate change is this sort of huge contradiction and there's much to say about it and we've said much about it but I think one of the long-term

results of having to deal with this problem if, you know, assuming we survive and civilization isn't, you know, set back or, or undermined in some fundamental way by climate change is that almost certainly it's going to result in a deeper and more profound understanding of how the climate system works. And this may take decades, this may take centuries. But an ability over time for human civilization to have more and more conscious intentional control over those processes instead of just doing things and then having these terrible externalities and these second order effects happen to us that we then have to deal with. And so in the same exact way, Marxism allows us to understand the fundamental motions and

laws of history and of society's evolution through historical time. And by understanding that deeply, then of course, just like these other examples, we can begin to take conscious intentional control and no longer be subject to the whims of forces we don't understand. And so I think that is a, that's a really important point that you made, and I really enjoy that. And then the other thing I just wanted to say is the transcending of class society. This is a really important point. And then the way I think about it is that this would, this would represent humanity as a species growing up.

You know, there's like this idea that you return to community at a higher level. There is pre-class society, forms of social organization, which are the vast majority of our history as a species in which we lived communally and socially. Then we go through this process of class societies, ancient slave societies, medieval monarchical feudal societies, industrial and post-industrial capitalist societies, all of which are class societies, which are obviously fundamentally irrational. they're fundamentally unjust they involve by definition exploitation and violence and brutality they give rise to things like imperialism and thus war right you can't have imperialism without capitalism and you know Albert Einstein famously called this entire period the predatory phase of human development right class society has this predatory phase it's almost adolescent phase that the human species goes through so then that we can grow up beyond that

and return to community at a higher level, having gone through the brutalities and alienation and absurdities and irrationalities of individualist or just in more broadly class societies. And so not only is it a possibility, it is going to happen. Like, you know, as if humans continue to exist, of course, we're going to have to fight for it because the powers that be are never going to just hand over their power and their wealth and nicely out of the goodness of their heart. It's going to involve struggle as everything does. but it is in some sense

in inevitability as long as there is that struggle and there is that continued evolution that humans will grow up beyond this really adolescent absurd infantile phase of human development and so socialism is still class society but it is the conscious

intentional shift trying to move out of it and moving in the direction where we can finally transcend it which is in so many ways the human species itself growing up finally you know despite the nightmare of history. Does that more or less align with what you're saying? Do you have any problems with what I said or any thoughts? No, no, no. I agree. I think, especially on that point about

the consciousness, I think that Marxism has, it's our weapon, but we have to understand it and really start using it as a weapon. It's a theory based on the history of proletarian struggle. And when we when we discard, when organizations don't take serious the scientific nature of Marxism, we can, we really are devaluing the role of that theory in consciousness plays. So I think that's one element. And then on the other hand, right, we, to be clear, we're not saying that if we just study Marxism really hard and we just take Marxism with proletariat, then then it doesn't really matter what the conditions are. We could just make a revolution. You know, that would be a major rightist era as well.

But when we undermine the role of theory and consciousness, when we discard Marxism as a real science based on the history of classes and class society and capitalism in particular, then we really do ourselves and the working class of disservice and equipping ourselves as communists and the working class as the leading class of this revolution, in achieving their immediate goals of proletarian dictatorship and their ultimate goals of class of society. Yeah, absolutely well said.

And just another side note, we can see so much confusion around class consciousness, around these different classes and strata and society and who's supposed to be leading who, just by looking at the spectacle of the ongoing currently DNC. And just the rhetorical overtures to the working class made by these absolutely, class warriors on behalf of the owning class tricking many desperate working people into believing that the Democratic Party has their best interests in heart and that, you know, if we just let this political elite, this political economic elite, because the politicians are sort of proxies for the underlying donor classes of both parties, that they're going to somehow

out of the goodness of their heart help the working class. And Kamala came out with this whole list of these, these policies that she's going to do to help working class people, you know, $25,000 for first-time home buyers, $6,000 child tax credits, you know, the erasure of medical debt, all these promises. And this gets a bunch of desperate working people like, ooh, maybe this time it'll really happen. And as I've said elsewhere, I promise you, none of, even those tepid, minor tweaks and reforms to the system that would take the boot off the throat of working people just a tad

are never going to happen. And it's not just that the Republicans, the bad Republicans are going to stop them, as we've seen over and over again the rotating villain role within the Democratic Party itself, in which certain key members that would be necessary in order to make such a policy possible, will step up and prevent it. You know, the Joe Liebermans, the Kirsten Cinemas, these people in every generation come up to stop these policy proposals. And then the Democratic Party acts as if they're just too weak. And because of this system of checks and balances, it's just impossible to do it. But it just all that is coming to mind as people are once again tricked by the electoral

spectacle into thinking that these, you know, these venal, soulless, corrupt proxies of the owning class are somehow going to fight for the little guy. And the Republicans have their own version of this too where unfortunately a lot of like working class union type guys are brought in by the idea that Trump, this baby, this rich kid turned a billionaire who has done nothing but ruthlessly serve his own interest and the interest of his class in power and out of power is somehow going to be a fighter, a scrappy fighter for the little guy for the average working class American. Both of these parties have their ways of tricking working people into thinking that they're going to operate in their interests. But the clarity that you're offering here and

that Marxism offers is really an inoculation against being susceptible to that sort of, that sort of just straight up lying and manipulation, you know. Yeah, with the, election coming up in particular. I think that's a great example of how the nature of capitalism and our bourgeoisie particularly wants us to get so consumed with this immediate moment and to abandon our knowledge about the history of this country and the history of capitalism. And they want to make us feel like, well, fascism is right around the corner. So we better just be online a lot and really try and post about stuff a lot. And maybe or and then once people post them up, then they kind of swing towards this nihilism, like, fuck, nothing can change.

We only have this two-party system, and well, maybe we'll have revolution in some other country, or maybe other countries can help us have our own revolution. And we really get away from Marxism. But yeah, I think it's really important. I found it really helpful to be actually in a revolutionary organization that can help us overcome that subjectivity, that drive to just kind of get lost in this immediate moment. but really have a more objective historical sense of as to really what's going on and what needs to be done in the immediate moment. Definitely. It gives you this sort of meta perspective on

history and sort of understanding your place within it, which makes, which again, it sort of helps inoculate you against the moment to moment attention grabbing spectacle of not only the electoral and political spectacle of the mainstream media, etc. But now these new apps, these social media apps where every story is just metabolized within a couple hours to a day and you just get lost in this rush of information coming at you all the time like of course that makes you nihilistic um of course that that makes you feel ungrounded and completely powerless and in some sense not that there's a cabal making it happen but in some sense because of the logic of capitalism it's sort of meant to do that and it gives you this sense of like everything is fucked nihilism um

etc. And so, you know, having, having an ability to step away from that to put your energy and attention and your mind into actual organizing on the ground to study history and through the Marxist lens, I think can really help, you know, protect you against the, the nihilism and the scattered attention economy and all of the, the trinkets and jangling keys of modern day, you know, societal spectacle and really center you in an analysis that is unwavering. and that understands where it is in time and space and has the long view both backwards into the past as well as into the future. I'm really online at all times. It really does help anchor you in this, this is this sea of dopamine and attention grabbing nonsense. That is the,

that is the spectacle. Absolutely. All right. Well, let's go ahead and move on. The second question is about the working class. So obviously we're talking about it. I think it helps to dive even deeper into the concept. So what is the working class and what does it mean to say that the proletariat alone is the vanguard of revolution? Yeah, yeah. In order to get to the industrial proletariat, which is a specific section of the working class, we need to take a step back and really talk about what the working class is. Because just because organizations identify as Marxist doesn't mean we actually even agree on this. There are organizations that literally are saying that we need to redefine what the working class is. And so,

It might sound like a basic and simple thing, but I think it's actually really important. There are two main classes in capitalist society, the bourgeois Z and the working class. In capitalist society, the bourgeois Z is the class that owns and controls the great majority of society's private property. And by private property, I don't mean personal property like clothes, phones, laptops, or bikes, but the socially recognized exclusive possession of the means of production for, example, factories, machinery, technology, land. Now, because the means of production are the private property of the bourgeoisie, whether the bourgeoisie owns them directly or controls them through means of corporations, financial holding companies, contractual agreements,

etc. The working class is without ownership and control of any means of production. they are not the only class dispossessed of the means of production, but this is one fundamental aspect of their material being that makes them working class as opposed to petty bourgeois or bourgeois. In addition to being excluded from this private property, the only commodity they can reliably sell on the market is their labor power, which is their ability to do work, although the capitalists are, of course, you know, not above,

buying up the few meager personal possessions the workers have if they go into bankruptcy or have to pawn any family heirlooms. And so as a result of their lacking ownership of the means of production, they are materially compelled to exchange their labor power for wages. I was just talking to some people at an event last night about this. To be clear, it is neither a gun nor a whip that forces the worker to sell their labor. Rather, it's the pain of an empty stomach and the cries of hunger from their children. So in this sense, the freedom of the workers is twofold.

