Debate over Lunch: History, Theory and Political Economy

By Michael Joseph Francisconi

I was born March 8, 1947 into a railroad family. I had two major passions in my early teens: the Democratic Party and John F. Kennedy. With his assassination and then the failure to seat the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in the summer of 1964, I lost all mooring with Party politics. The following May 1965, I graduated from Pocatello High School; I was eighteen, registered for the draft, and the nation was at war. Mr. Johnsons escalation of the war in Vietnam, along with the sending of troops into the Dominican Republic, completed my crisis of faith; I was no longer a Democrat.

My history is an intellectually personal one of the awakening and growth of a radical in love with the wonderment of the radical life-style. This is a story of an insurrection and rebellion on the limits placed upon essential human quality in a consumer-based society. This rebellion is, at its core, anti-capitalist, anti-state, anti-bureaucratic, anti-clerical, anti-patriarchal and anti-positivist.

This rebellion has continually evolved as age brought more insight and wisdom. One tradition replaces another, not that they are outgrown or abandoned, but that they lead naturally by life experiences to new ways of dealing with life. This is a rebellion born in experience and not an abstraction of an isolated rebel.

Particularly because of the rebellion that was the 1960s, I soon discovered the philosophy of the Russian Anarchists of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, and Berkman.

With the collapse of the movement in the early 1970s, the veterans and history of the old left became beautiful beacons in the night. The Industrial Workers of the World, Socialist party USA, Communist Party USA, and the Socialist Workers Party became my foundation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Nov 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466905139

Michael Joseph Francisconi

I was born March 8, 1947 into a railroad family. I had two major passions in my early teens: the Democratic Party and John F. Kennedy. With his assassination and then the failure to seat the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in the summer of 1964, I lost all mooring with Party politics. The following May 1965, I graduated from Pocatello High School; I was eighteen, registered for the draft, and the nation was at war. Mr. Johnson’s escalation of the war in Vietnam, along with the sending of troops into the Dominican Republic, completed my crisis of faith; I was no longer a Democrat. My history is an intellectually personal one of the awakening and growth of a radical in love with the wonderment of the radical life-style. This is a story of an insurrection and rebellion on the limits placed upon essential human quality in a consumer-based society. This rebellion is, at its core, anti-capitalist, anti-state, anti-bureaucratic, anti-clerical, anti-patriarchal and anti-positivist. This rebellion has continually evolved as age brought more insight and wisdom. One tradition replaces another, not that they are outgrown or abandoned, but that they lead naturally by life experiences to new ways of dealing with life. This is a rebellion born in experience and not an abstraction of an isolated rebel. Particularly because of the rebellion that was the 1960’s, I soon discovered the philosophy of the Russian Anarchists of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, and Berkman. With the collapse of the movement in the early 1970s, the veterans and history of the old left became beautiful beacons in the night. The Industrial Workers of the World, Socialist party USA, Communist Party USA, and the Socialist Workers Party became my foundation.

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© Copyright 2011 Michael Joseph Francisconi.

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Contents

Radical Ethics

Radical Ethics

Human Activity and Production

Issues and Social Movements

Legal, Reform,

Revolution, Insurrection

Radical Socialism

The Russian Revolution

Theory

Vanguard or Mass Movement The Party of the Working Class

Workers and Farmers

Reform, Revolution,

Working Class Organizations

Post War Marxists

I

Raya Dunayevskaya

The Theory of Alienation: Marx’s Debt to Hegel: (1983)

II

George Novack’s Understanding History

(Pathfinder, 1972)

Alienation

III

Erich Fromm 1961

Marx’s Concept of Man

IV

Marshall Berman, 1963

Freedom and Fetishism

V

Gajo Petrović 1965

Reification

VI

István Mészáros 1970

Marx’s Theory of Alienation

Standard Bib.

