Social and Intellectual Basis
of Worker-communism
A better world
To change the world and to create a better one has always been a profound aspiration of people throughout human history. It is true that even the present-day so-called modern world is dominated by fatalistic ideas, religious as well as non- religious, which portray the present plight of humanity as somehow given and inevitable. Nevertheless the actual lives and actions of people themselves reveal a deep-seated belief in the possibility and even the certainty of a better future. The hope that tomorrow's world can be free of today's inequalities, hardships and deprivations, the belief that people can, individually and collectively, influence the shape of the world to come, is a deep-rooted and powerful outlook in society that guides the lives and actions of vast masses of people.
Worker-communism, first and foremost, belongs here, to the unshakable belief of countless people and successive generations that building a better world and a better future by their own hands is both necessary and possible.
Freedom, equality, prosperity
Clearly, everyone's image of an ideal world is not one and the same. However, throughout human history certain ideas have always come to the fore as the measures of human happiness and social progress, so much so that they are today part and parcel of the political vocabulary worldwide as sacred principles. Freedom, equality, justice and prosperity are the first among them.
Precisely these ideals form the intellectual foundations of worker-communism. Worker-communism is a movement for changing the world and setting up a free, equal, human and prosperous society.
Class struggle: proletariat and bourgeoisie
However, worker-communists are not a bunch of utopian reformers and heroic saviours of humanity. Communist society is not a fantastic design or recipe conceived by well-wishing know-alls. Worker-communism is a social movement arising from within modern capitalist society itself, a movement that reflects the vision, ideals and protest of a vast section of this same society.
The history of all societies to date has been a history of class struggle. An uninterrupted, now open and now hidden, struggle has been going on between exploiting and exploited, oppressor and oppressed classes in different epochs and societies. This class struggle is the chief source of social change and transformation.
Earlier societies were built on a complex hierarchy of classes and strata. Modern capitalist society, however, has greatly simplified class divisions. For all the variety of occupations and the extensive division of labour in it, the present society as a whole is organised around two main opposing class camps: workers and capitalists, proletariat and bourgeoisie.
The opposition of these two camps is, at the most fundamental level, the source of all the multiplicity of economic, political, intellectual and cultural conflicts going on in the existing society. Not only society's political and economic life, but also the cultural, intellectual and scientific life of humanity today - areas which appear to be independent domains standing above and independent of classes - bear the imprint of this central alignment in the modern capitalist society. The camp of the proletariat, of workers, for all the variety of thoughts, ideals, tendencies and parties in it, represents the will to change the system in favour of the oppressed and the poor. The camp of the bourgeoisie, again for all its various strands of thought, political parties, thinkers and leaders, stands for the preservation of the status quo and the protection of the capitalist system and the economic and political power and privileges of the bourgeoisie, in the face of workers' drive for freedom and equality.
Worker-communism emerges out of this class struggle. It belongs to the camp of the proletariat. Worker-communism is the revolutionary movement of the working class for overthrowing the capitalist system and creating a new society without classes and exploitation.
Worker-communism
However, not only freedom and equality, but even the ideal of abolishing classes and exploitation are not unique to worker- communism. These goals have been the watchword of other movements and other oppressed classes in earlier societies too. What distinguishes worker-communism as a movement is the fact that it emerges in opposition to capitalism, i.e. the latest and most modern class system.
Worker-communism is the social movement of the proletariat, a class that is itself a product of capitalism and modern industrial production, and the main exploited class in this system. It is a class that lives by the sale of its labour power and has no other means of making a living but its labour power. The proletariat is not a slave, not a serf, not an artisan; it is neither owned by anyone, nor does it own its means of production. It is both free and forced to sell its labour power in the market to capital.
The principles and social ideals of worker-communism derive from a criticism of the economic, social and intellectual foundations of capitalism. This is a criticism from the standpoint of the wage-earning working class in this society, and thereby thorough and revolutionary. The working people's conception of freedom, equality and human happiness is, and has always been in previous societies, inevitably a reflection of the existing social relations and of their own position vis- a-vis production and property. The slave's conception of freedom did not go much beyond abolition of slavery, and the serf's and urban artisan's conception of equality could not be anything more than equality in property rights. But with the rise of the proletariat, as the great mass of producers free from any form of ownership of means of production, a class whose economic bondage and exploitation is precisely based on its legal freedom, the concept of freedom and equality changed fundamentally. The proletariat cannot set itself free, without society as such being set free from class divisions and private ownership of means of production. Equality is not just a juridical notion, but also, and fundamentally, an economic and social one.
With Marxism the proletarian criticism of capitalism and the worker-communist movement and social outlook which had emerged with the Industrial Revolution, attained immense coherence clarity and theoretical vigour. The worker-communist movement has since been inseparably linked with Marxism and the Marxist critique of political economy of the capitalist society.
Worker-communism is a social movement that came into existence with the rise of capitalism and the wage-earning working class, and represents the deepest and most universal working- class criticism of capitalism and its ills. The objectives and practical programme of this movement are based on the Marxist critique of the foundations of contemporary capitalism, i.e. the last, most modern and most advanced form of class society.
Worker-communism is not a movement separate from the working class. It has no interests apart from those of the working class as a whole. What distinguishes this movement from the other workers' movements and parties is that, firstly, in the class struggles in various countries it champions the unity and common interests of the workers of the entire world, and, secondly, in the various stages and fronts of workers' struggles it represents the interests of the working class as a whole. Thus, worker-communism is the movement of the most advanced section of the working class which understands the ultimate goal and the conditions and pre-requisites of victory and tries to rally the various sections of the working class.