On one hand, the working class is free from the absolute control of any individual master. Workers are not subject to the chains of chattel slavery, nor are they bound to any landlord or plot of land, as was the case with many peasants under feudalism. Because of this, workers can freely sell their ability to work without the restrictions of slavery or feudal bondage. But on the other hand, they are also free from possessing any means of production. The technology and natural materials necessary for reproducing themselves and their loved ones. Again, it is this freedom that forces the working class to work for the capitalists. And in contrast, the bourgeoisie is free to do with their private property as they please, including hire and fire workers whenever they wish, right?

These are the glorious freedoms granted to us under capitalism. Yeah, absolutely. And that point about freedom is so important because everybody talks about it all the time. Everybody is going to pretend that this is the core value of American society. This is what they're trying to spread around the world with imperialism. and it's such a fucking joke to see through the freedom rhetoric I think is a really important step

for any class conscious person to break out of the ideological capture of their rulers and you know two points you made about having to you know sort of a side you made but I think it is sort of amusing sad tragic and a reality

is this having to pawn off you know working your whole life but still constantly being in precarious situations we got the pawn shit off and I've done that dozens if not hundreds and hundreds of times throughout my life where I've had to go and sell things that I liked just to be able to make a bill to get through the month. A huge thing is selling books

that I bought over the years, just be able to pay my electricity bill or something. And so I know many of you out there can relate to that. But also I wanted to point out that one of the other ways is not the pain of an empty stomach and the cries of hunger from your children, of course, is the new gun and whip. It's the, it is the thing that, coerces you to to abide by the system and to get the fucking line. And it's even more coercive than the gun or the whip, right? Because I can, you know, you point a gun at me, you whip me, that's one thing. You do it to my kids. You know, I will do anything to stop it. You know, as a parent or just, you know, you're a parent as well. Like you would die for your

children without even thinking about it to protect them. And so in some ways it's more brutal than the gun and the whip. And another thing that serves this sort of coercive element is homelessness, visible homelessness. You know, capitalism acts like it's a problem and both parties pretend to have solutions to it. There is no solution to it under capitalism. But more than that, if you, especially in these huge cities like New York City, this sort of center of financial financialized capitalism, you're stepping over human bodies to go to your work and there is an unconscious perpetual reminder you could end up here too there is no safety net nobody's coming to save you if you don't shut the fuck up and get back to work you could be here um and so you know as much as

they say they want to solve the homelessness crisis it never gets solved it's ever present it will be present with us as long as capitalism exists and it does play one of the most powerful coercive roles in the capitalist system to unconsciously whip workers um into submission uh knowing that you know, they have to go to work or they're going to end up like that. Nobody is going to save them from ending up like that. And debt is, of course, another mechanism of control by which, especially if you can get people when they're 17, 18, deep into debt when they don't even know what the fuck's going on, their frontal cortex isn't even developed enough to know what they're signing up for

with this insane interest rate just to be able to educate themselves or just to be able to access health care, then you have somebody locked in as well because now they have this debt that is sort of almost impossible in some cases to ever pay off. And so it's another coercive element to keep you in line. And of course, the elite, the ruling class, they don't have such fetters. They're never worried about becoming homeless. They don't have debt in the way that we have debt. And so they are free from that precarity and that coercion, free to inflict that precarity and coercion on everybody else. So again, they can live lives of luxury and opulence while everybody else at best is forced to live a life of precarity, if not, endless, mind-numbing, soul-crushing toil.

Yeah, yeah. There's lots of ways that we can just kind of spiral to the bottom. Yes. And that threat of the spiral and the threat of the bottom is always kind of haunting us because we're wage workers. So now that we've talked about the position of the proletariat in capitalist society and the relation to the capitalists, let's talk about class interests. Due to its objective position within capitalist society, the working class has particular concrete class interests, some of which overlap with those of other classes, but many of which contradict with them. So due to its specific class position in capitalist society, more than any other class or press group, it is in the interest of the proletariat to overthrow the capitalist class by means of socialized. revolution, and to then begin the long road to ending all forms of exploitation and oppression

and their corresponding ideas. Why exactly is this the case? The ruling capitalist class owns and controls the society's means of production. The proletariat controls none of it and depends upon wages for survival. The bourgeoisie is compelled to reduce the wages of the worker to the bare minimum so as to increase their profit. The worker is driven to maintain or increase their real wages so as to avoid starvation and death. The bourgeoisie has the state as a weapon for class repression. The proletariat has no political power and is repressed by the capitalist state.

The political role and economic enrichment of the capitalist class assumes the political subordination and economic enslavement of the working class. This is why the working class has the most. at stake in ending its exploitation. Now, does this mean that within developed capitalist countries like the United States, racially, gendered, sexually, and religiously oppressed groups have no interest in abolishing capitalism? Of course not. These particular forms of oppression are themselves rooted in the conditions of class society

and can't be abolished while class society, and in particular capitalism, still exists at the most basic level. And in the United States, specifically, within racially and sexually oppressed groups, there are often fewer bourgeois and petty bourgeois members in more proletarians than the population average. So, however, there are sections internal to these oppressed groups that we need to consider that have material interests that are actually antagonistic to the establishment of socialism as well. Petty bourgeois and bourgeois oppressed people actually have a class interest in preserving the system of capitalism and its economic enslavement of the proletariat, including fellow members of their

oppressed group who are working class, which points to the existence of class contradictions within these oppressed groups and strata. Can various forms of oppression make one more receptive to revolutionary Marxism? Can they contribute to one's development of a proletarian world outlook? Absolutely. They can. But these various forms of oppression do not inherently make one more susceptible to Marxism. They do not inherently develop proletarian consciousness. Let me say that again. Non-class-based forms of oppression can make one more receptive to Marxism, but they do not inerrantly do so. Due to the fundamental nature of class society, it is one's class position and one's class interests that most fundamentally determines people's receptivity to the revolutionary science of the proletariat. And finally, the working class is the only class in a strategic position to lead and actually win a revolution in a developed capitalist country.

As I mentioned a moment ago, the political rule in economic enrichment of the bourgeoisie is built upon the political subordination and economic enslavement of the working class. If the working class as a whole were to refuse to be exploited, the bourgeoisie would have no labor at its disposal to expand its capital. If the proletariat refused to treat bourgeois law and its enforces as things to be respected and obeyed, the bourgeoisie, would not be able to hide its class dictatorship. If the proletariat were to halt all production in key industries and stop all transportation and commodities in military supplies and personnel, if they were to paralyze the capitalist's economy

and transform a major economic and political crisis into a mass-armed insurrection, the working class could actually lead the various oppressed classes in strata of society in overthrowing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The homeless are not able to lead the revolution. Prisoners cannot lead the revolution. One or multiple racially oppressed groups,

principally united by their racial oppression, cannot lead the revolution. Rather, it is the class of proletarians, which must lead the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalists in the following fight to abolish all other forms oppression. And before wrapping this up, just a quick word on this link between the struggle against class oppression and the struggle against other forms of oppression that rise from the soil of class society. The proletariat has a class interest, right? We're talking about class

interests. The proletariat has a class interest to abolish all forms of oppression, bred by class society and reinforced by class society. Because these particular forms, of oppression spring up from class society, right? We have to stamp out all birthmarks of the old society in the social relations, which include these other forms of oppression. Even under socialism, the material inequalities that underlie these forms of oppression are part of the material basis upon which the bourgeoisie launches its effort to wage a counter-revolution and restore capitalism, as is what happened in Russia after 1953

and in China after 1976. The proletary can't allow things like patriarchy and racism and national chauvinism to persist because while class relations gave rise to these particular oppressions, these oppressions reinforce the

existence of classes in class society. They reinforce the division of people into those who own and control the means of production and those who are forced to work by one or another. The proletariat in the proletariat alone can be the vanguard of revolution in a world of capitalism because the interests of the ruling class and the fundamental nature of capitalist society are inherently antagonistic to the economic emancipation of

the working class. In pursuing the end of its economic enslavement, in pursuing political power for itself in pursuing the end of all forms of exploitation and oppression, the working class takes up its historically determined role as a vanguard of the revolution capable of overthrowing ruling

bourgeoisies and imperialists everywhere and leading the world in transition through socialism to communism. Yeah, important points. And just to highlight one of the points you made about this use of identity politics on both the

center and the right, right? The right is throughout Europe, throughout the West, throughout the United States. The right has its own form of identity politics, often white identity politics or Christian identity politics, you know, real Americans versus the non-real Americans. It can go all the way to fascism where it's white people versus non-white people. But they have, you know, obviously no interest at all in abolishing class oppression. They're totally fine with having a society where there's white billionaires and trillionaires and white homeless people as long as white people are in control and on the flip side the inversion of that toxic disgusting fascist white identity politics is of course the quote unquote ostensibly progressive you know identity politics of