Radical Ethics

Simple morality is used to lead the exploited to passivity in the face of oppression. This morality maintains existing relations of exploitation by placing moral responsibility on the shoulders of the poor and exploited, while the rich and powerful get their just rewards. A morality of this type the destruction of the lives of the poor is unchallenged. The property relations that condemn the poor to a shorten life of misery is perfectly moral, while the poor’s resistance to that suffering is immoral. (Eugene Kamenka 1962)

Morality is set in a specific historical setting defined by law and religion to protect and defend existing power relations. The existential being creates a recurrent pattern pertaining to authenticity with having actual continuation over time. In time the rule of the rulers are seen as universal. This can only be shattered by the essential coming together of rational self-possessed assessment and class agitation leading to opposing the system of dividing society into a rigid system of social distinctions that make a great effort to fight against all forms of inequality. (George G. Brenkert, 1983)

Only by actively challenging the existing moral principles through collective action can decency as defined by the privileged as is use to control the general public and it use of principled teachings and unquestioned right beliefs be confronted. (Paul Mattick 1965)

Developing an alternative ideology drives the struggle for emancipation forward. This redefines the moral as what meets the needs of the poor and powerless. The old society becomes an obstruction to the decent life as now explained as the essential nature of what it is to be human with dignity. Old morals are uncovered and set forth as a lie standing in the way in the making of the future society. (Paul Mattick 1965)

With this movement towards the realization of the creation of a life that becomes the most we can live, with the greatest fulfillment the Epicurean garden in which we indulge in every day as a ceremony a celebration a passionate love affair with existence. Anything else falls far short and must be overthrown, the revolution is and everyday experience is also a permanent part of that life. With each new triumph we find ourselves fighting new forms of alienation and isolation, new forms of exploitation and manipulation, domination and oppression. There can never be political freedom with social and cultural sovereignty and all of the above with out economic self-determination through collective control over the cooperative production by the direct producers in public ownership of the resources necessary for production, survival, subsistence, and the full enjoyment of life. (George G. Brenkert, 1983)

Through labor we manifest our humanity as connected with nature this is the creative and artistic materialization of our citizenship of life. We wage laborers we are striped of this genuine and real meaning of life to become little more than raw materials for industry. Work is no longer an inspired and enjoyable emergence of happiness, but becomes a necessary gravity to be undergone required in order to survive. Nature our home, our true quintessence and our maternal connection with life because and angered hostile force to be conquered by others and used to subjugate us into submission. Isolated and alienated ultimately we are torn from our community to die alone in the deserts of a forgotten time and a forgotten land.

The above outlining the nature of alienation of labor becomes no more than the consideration of the temperament of disaffection from the gratification of subsistence in an existential sense by the worker. This is a simple tautology and does give us a universal moral code. For the owner of property need in the production of the necessities of life any threat to that property is wrong. To a business owner theft of property is wrong. These are seen as theft and robbery is always wrong. To a worker particularly a class-consciousness worker property is a result of wealth and wealth is the result of surplus value, which is only produced by the worker. Thus, the work often feels all wealth is theft and property that comes from that wealth is also theft. Morality reflects in this case class positions and what meets the interests of the conflicting classes. This is why it is important for the capitalist to represent their particular morality as a universal morality. If successful the worker will accept the dominant morality of the capitalist and no more need be said. If not there appears to be a conflict of right against right.

It is not however simple moral relativism. In the conflict between moralities that which expands opportunities to have a better life to ever increasing numbers of and classes of people I will argue is more moral than the older more restrictive morality. Liberal Revolution replaced the ideal rank based upon birth and divinely sanctioned with rank based upon earned merit and at least some hope of equality of opportunity. This is an improvement. Yet, with private property, restriction to access to the resources need for survival, inherited wealth and accumulation of wealth inequality is still guaranteed and will seem to those operating under an innate impediment as unwarranted thus morally wrong. With equality of outcome in the necessities of life and nominal level differences in life choices replacing ordinal and interval level differences in rank, income or life chances it will be argued here morality has been made better. Peter Kropotkin in his outline of Mutual Aid as an evolutionary strategy seems a better moral fit than survival of the fittest. Moralizing by the more restrictive ruling class is not moral. The advantaged will be liberated along with the oppressed by the more inclusive and democratic ethics of equality. (Eugene Kamenka 1962)

All ethics are situational ethics. That moral codes are embedded in a particular historical and cultural setting. Moral codes represent the interests of a particular class in that setting, and often are presented as a general and universal truth. In fact one class will benefit more than the existing competing classes. This not to say all moral codes are equivalent. The larger the classes protected by the principled instructions on life the closer it comes to also protecting the opposing classes, as well a offering a chance for liberation to the classes suffering oppression.