the capitalist center you know the the democrats in the united states context in which they kind of invert that same logic where it's just like racial oppression is the only type of oppression that needs addressing and because there's no real class analysis a racialized member of or a member of a racialized minority group, an oppressed group, reaching positions of power within the hierarchy of dominance of a society is, in some sense, a win or the opening up of a possibility for a victory of people of that entire class. But they're also totally fine with black billionaires and black homeless people. There's no interest at all to abolish class oppression. And that's why identity politics works so well for the maintainers of the status quo,

whether it's reactionary identity politics or ostensibly progressive identity politics is because it still splits up and undermines class interest and class solidarity by making the focal point of oppression and thus liberation purely on the identity front and negating by that action of class solidarity and not even pretending to want to solve class oppression at all. But as you said, because the working class, among other reasons, because the working class is inherently multiracial, multigendered, of multinational origins, of every sort of religion, every shade of skin color. There's not only an interest to abolish those forms of oppression, but to abolish class oppression, which as you make very clear, is the soil from which these

other forms of oppression are able to rise and perpetuate themselves. So I think, you know, I think that's incredibly important for people to keep in mind because there's so many people in our society on the liberal center or the reactionary right who are so susceptible to having their disgruntledness at the system be funneled into these divisive forms of identity reductionism that maintain the status quo while posturing as if it is a challenge to it. Yeah, at Maoists, we want to crush racism. We want to wipe it off the face of the earth. Absolutely. And we think that the path to actually accomplish that needs to be put upon a scientific basis as opposed to a moral

one. And so the scientific path for overcoming and abolishing all forms of oppression, but in the particular example you gave race and gender, we have to do so through the leadership of the proletariat. Yeah. And black communists have always made this incredibly clear. All the people that, you know, we love and look up to and learn from in the American context, right? Because that's a specific lived experience for black people in the United States historically. They've made this point incredibly clear. And they're often the first ones to come out and challenge this identity reductionism that eschews class struggle in favor of mere identitarianism.

So, you know, take the lead from them, if nothing else. Yeah, Fred Hampton, one of the most proletarian conscious elizabeth. And the Black Panthers said that, you know, we're, you know, we're, um, paraphrasing. We're not just going to, we can't just, um, fight racism, uh, racism, right? We have to fight it with socialism. Right. And even Martin Luther King Jr., you know, more on the democratic socialist side of that spectrum, but still he made this incredibly clear.

He was very clear about economic justice, you know, organizing the poor people's campaign, um, was ultimately a step too far for the system to handle. so again and again you see this exact same point being made and it's an incredibly crucial point so having said that let's go ahead and move on to the next segment here so what makes a section of the workers industrial as opposed to non-industrial and why would a scientific strategy for revolution center industrial workers in the long term in the fight for socialist revolution because i think this is an important point i think sometimes it is obscured but also weaponized by rightist factions masquerading as, you know, Marxists in today's online ecosystem

and where they have this very dogmatic and reductionist view of who is and isn't a worker. And so just asking a question like that for people that have been steeped in that sort of discourse can be a little eyebrow raising. So I think it's really important to get down and define what the, what, you know, an industrial worker is, what a non-industrial worker is in the different roles they play in socialist revolution. Absolutely. Yeah. good points. Let's start by defining industrial production. Developing a scientific understanding of this question is very important because of the historical role industrial workers have played in

socialist movements and revolutions, especially in developed capitalist countries like the United States. But also, Marxists in the U.S. generally lack an understanding of what even qualifies as industrial production. Speaking for myself, it really wasn't until I sat down and started researching for this episode that I developed a more scientific understanding of the nature of industrial production. And so I want to start by saying much more investigation and research into this question, and related ones is needed. But what makes a form of production industrial as opposed to non-industrial? In his examination of the nature of capitalism in Volume 1 of Capital,

Mark spends several chapters spelling out the development and fundamental nature of large-scale industry. In particular, while chapters 13 through 15 are worth checking out, chapter 15 is key for understanding industrial production. When Marx refers to industrial workers, he is specifically referring to workers in the productive processes of large-scale industry. So let's talk about the historical development and some of the key aspects of industrial production. The development of production from handicraft and manufacture to large-scale industry transformed both the means of production and the nature of the work that workers themselves performed by transforming the relationship between the two. The stage of capitalist production,

known as handicraft, had very limited to no division of labor. Handicraftsmen and artisans on one hand were workers, but on the other hand, they were not estranged from control over the means of production. Handicraftsmen would create a commodity from start to finish almost entirely on their own, although sometimes this stage would involve a master and his journeyman and apprentices. They would wield special tools develop for their particular trade and would produce a specific commodity by hand from beginning to end. this was a major form of commodity production in the era before industrial machinery was even developed and so the dominant mode of power in the production process was human labor this form of production required the worker to be highly specialized in their work it could take decades to develop the knowledge and skill required to create properly and fully create a particular kind of commodity but in an important aspect of this pre-industrial labor is the dominant position that the worker has over a part of the

means of the production, the tool, right? The tool was an appendage of the worker. This will change with the onset of large-scale production, but we'll get there in a minute. Next, came to the stage of catless production referred to as manufacturer, in which small machines began to be used for part of the work in the production of a commodity. It was during manufacture that the productive process involved comparatively larger numbers of workers that operated on a single commodity according to a division of labor. But workers were still primarily working by hand with hand tools. Marx dates the period of manufacture from the 16th to the last third of the 18th century in England.

At the time, most of the European continent lagged behind the accept. with the exception of France, likely being the most advanced in its economic development. Germany, on the other hand, for a long time, including right up to the 1848 revolution, still had a significant degree of manufacture and even handicraft production in only a very nascent modern industry. The United States was likely most comparable to Germany at that time, but large-scale industry really wasn't able to develop until after the Civil War. in the period of manufacture workers who worked these simple machines would work one machine often in a large room of workers who were also using the same individual machine but the process of production was still far from a complex interrelated system of many machines rather machines remained isolated and scattered tools and machines remained subordinate to the laborer and the motive for for production remained predominantly laborers themselves.

It is in the epoch of large-scale industry, that the machine replaces the worker as the motive force in production, and that the worker becomes an appendage to machinery. Although not unimportant, industrial production is less about the number of workers at a given workplace, and whether it's a workplace of 100 or 1,000, doesn't mean it's industrial or not. And more about the nature of the productive process itself,

industrial labor, in a sense, is labor that has been seized by machinery. No longer is the worker controlling and working their tool. Rather, it is the machine or really a complex system of machines that controls and works the worker. And by becoming an appendage of the machine, it is the system of machines which now produces the whole commodity, not the worker. and the worker acts as a simple tool, often repeating one simple movement or action over and over again throughout the day. Think of auto workers on an assembly line today. Instead of one worker making a carriage from start to finish,

now a whole system of machines in assembly lines make the car while the worker performs only a single aspect of the whole. even more where large-scale production has become dominant the social division of labor is driven much farther than manufacturer ever could with the introduction of mechanization in one branch of industry the other branches of a given industry are seized by machines new branches of production come about from this ever-expanding process while entirely other industries are now being seized by machinery too machines themselves are increasingly used to produce more machines. Resulting from all this is a gigantic system of machinery in which workers are subordinated. Of course, under socialism, the use of machinery in large-scale industry frees workers from many physical tasks, but under capitalism, it further enslaves them to valorizing value for the bourgeoisie.

In a capitalist society, where large-scale production has become the bedrocked, of the economy. Workers are continuously thrown in and out of one industry and into the next his work formerly performed by the worker is now being performed by machines. Just to give one example of this, think about the way the assembly line has been transformed in the auto industry. A huge amount of work, which was previously done by workers on the assembly lines, is now done by robot harms. This also goes to show that despite many labor unionists and worker activists believing otherwise,

automation isn't new. The auto industry itself was industrial 100 years ago and is still industrial today. Additionally, with the introduction of evermore machinery, the productive power of labor is increased again and again. Industrial workers' operating machines can produce far more than they could with the tools of handicraftsmen. But the industrial workers of tomorrow will be even more productive than the industrial workers of today.

However, because large-scale production drives the never-ending revolutionization of the means of production, machines are constantly replacing labor, and laborers are regularly thrown out of one branch of industry into another, or even out of the industry as a whole. Actually, this phenomenon ultimately brings into sharp contradiction, capitalist relations and production and the further development of productive forces, but that is a topic for another episode. Due to this volatility of the market for wage workers, compared to handicraftsmen and artisans, industrial workers are far less specialized in their knowledge and skill and instead perform various types of simple labor. Essentially, labor under large-scale industrial production is increasingly deskilled, rendering nearly every member of the working class as a whole totally expendable. To be clear, varying levels of skill aren't completely abolished or anything like that, but it really doesn't take much time today to be trained for most jobs, nor are workers taking up one industry for their entire lives as they did as handicrafts. and artisans. The contradiction between mental and manual labor, too, while not absolutely

separated, reaches its most developed form under industrial production. So perhaps here, it's worth noting again that we haven't defined industrial labor by the degree of socialization. For example, in the commercial sector of Walmart Superstore averages 350 workers, whereas a dollar general may employ eight to ten. But we shouldn't confuse Walmart workers with the industrial proletariat, simply because the number of workers employed there is relatively high. The labor performed by Walmart workers lacks the key characteristics of industrial production. And to be clear, this isn't to say that socialization of labor has no impact on the workers' consciousness. It can and does.

Nor is it to say that industrial workers do not generally work in workplaces with relatively larger numbers of workers. They do. But the size of a workplace alone doesn't tell us about what the workers are actually doing. And speaking of what workers are actually doing, we should speak about transportation and logistics workers. Given their role in the process of circulation of capital, in volume two of capital, Mark says the transportation and storage, while not being costs, quote, incurred in the production of the use values of the companies, modalities, end quote. But rather in the, quote, realization of their exchange value, end quote, they are still part of the total process of reproduction of value. And thus, according to Marx,

constitute as part of the whole of large-scale industry. So, for example, look at the work performed by the backbone of the shipping industry, longshoremen. While labor intensive, a great majority of it is working machines that do the work, right? Think the giant cranes in ports. In UPS and Amazon warehouses, too, machine operation is there. Think of the giant sorting and package moving machines operated by workers who are rendered appendages to these machines. And if we look only a few years back, we can see a continual process of machines doing jobs the day that used to be performed by workers. And so a process, of continual mechanization is quite clear among the logistics and transportation workers

who have increasingly been transformed into operators of machines. And finally, the question of the agricultural industry is something I haven't researched much at all yet, but just from a quick glance, it does seem like a significant degree of agricultural production in the United States has been mechanized. Think of the gigantic tractors driven by GPS, but also the particular production of grains like corn, soybeans, oats, peanuts. While it's true, there are still crops that require a good amount of manual labor to harvest, largely performed by migrant workers facing brutal conditions and super exploitation. They may actually play a relatively minor role in agricultural production in the U.S. as a whole.

But that's all I can really say about that for now. This will have to be a topic for further investigations. Now, now that we've got a sense of the development from handicraft and manufacturer to large-scale industry, compare this highly mechanized value-producing labor to someone like a cook in a kitchen. In contrast to the industrial worker, the tool of the employee at a sandwich shop, which I've been one, remains an appendage to the worker. They are the mode of power and the productive process as opposed to a system of machinery. So while sandwich makers produce values just like industrial workers do, they are not part of large-scale production and thus are not industrial.

But neither should be referred to the sandwich maker by the hazy and vague term service worker. Given popular confusions around service workers, perhaps it would make sense to pause for a moment and speak to this question of the so-called service industry. First of all, there are services provided by workers, and these services are. a particular form of commodity. By identifying these workers as service workers doesn't really make so much sense because it doesn't actually explain much of anything except the fact that they are providing a service. You know, labeling workers, service workers doesn't say whether their labor is industrial, small scale, commercial, doesn't say whether their labor is value producing or not. secondly the label service industry is generally misused for example fast food workers like the sandwich maker

are considered by bourgeois economists as service workers but fast food workers aren't producing commodities in the forms of services right they aren't doing the work required for capitalists to be able to rent out a hotel room or sell tickets to a concert a coffee or a burger are not serving services. They are consumable commodities. You know, neither is the work of a cashier a service. Like at a grocery store. My grandma for decades was a cashier in a register. She was not a service worker. So the term is widely misapplied and ends up distorting what's actually happening. Again, are there workers who produce services? Sure. Uber and door dash drivers perform a service. as do maids and house cleaners and many others.

The labor produces a commodity which is not a physical good. But it's far more important for Marxists to know whether the worker is in large scale or small scale industry, whether their labor is value producing or not. And I know we haven't even defined what value is, but I don't want to do too much here. The point I hope I've made is that the concept of a service industry is really not so helpful and it doesn't really seem scientific and we can't afford to have anything but a scientific understanding of society

if we wish to place a real revolutionary movement upon a scientific basis. Yeah, so I do have a comment about this, but I actually want you to finish this point out and then I'll advance my comment slash question for you. Okay, cool. So then, I guess now that we've shared this, we could ask why would all of this stuff be important?

And the answer is because historically industrial proletarians have proven to be the most advanced section of the whole of the proletariat in working class movements. In the French, British, and German class struggles observed by Marx and Engels, it was the industrial proletariat of all three countries that were the most active and conscious elements of the proletariat at the heights of their movements. The class struggles in France by Marx and the chapter labor movements by Angles are just two sources that affect. firms. This isn't to say that industrial workers are always the most advanced section in these movements. For example, the German movement in the 1840s was initially led by artisans and craftsmen, though this was at an early stage of the development of capitalism in Germany, when large-scale industry had not yet fully developed. But a more modern example, though, is the 1987 strike in South Korea, in which it was the more skilled tradesmen.

that initially led the strike movement later, later to be propelled to a mass scale by the lower-skilled and lower-page stratum of workers. But while there are these unique occasions, as large-scale industrial production developed, it is from the industrial proletariat that the most conscious and consistently active workers have come. Beginning in the 1880s,

it was the urban factory workers, particularly the steel and textile workers, They were the most consistent and politically advanced of the Russian Revolutionary movement. Even in the Chinese Revolution, which took place in a semi-feudal semi-colonies, the miners, textile workers, machine builders, water workers, transportation workers, and postal workers, were the sections of the working class most receptive to Marxism. Additionally, in the two presently occurring people's wars being waged by Mao's parties in the semi-feudal semi-colonies of India and the Philippines, Philippines, both the Communist Party of India Maoist and the Communist Party of the Philippines placed great importance on work among the industrial workers in particular and in the unions

in general. Despite their path of the human deliberation being protracted people's war, a strategy not applicable to develop capitalist countries like the United States, no matter how hard the Gonzaloists pray for it to be so. So this is not the same, though, that CPI Maoists and the CPP have always prioritized the industrial proletariat in their urban work. CPI Maoist actually self-criticized for their neglect of industrial workers in their document urban perspective, which you can find online. And honestly, I'm not even really sure what they've actually been able to accomplish since then. It's a little unclear to me what the situation is for workplace organizing in India because

I'm not exactly sure as to how much the development toward fascism since the writing of that document has impacted conditions for workplace organizing and the work of CPEI Maoist more broadly. But despite the industrial heralitarians of these countries being relatively small, right, and their strategy for making revolution different from ours, both of those parties understand that it is erroneous to neglect industrial workers in their urban work. All this to say, that if we look at the history and the president, of the working class struggle and the international communist movement, we see that the industrial workers have consistently proven to be the most advanced section of the work class

in the struggle for socialist revolution. In just in case, some folks think I'm saying we should only organize the industrial proletariat. Lenin makes a really good point about winning over the masses, but needing to win them over specifically to the cause and theory of the working class and not misleading the proletariat to adopt the views of this or that class or a press group. And so in no way is MCU saying we should just solely ever and even like immediately concentrate all our forces among the industrial workers. That's actually not the immediate task that we can maybe say about if you ever want to

talk more about if you want to reach out to us. But to this point, you know, this is from social democracy's attitude toward the peasant movement from Lenin. Quote, quote, the urban industrial proletariat will inevitably be the nucleus of our social democratic labor party. But we must attract to it, enlighten, and organize all who labor and are exploited, as stated in our program, all without exception, handicraftsmen, hopers, beggars, servants, tramps, prostitutes. Of course, subject to the necessary and obligatory condition that they join the social democratic movement and not that the social democratic movement join them, that they adopt the standpoint of the proletariat and not that the proletariat adopts theirs, end quote. So again, while we need to win over as much of the exploited and oppressed as we can,

we need to take the proletariat's revolutionary science to all other classes and oppressed groups and not allow the proletariat to be misguided by the views and perspectives of other sections of the working class, but of other classes and groups as well. Yeah, so this is really important. I think I might be anticipating your next section here by stating this, but you're going to go deeper than my comment will go. So I'll say it anyway, which is, and you're kind of alluding to this very strongly. And the Lenin quote hits this nail on the head precisely, but it's not saying that non-industrial workers are irrelevant or have no role to play. Non-industrial workers have every bit of interest and everything to gain as industrial workers do in overthrowing capitalism.

It's just that industrial workers play a key role in the overall capitalist economy that can actually be used as choke points to shut down the capitalist economy and leverage their power in order to, you know, wage class struggle or whatever. So if like a bunch of, you know, people who work at Walmart or whatever went on strike and refused to work at Walmart, maybe that Walmart or a couple of Walmarts in the area might shut down, other stores would be able to pick up the slack or get more business or whatever it may be. If the longshoremen stopped unloading cargo ships, right? If the truckers stopped taking goods and commodities across the nation, if the railway workers shut down the railways, and you can go down a million other examples

of this, that's actually an immediate material choke point that would have reverberations throughout the entire capitalist economy. And just a couple key industries and a couple key areas could literally shut down at this point the global economy. And so it's that leverage point that makes industrial workers particularly crucial. Is that more or less correct? 100%. We have to organize the mass of people in the fast food industry or janitors or the various oppressed groups, right?

It's not to say that we should only go to the industrial proletariat and that the industrial proletary, even alone, can make this revolution by themselves. That would be completely ridiculous. But what we're trying to do is, like, really develop a general political line. We're trying to have an understanding of how are we generally going to make revolution in this capitalist society? And we've just identified a problem that there's a widespread confusion as to even what the industrial proletary is, let alone the fact that they have played this really key and basic leading role in proletarian socialist revolutions. So if we do want to actually make revolution in this capitalist country, then there are these lessons from history that we can learn from and we need to be really precise as to what's primary as opposed to secondary, what are immediate tasks as opposed to kind of tasks to be taken up down the road. And again, it's not that it would make sense for just communists to just kind of give all of their, 100% of their attention to just trying to leave the industrial proletary and economic and political struggles today.

That's actually not the immediate tasks of Marxist, Leninist, Maoists in the United States today. But if we don't even have this general sense as to, okay, where are we going and how are we going to get there? Of course, we want a mass armed insurrection. But how the fuck do we get there, right? We have to take this seriously. And so this is what we're trying to get at is we do think that there are that this science, this revolutionary science, actually does have some really key insights for the immediate, the, medium and then long-term tasks. And one quick question to you, because when you get into these topics, or you just listen to

mainstream media of any sort, you'll often hear phrases like, you know, we live in a post-industrial service economy. We have been, you know, since neoliberalism has really taken over, that's represented in part a de-industrialization of, you know, of a given country. And globalization has spread out industrialization, which gave rise to this de-industrialization. Now we're hearing terms like reshoring of industry, et cetera. Are all of these things more or less sort of mystifications, or is there really an unloading of industrial jobs in the Imperial Corps that acts as a problem for this sort of analysis? There definitely was a movement of capital industrial production to other countries, but something that we really have to

actually realizes that industrial production wasn't completely wiped out. There's actually still a significant percentage, while less compared to, say, like, 50 years ago, there's a significant percentage of industrial production still occurring today. It's developed, it's been transformed, and as we're going to talk about in a little bit, this inter-imperialist conflict with China has both the American and Chinese bourgeois zes in a problem because the global supply chains, that was developed over these last five to six decades just linked these two capitalist countries

so embedded together that they'd like to destroy the other one. You know, the United States would love to destroy its imperialist competitor and China would love to destroy the only imperialist power that's like above it. But the problem is that they're so intertwined interlinked that you can't just restructure the global, supply chains of the world in a night or even in a year or even within a few years. It's going to take a long time. So all that to say is that the American Borgiaz has a real problem because a lot of

its production, but also some of things that actually are fundamental to its military are produced in countries that are either their main enemies or even their friends of their enemies. And so that's kind of where we're at today. There's a real shift from what's called neoliberalism to what's called neo-mercantilism, but that's a whole other kind of conversation for another day. Yeah, and it certainly complicates the picture more than like during the Cold War where there were these industrial and economic blocks that were not so intertwined.

You had these competing blocks, but in the modern situation, the global economy is so interrelated and the Chinese and American economies in particular are so deeply intertwined that it makes that confrontation. much more nuanced and complex for both sides. And, of course, it's just always worth pointing out. I say this when we have Leninistan or we have Maoists on. The main sort of difference between those two factions on the Marxist left is their analysis of China. That's totally fine.

We've talked about it in numerous, numerous other episodes. So if you're particularly interested in that or you don't exactly share the Maoist analysis of China, it doesn't take away from the overall point being made here. But, of course, it's just worth pointing out that that riff between Maoists, and Leninist does exist is real. It is worth talking about, but we can certainly do it in a principled and comradly way. But having said that, let's go ahead and move forward with the actual thrust of this conversation. So why would any Marxist organization in a developed capitalist country center industrial workers in the long term in the fight for socialist revolution?

So we've already talked about what the industrial workers are. And we've kind of alluded to their importance. But let's see if we can dive a little deeper on that. Yeah, sure. So first, I would say that if you're in a socialist or communist organization that isn't actively discussing how the working class is actually going to overthrow the bourgeoisie, and then what the specific tasks are for your organization, given the actual number of people in your organization in the situation of both the Marxist and working class movements, which is presently not fused, then I guess I'd ask what you're even doing in that organization? I don't even have to name various organizations right now. It doesn't take but just a few seconds for listeners to know if their organization is consciously studying and debating and struggling over how to get from where we are today to an armed insurrection. And if your organization doesn't have clarity on this, if it isn't prioritizing this. You know, maybe ask yourselves, do you think it's even serious about making revolution?

Then there are those who are in an organization that may talk about revolution abstractly, but has everyone so busy doing the same damn tactic week in and week out? I mean, protest, protest, protest that. Its members don't even know if they even have a strategy for revolution, let alone if that strategy is based on the history. of proletarians struggle or not. And maybe there are also some listeners who think the rank-and-file strategy is a revolutionary strategy. Honestly, I could talk all day about the rank-and-file strategy, but maybe I can come

back sometime, Brett, to share a Maoist perspective on it because nothing about it is Marxist, yet Trotskyists and social Democrats talk about it like it's the mass line or something. Essentially, it's really just a Trotskist cover-up. for worshipping spontaneity, liberal trade unionism, and liquidation of both real communist leadership and theory. But all these scenarios represent rightist deviations when it comes to the question of revolutionary strategy. Left deviations, right, left in air quotes, left deviations in revolutionary strategy, I think are more explicitly actually anti-industrial

proletariat. As I said, toward the beginning of our discussion, these left errors in thinking lead people to de-center the labor union movement. See the industrial proletariat as the labor aristocracy. I think the revolution is really something to be led by the most oppressed, or maybe even believe white workers have more in common with capitalists than they do racially oppressed proletarians. And of course, this is where we get idealist adventurers of urban guerrilla war in the projects or protracted people's war but in countries it literally makes no sense

to do so. And just to say it again, imperialism absolutely does have an impact on the objective and subjective conditions here. Also, there certainly is a labor aristocracy in this country and this labor aristocracy really

is bribed to take up interests of the bourgeoisie. But it is really a tragic display of a metaphysical world outlook when people simply look at the present ideas held by workers, observe that most workers presently

are not for a revolution, surprise, surprise, then jump to the conclusion that, well, all of these workers must be part of the labor aristocracy. Instead of correctly understanding the role of the labor union movement in the broader working class movement, the labor union movement being the economic aspect

of the working class amendment. These leftists, they promote anti-imperialist actions and anti-police actions as the real alternatives to boring from within reactionary unions. Lenin has a great book on it. Check out left-wing communism and infantile disorder. However, whether the errors are right or left in form insofar as they are completely unscientific,

They all lead to the reproduction of bourgeois rule. So before I move on to talk about the historic role of industrial workers in a proletarian socialist movement, Brett, any thoughts on these right and left confusions on revolutionary strategy in general? Well, yeah, I would just say that making revolution is incredibly, incredibly difficult and that difficulty can often lead people down the path to searching for, you know, other routes to do it. and that often can give rise to various deviations. And these are, you know, well-intentioned people, even in our own, in our own selves, I'm certain over our political development, we've made right or left-wing deviations. And we're always susceptible to them. That's why working in a really principled organization and struggling over a line is really important

because no one person can always have it figured out. You need other people to check and balance other people's ideas and to bring up things that other people have blind spots for. So, you know, this is important to point out these deviations, but it's not at the same time some dogmatic hatred or, you know, some personal blame that we're throwing on any individuals or, you know, even parties. I know some people might take more aggressive stances to parties that do these deviations. But at the end of the day, I do have some basic level respect that they're trying, you know, and then these lines and these struggles and these critiques should be then taken on board and see how you can move that party or that organization in a more. effective and more scientific direction. But again, this stuff is difficult. So I'm not here to cast aspersions on anybody as long as, you know, they're really trying their best. But I do notice,

speaking of this Marxist and Maoist distinction that, and this is not obviously to say that all of them fall in this position, you're a Maoist that does not fall into left deviationism, for example. But it does seem like left deviations are more common on the Mao side. And right deviations tend to, when they do deviate, tend to be more prevalent on the, um, prevalent on the Leninist side, and I think there's something interesting to inspect about those two positions that they do tend to give rise to specific deviations in specific ways that I think is interesting. I think

sometimes as well I'm sorry, can I go ahead. That's an interesting, I think that's a really interesting idea. Can I speak to that for a second? Yes, please. Yeah, and actually, you're making a good point, because look at the Revolutionary Communist Party of USA, who came out of the Revolutionary Union in 1970s. Look at all of the Gonzaloists behind the revolutionary study groups, right, across the U.S. These, now, the RCP didn't, I don't think they claimed protracted people's war back in their heyday.

But they did eventually and very quickly pull everyone out of labor unions and they abandoned the working class out there, places of work. And while they were able to build some level of movement, they had to force themselves from industrial workers and the working class more broadly. that's that's a really great example of a lefty aviation from people who identified as Maoist and then of course the Gonzalez today but I think it's it's really it's not an issue of Maoism it's actually an issue of of taking Marxism and treating it as a dogma looking at the Chinese revolution completely stripping it of its particularity and then just trying to dogmanically take whatever they did in China and just abstractly and vaguely just plaster it to completely different conditions. And that shows a very low level of grasp of Marxism. And this is the task of Marxist today. Can we really take the study of Marxism seriously to the point where we have a genuine deep level grasp of the history of its development? And then are we able to take this general universal science and apply it specifically to our unique conditions today.

That's a giant task. But I think these left deviations, as you put it now, it is a great example of where it's just dogmatism. That's what we're talking about when we talk about dogmism. Yeah, even, you know, national struggles against imperialists. There still is a, they have a class character to it. They can either be primarily led by bourgeois Zs to establish a bourgeois dictatorship once they've asked the imperialists, or they can be led by the proletariat.

And what Marxism says is that we want to support, we want to help clarify the need for the proletariat to lead revolutions within capitalist countries and within semi-colonies. So, yes, like 100%. Marxism is how we wipe colonialism off the face of the earth. It is how we finish imperialism. The final day of imperialism, right? This can come about if we live. really study Marxism and take it up as our own and apply it to our concrete conditions, but we have to do it within our particular countries. We can't, you know, we can't hope some other country is going to save us, like some people kind of treated the USSR for a long time, or we can't make revolution for some other country as well. Our primary task is to really study the science and apply to our conditions. Absolutely. All right. Well, continue. Cool. So to get up this question of why communists need to center the industrial proletariat in the fight for socialism, I want to start off by saying that I think it's really far more like simple than Marxists have made it out to be this far.

If we're trying to convince people of the need for revolution of one class over another and explain that capitalism is a system of production, it's bedrock being large scale, highly mechanized industry, and that terrible. things happen to those industrial workers in particular, but also to the working class more generally, as well as other classes in strata of society, and that the whole global system now of capitalism is based upon exploitation of the many by the few, but especially the exploitation of workers in large-scale industry, and that all forms of oppression grow from the soil of class exploitation and if they want to abolish the political subordination and economic enslavement of the mass of workers by capitalists and imperialists, then the class of wage slaves needs to lead all other classes in oppressed groups in overthrowing the ruling class of exploiters and take

the state under its exclusive control and then pursue the total abolition of classes in class society, which requires abolishing non-class forms of oppression too. So if this is what we're trying to teach people, then doesn't it make sense to go to the people at the bedrock of this fucked up system of production? Isn't it fairly logical to think that this section of the working class will be fairly receptive during economic and political crises to specifically Marxist exposures of their enemies and explanations of their conditions, or even during revolutionary situations, as defined by Lenin, to overthrowing the ruling class and seizing the very needs of production that their

bodies are appendages to, in the very state telling them the bow before the barrel of the gun and return to their subordination and enslavement. Yet, because there's so much confusion among organizations in the United States on even what Marxism is, it's scientific nature, why the working class has to lead the revolution and not the lump in proletariat or any other oppressed group, because of all the confusion and distortion of these fundamentals of Marxism and more, we need to break this down. There is nothing about working with metal, rubber, plastic, or chemicals, or in a mill, mine, or a warehouse that magically makes a person more receptive to Marxist politics and ideas,

nor have the composition of industrial workers been monolithic. Industrial workers have always reflected the numerous divisions of the world's working class along lines of skill, nationality, race, gender, age, religion. So there has to be a materialist explanation as to why industrial workers have historically been the most advanced. Initially, I thought the answer could be found in what Lenin said about the industrial proletariat

in tasks of the Russian social Democrats. It's a great text. I really recommend everyone to go check it out. But there's still some really important insights. And while this was misguided on my own part, it's worth pointing out for a second. In tasks, Lenin writes, quote, our work is primarily and mainly directed

to the factory urban workers. Russian social democracy must not dissipate its forces. It must not, I'm sorry, It must concentrate its activities on the industrial proletariat who are most susceptible to social democratic ideas, most developed intellectually and politically, and most important by virtue of their numbers and concentration in the country's large political centers. The creation of a durable revolutionary organization among the factory urban workers is therefore the first and most urgent task confronting social democracy, one from which it would be highly unwise to let ourselves be diverted. at the present time, end quote. So here Lenin is saying that at that particular moment in the Russian revolutionary movement, Russian Marxists needed to hyper-concentrate their forces, propaganda, and agitation among

the factory urban workers. Listing three examples or three reasons, he says the working class were, one, the most susceptible to Marxism, two, the most intellectually and politically developed, and three, most important by virtue of their numbers and their concentration in large political centers. But after developing a more objective understanding of our situation today, compared to where the Russian Revolutionary Movement was by the late 1890s, which is far more advanced than ours, and coming back to both this text and this question of why the industrial proletariat today,

I realize that when it doesn't actually explain why the industrial workers are generally the advanced section of the working class. Rather, he argued why it was a task for Russian Marxists in the mid-1890s to concentrate there and then in light of their situation. He continues on to explain how the industrial workers were the key to winning over and leading the rest of the proletariat and even the better elements of Russia's author other classes in Strata. But again, he tells us that they are the advanced,

not what has made them advanced generally. So, if an organization actually wants to lead the working class in a revolution in this country, they need a very solid footing on the basic question of why industrial workers need prioritized in the medium, the long term, and if Marxism has any explanatory power, why they will most likely be the leading section of our proletariat. And we can answer this question in two parts. First, there's the question of what makes the industrial proletariat more susceptible to Marxism. Because to become the leading section of the proletariat entails developing a level of consciousness relatively higher than the rest of the working class, right?

Which assumes becoming the most susceptible to Marxism, which must be brought to them by a communist party. And second, there is the question as to what makes the industrial proletariat so strategic for a proletariat? and socialist movement. Because if they're not strategic, then why prioritize them in a revolutionary strategy in a capitalist imperialist country? Let's start with what makes workers in a large-scale industry generally more receptive to Marxism. So first on consciousness and a little bit on strategy later on. One way to get at this question is to think not about the industrial proletariat in particular, but the working class as a whole. Marx and angles, both observed and discovered the revolutionary potential of the proletariat. The Marxist conception of the proletariat

as the vanguard, the political leader of the socialist revolution, both accurately reflected the reality in which Marx and Ingalls were struggling in, and is the logical outcome of the application of dialectical materialism to capitalist society. Essentially, it is the objective position of the proletariat and role within capitalist society, the fundamental nature of capitalism, the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and its concrete interests as a class that make the working class as opposed to any other class more susceptible to communist ideas and developing communist consciousness. Let's go a little deeper. In the preface to a contribution to the critique of political economy, Marx conveys the dialect

materialist principle, it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness, and quote. And while lots of people may agree with this in the abstract, or at least in its application into the working class as a whole, how does this help us understand why specifically industrial workers have historically been the leading section? First, to say that social being determines consciousness is to say that the objective class position, the specific role in production, the working conditions, the experiences a person has within class society greatly impacts their consciousness. This is not to say that being determines consciousness in a one-to-one

mechanical manner as if you are in X class, then you are mechanically determined to have X ideas. or that only class position in working conditions inform the development of a person's consciousness. But it is to say that the ideas of individuals are profoundly and significantly shaped by their experience as members of a particular class in a particular class society. pertaining to industrial workers more specifically, Swedish Maoist Thomas Berg in his article Gonzaloism, a left revisionist deviation, gets at the idea quite well when he writes, quote, the most advanced sections of the proletariat are the industrial proletariat and mainly those who work in large-scale industry. This, because of their

role in production, makes them see most clearly the fundamental contradiction in capitalism, that between social production and private capitalist appropriation. This is because they work in large teams are unionized and participate. directly in capitalist production are long-term employees and are part of an international production chain and are thus politically aware

of the international character of capitalism. The industrial proletariat thus has the greatest potential to achieve advanced consciousness because of their working conditions, end quote. Essentially, because of the fundamental nature of capitalism,

the position, conditions and experience of industrial workers generally, right? Not always, not in every situation or at all times, but generally make them more receptive than any other class or group to the scientific theory that is based on the history of all classes and the struggle of the proletariat in particular, most accurately explains their experiences and centers their own immediate and ultimate interests. Remember, what are some characteristics of large-scale industry that we learned about from Chapter 15 of Capital?

Industrial labor is value-producing as opposed to non-value-producing. These workers are appendages to a system of machine. Not all but large sections of the work is made more and more simple over time. Every so often, workers are tossed out of that industry and into another or even into the streets as a result of the revolutionization of technology. Industrial labor is far more socialized and collective than not, and the work is greatly international in character. So, because this is the nature of the work, then we can say that the position of large-scale industrial workers in the United States' capitalist economy, the act of participating in the production of new value, the material experience

of being rendered appendages to a system of machines, the expendability due to the simplification of the work, the constant threat of being discarded by the endless process of automation, and one's position within a global system of production are all objective conditions that contribute to the historical trend that has made industrial workers generally more receptive to Marxist politics than others. Furthermore, we can consider the impact of socialization and experience in the economic struggle against the capitalists. On one hand, large-scale workplaces can have a significant impact on workers' consciousness in that most workers are brought into contact with larger numbers of people.

The work itself is generally socialized. They're collectively participating in value production, and there's a fairly collective sense of discipline, right? Think about it. Wage cuts, schedule changes, speed-ups, elongation of the working day, reduction of rights and privileges on the job, layoffs, these tend to be imposed on the workers as a whole. On the other hand, well, it's not the case that all industrial proletarians have experience in unions. It's worth mentioning that the actual

concrete experience of industrial workers in the economic struggle, that is to say the labor union struggle, where workers can begin to experience and summarize the lessons of the class struggle, especially the lessons of the struggle within the union. is generally fruitful as well. Workers without any experience of collective struggle, without any experience in what angles called the practical economic resistance to the capitalists, for example, Amazon workers,

they're not unionized, might have some ideas about the need for fundamental transformation of society, but likely not so much. Whereas workers who do have some experience fighting the capitalists, and especially those workers who have experienced fighting reactionary union leaders, like members of the Railroad Workers United, generally will be much more receptive to Marxist ideas.

Our political propaganda and theoretical explanations of the reasons for their economic enslavement to the capitalists, as well as our explanations of larger society and capitalist imperialism, and our explanations of how to overcome these issues, will in the long run find the most resonance with unionized workers who are already looking for answers to the questions posed by their existing struggles? This is just one of a number of reasons why MCU thinks joining a reactionary-led union like the Teamsters and uniting workers against labor union fakers like Sean O'Brien is far more productive

than trying to raise consciousness of non-unionized Amazon workers, right now. Rather than waste a ton of time trying to organize the unorganized today when clearly the conditions do not make sense to do so, Malice Communist Union has linked up with other workers through Teamsters mobilized to really work with the growing number of Teamsters who are frustrated with the bullshit of O'Brien and TDU, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, and see the need for a real fight to be waged against the union leadership that has a light. itself with the capitalists against Teamsters workers in particular, but the working class as a whole. And to be clear, MCU and Teamsters mobilize as organizations are not one of the same. The objectives

of the two are related, but they're definitely distinct. But the point here, however, is to say that people with experience fighting capitalists and class traders and the unions will, in the long run proved to be relatively more receptive to correct Marxist exposures and agitation than those without that experience. Again, this is a general lesson of the history of the working class movement, not an absolute and immutable law of social development. There are other factors to consider when thinking through what makes some sections of the working class more receptive to Marxism as opposed to others. For example, there are concrete experiences of some sections of the working class in general, and the upper crust of industrial workers in particular that can actually

reinforce aspects of bourgeois ideology. There are highly skilled workers, both industrial and non-industrial, whose conditions generate bourgeois values in a bourgeois world outlook, especially in imperialist countries. Additionally, the individualism produced within the superstructure through the education system, the media and music we listen to on our phones, film, as well as the impact of religion, among other things, all influenced the ideas held by workers in a given state, in a given city, at a given workplace. And finally, people's experiences in non-economic struggles, too, can greatly impact the degree of receptiveness to Marxist politics positively and or negatively. You know, I know there's

a lot here, but I hope this helps us get at the question of why workers in large-scale industry generally and in the long term have been more receptive to Marxist exposures and explanations, especially in times of economic and political crises or even during revolutionary situations. Having a scientific, as opposed to a moralistic understanding of what conditions and experiences generally make one more or less susceptible to Marxism, is very, very important. Again, that industrial workers have historically been the leading section of the proletariat

can't be mechanically or one-sidedly understood. Other factors do play a role in determining people's consciousness. For example, I mean, Brett, you and myself, I don't think either one of us have been industrial workers. Right. But just because other factors, like various forms of oppression,

can play a role as Marxists, we need to be firmly grounded in the dialectical materialist principle that social existence determines consciousness. And keep in mind the fundamental nature of capitalist society. For example, it's one thing to realize that the state doesn't serve you, even that the state is your enemy. But it's a whole other thing to know that the state has a class character to it,

one that is antagonistic specifically to the interests of the working class. You know, both fascists and progressives can at some point hold the position that the state doesn't serve them, which is why the slogan don't vote revolt is pretty worthless today. But this kind of sloganeering is pretty typical of petty bourgeois radicalism. However, hopefully it's clear by now

that the working class overall in the Industrial Proletariat specifically are most receptive to communist politics because of their position and experiences in capitalist society. There are, of course, numerous strata and segments of the Industrial Proletariat, So understanding this first foundational point is only really the starting point to further investigation of the working class movement.

But still, it's an important one that organizations, I think like PSL, DSA, Frizo, and many of the Trotskyos orgs, in one way or another, have discarded. Yeah, it's an interesting critique to be taken up by those organizations and see where they think that critique lands and where they might, you know, have disputes about it. But, you know, having a good-natured principled critique of other parties, I think, is not just a dogmatic shitting on them, but genuinely bringing something that is important to their attention and, you know, they deal with it as such. And MCU itself is ultimately going to have to, you know, sort of prove the superiority of its line as it continues to develop and organize to see how far it can take its organization with these ideas in mind. But overall, your points are incredibly on point. And I have many people in unions, you know, in the industrial sector in my family and in my friend group. And there is this this baseline level of class consciousness that is just imbued with them by by nature of being in the union. And there's this baseline fighting spirit against the bosses, as it were, that is inculcated in them.

And I've even seen, you know, like my stepfather who was in the military, you know, grew up in, you know, semi-rural Nebraska at a deep red state, who clearly is susceptible in every way to right-wing politics of various sorts just as a baseline, but who through leading a union struggle at his work, which is, you know, in industrial food, you know, in the food industry, not to be too specific, but by leading this union struggle had so much political education fostered in him that moved him, you know, deeply to the left just by virtue of engaging in the union struggle. And then I was, of course, there to sprinkle in the actual, you know, Marxist stuff, which is not going to self-generate within these unions, right? A lot of

these unions have certain prerequisites ideologically and materially that make them much more susceptible to that line of argumentation. But it doesn't spontaneously often arise, within these unions or within these union members, you know, there is a critique of, of the bosses, but that's not necessarily a critique of the entirety of capitalist society. And then if you want to have a critique of imperialism, that's even, that's going to take more self-education. But just seeing how it moved, you know, my stepdad far to the left economically by merely engaging in the union struggle itself, I think really brought these ideas, which can seem abstract, to the very personal real world sort of example that I've seen happen in my own life.

So, yeah, it's incredibly crucial, and I think we disregard this analysis at our own peril. Obviously, what we have been trying, all the different forms that the quote-unquote left has taken has not gotten us very far. And so I think this is a crucial intervention in the American left in particular to kind of get our heads on straight and think through such an analysis. So I think it's crucial. Yeah, and great point about the need to take communist theory and consciousness, Marxist politics, and exposures to the working class, right, and the industrial workers, because

no one's going to, you know, the working class as a whole isn't going to spontaneously develop communist consciousness. That's a main point of what is to be done, the role of consciousness, and the need for actual that leadership. And, yeah, so that's a very important point as well. And one point before we move on to strategy is one of the things that I had some interesting success with my stepdad was in regards to viewing the union as an embryo of democratic control of the workplace and then elaborating out from that.

So he already has this fighting spirit. He already sees how the owners are trying to fuck over the workers at every turn. He's seeing the multiracial, multi-gendered nature of the working class as he's working with and struggling alongside his fellow workers and his fellow union members. And then I extrapolate this idea of the union. I'm like, you see how pathetic and unnecessary so much of the owning strata is. You see how they don't contribute to anything. And that actually without the workers, the entire business would shut down overnight.

But without the owners, the workers themselves already know the procedures better than the management, better than the owners do. They already are the ones on the ground making everything work anyway. Why do they even have to negotiate with these terrorists, right? Why do they even have to have to enter into, of course you have to based on the system as it actually is, but you could imagine a world quite easily in which that parasitic class was just cut out of the picture and that the functioning of the business would continue on just as well, if not better, unimpeded by that profit extraction and by these people's ideas who come into an industrial process that they've never engaged in, don't actually understand from the bottom up, and try to impose their ideals of, management or their authority as owners onto the working class. And I got, I got a long way with my, with my stepdad, making those sorts of arguments to the point where he was really, really receptive to them. That's cool. And it really goes back to that. The point I made about how we need to take Marxism, you don't just like take a Marxist book and say, hey, well, you read this Marxist

book. We need to actually do Marxist exposures. And that's what you did. You looked at his actual experience in the unions and as a as a worker and you help trying to clarify their actual experiences in the economic struggle and that's a there's a there's a lot of potential there so absolutely very cool well cool let's do strategy so on one hand we've we've identified that the industrial workers have generally been the most receptive section of the working class to communist consciousness, but just as important, there's this question of, well, what role do they play in actually making a proletarian socialist revolution? Because they could be very, very receptive, but actually have zero strategic element to it. But unfortunately, that's not the case.

The general receptivity to Marxism is not the only reason why a Marxist organization actually working to get the working class from where it is today to a mass armed insurrection has to center industrial workers in their general political line. While we have answered the question as to why the industrial politariat have been receptive, it is also important to understand that communists need to center and prioritize industrial workers because of their ability to paralyze the bourgeois economy amidst an economic and political crisis, but most importantly in revolutionary situations. It is the role that industrial production plays in the production and reproduction of capitalist dictatorship that makes it strategically necessary to win them over to their own

cause, even if a revolutionary movement is able to develop some communists. If Marxists divorce themselves from the industrial proletariat in general, it is highly unlikely they will be able to make a proletarian socialist revolution in a developed capitalist. country like the United States. The bourgeoisie cannot be overthrown while they continue to control the manufacturing and transportation of commodities, as well as the production in movement of military personnel and supplies. They cannot be overthrown as long as they can continue to rule in the old way. This is another reason large-scale industry is key. Industrial workers produce and enable the transportation of the weapons and the commodities needed to make the weapons

that the bourgeoisie uses to suppress rebellious or revolutionary workers. But before any kind of decisive attack, the workers will have to strangle the enemy economically and politically, which is to cripple the capitalist's ability to rule in the old way. And what better time than now to think about the work of communists among industrial labor tied to the military. As I mentioned earlier, with the interior imperialist contradiction with China becoming sharper

and the need for the U.S. Borgiazzi to delink itself from Chinese production over the next few decades in both the American and Chinese imperialists needing to restructure the world's global supply chains, communists in the United States have to understand that the reshoring efforts

brought about the bourgeoisie will be a very critical site of struggle in the near future. But if Marxists don't even see why this would be so critical to making revolution in this country, then we'll continue confusing protesting in the streets and posting about shit online as revolutionary strategy. If the proletariat of this country is going to overthrow the bourgeoisie, industrial workers are going to have to grind the country's manufacturing to a halt. It's going to have to stop every truck and tank from getting anywhere and moving anything. The working class as a whole can't do this if the majority of industrial

workers in key cities and basic industries being captured by bourgeois ideology and subservient to the capitalists. And the communists will be in a very bad position to lead, let alone win any kind of decisive attack. The bourgeoisie's political power is based on their ownership and control of the means of production, right? All the way back to what is the bourgeoisie and what is the working class? And as long as the capitalist can freely use the means of production, specifically large-scale industry, in their interests, the working class will be too weak to defeat their enemy. Paralyze the bourgeois economy, and you greatly weaken the ruling class politically and militarily. Again, a great deal becomes possible during crises in revolutionary situations, but if we don't understand this, then we won't properly prepare it. Therefore, it is the objective position of industrial workers that make them so strategic

for making a proletarian socialist revolution. Beautifully said, incredibly important, goes to the core of the scientific method within Marxism broadly. I think it's really important. The critiques that you brought up of other organizations and ways of analyzing society are crucial and need to be contended with. We know whether you agree or disagree on certain aspects of this analysis. You need to understand why you agree or disagree with certain analysis, and it should be a propellant to think deeply and critically about these issues, maybe revisit some texts, and if you're in any organization, try to reorient that organization in the direction of success, of revolution, which is ultimately our goal. Our goal is not to get particularly

progressive members of Congress elected. It is not merely to protest. forever, not to say that those organizations and those people engaged in those are ill-intentioned or bad people or shitty Marxist or anything like that. It's just to offer a critique that we could all learn from. Listen, we're not anywhere close to a socialist revolution in the U.S. And so criticism is absolutely fucking necessary. And we need to wrestle with these core, core issues that go back to Lenin, they go back to Marx, they go back to Mao, these core issues and really rethink our approach and try to, again, focus and refocus the sharpest edge of our spear in the direction of revolution. And for that, I really appreciate all the time,

effort, and energy that you put in to bringing this script to life and to answering these questions and to this analysis. I think it's absolutely crucial. And I tip my cap to the comrades in MCU, and I'm very excited to see where that organization continues to go from here. So with all that in mind do you have any final thoughts anything you want to plug any way that people can find you and MCU online etc yeah well first you make a really really good point about criticism and self-criticism you know we take it pretty seriously in MCU and um you know unfortunately coming from bourgeois society we're we're so much used to like liberal forms of criticism where the goal is to take down someone else the goal is to hurt somebody

else. But actually, as Marxists, when we criticize and self-criticize, it's actually to better ourselves and to better our organization into, and right now our task is to really get a Marxist movement up off the ground. And we can't do that if we don't criticize. And yeah, I think it's a really important point that I've been thinking about recently and MCU's really been struggling to base our organization on self-crit. Well, so that's a great point. But, no, In general, with this whole episode, you know, the main task of Marxists today is actually not to immediately fuse the Marxist and working class movements. All right, that's what the Russians were able to do in the 1890s. We're more so in the 1870s.

Neither the working class nor the Maoists are actually in the necessary positions to accomplish this great fusion of the two. There are steps that must be taken, conditions to be developed before Marxists. can actually be fused with the industrial workers specifically and the working class more broadly. But there is a great deal of practical and theoretical work that can be done. Revolutionary work that must be taken up as we prepare the ground for the fusion of the proletariat with Marxism and the qualitative leap from Mao's Communist Union being a pre-party organization to becoming a genuine fighting Communist Party, firmly rooted in Marxism, Leninism, Maoism ideologically, and in the working class of the United States organizational. It doesn't matter what your class background is or what your present class position in society is.

People from all sorts of backgrounds can take up Maoism and really have their whole world outlook transformed. If you don't believe me, please go check out new women in New China. There are free PDFs of the book online. which is a collection of articles written by women of different class backgrounds on the economic and political changes for women after liberation, just to see how real people from different class backgrounds have taken up a proletarian stand and viewpoint. They took up the interests of the working class as their own.

But this level of transformation of people and the task of becoming real revolutionaries in this country today is only possible for those who really are, willing to dare to struggle. So I want to invite listeners who are wanting a more serious but basic introduction to Maoism to reach out to MCU, Maoist, Communist Union, and learn more about our MCU open study starting soon. You can email the comrades leading that study at MCU study at Proton.me.

Or if you have more general questions about Maoism or MCU, don't hesitate. You can email us at Maoist Communist Union at Rizabeth. up.net. And huge thanks to Brett for allowing me to come on and talk a lot about industrial workers. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's an honor to have you on of longtime comrades and friends. It's really cool to see you continuing to fight in the movement. And I always appreciate your very principled and consistent voice when it comes to these questions. So I appreciate you so much. And I'm going to link to the ways that you can contact MCU in the show notes. So people can can go in that direction if they seem fit and yeah just thank you again for everything you're

doing and i look forward to a future conversation with you as well as our our conversation in a week or two with other members of mccu to to talk more about the organization itself right on right on thanks bratt summer time summertime loves and it's proud summertime summertime summertime everything's just fine came Martin came turned love into shame and love's again loves again no one's to blame who are you counting on who are you leaning on when the cold winds grow strong who are you counting on when the cold winds blow strong who are you counting on? Wintertown, blood in the snow Wintertown, wintertime, release the need more

Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve, Adam Eve New Year's Eve, New Year's Eve, wear it on your sleeve Who are you counting on home? Who are you leaning on? When the coal wells blow strong Who are you leaning on? Low down valley Low down values

These are come These are cold Angry lover Down to the river There you will find some peace of mine Spring will come spring will come with squirrels on the run Lots of fun sit in the sun another one will surely come Who are you counting on?

Who are you leaving? leaning on when the cold winds blow strong with all that's going on You're going to be able to be. Thank you.