We are coming closer to understanding the basis of a proletarian ethic. A community of individuals, in which individuality is more fully realized through the near complete rejection of egoistic individualism, is now realized. This is a situation of mutual aid between members of the community, and a reciprocal confirmation, with an innate reflectively inspired interaction between this community and nature.

As soon as the worker becomes alienated from work, from the product, from nature and from other people labor becomes a labor of personal sacrifice, of humiliation. Under this set of circumstances someone must suffer so someone may benefit. Only under the state of affairs of mutual aid flanked by citizens of the nation, abided by a common validation, with an inborn thoughtfully educated communication connecting this group of people and natural world can humanity move to a more complete morality. This does not mean that any ethical system can be achieved before the material preconditions for its insights exists in the historical and social environment.

At each stage in our analysis of morality it will be noted, that goals are nothing to be jeered at as a basis of morality. While end and means interact, morality does not predate the material reality that gives rise to. There cannot any other meaningful ethics other than situational ethics. Eternal truths and universal ethics are both dogmatic and dictatorial as well as corrupt and unprincipled.

Before we can attain a more universal ethical code moving from family to clan to tribe to nation to humanity and finally to the living planet we needed to attain a material reality that is based upon an increasing interdependence that we are aware of an ever larger community. If our world consciousness stops with the next mountain range we will not develop a humanist worldview. If the capitalist income is derived from the labor of others surplus value and economic equality is Marxist emblematic fairy tales. From the view of the wageworker socialism, communism, worker councils, worker self-management, and the cooperative commonwealth federation frees the worker and the capitalist. ((Eugene Kamenka 1962))

Even this over looks the fact that morality set in a particular environment setting. What is an evil in one setting is a virtue in another. To kill bacteria to save a patent is a virtue even it means of taking the life of the bacteria. To eat meat we take the life of what is eaten, animal protein can in improve the health of people who eat meat. Meat eating it appears played a role in human evolution. To take an innocent life we can all agree is wrong. (George G. Brenkert, 1983)

The highest form of morality is the end result of struggle, even class struggle, often set in a revolutionary setting. Yet the highest form of morality is only the raw materials for future struggles of yet another class who come the limitations for their own needs as the older morality represents the best expression of the class now as the exploiters. (Raya Dunayevskaya 1971)

According to Leon Trotsky Historically ethics the creation of chronological societal evolutionary occurrence. With morals there is not any unchanging principles that would complete universal social welfare in all places and all times. Competing philosophies represent rival interests that are conflicting and morality like all ideology a class temperament suited to the needs of a specific class. Each warring class represents it particular ethical code as the best for society as a whole.

The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilability of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions patronized by religion, philosophy, or that hybrid which is called common sense. The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception. The exposure of this deceit which retains the tradition of thousands of years is the first duty of a proletarian revolutionist. (Trotsky: 1938)

Science, common sense, truth and logic each will express themselves differently when used in different setting by different group while fighting for their goals. While classes stand opposed with enough strength to challenge the authority of the ruling elites compromise is offered to maintain control at top levels of the upper class over the rest of society. Where there is not enough power to force concessions form the leaders of the social whole, the ruling class can openly use terror to keep control and justify it using their own universal moral codes. If this wasn’t enough simple commonsense simple or the logic of animal survival is distorted into justifying the authority of the existing state of affairs.

"Politics makes strange bed fellows’ goes the tired cliché, yet this opens up the dilemma faced by all sincere revolutionaries. With out a genuine popular front all we have immature political posturing. But, do we justify that which allies do that ultimately will be harmful to us? Are differences swept under the steps in our basement so as not to make our allies self-conscious? There can be no final answer. Yet these are part of our day to day decisions. Openness is suggested and when necessary express candidly our position on both the long term and short term aims. It can never be easy to be cooperative and honest at the same time, but success requires just this kind of concern.

Radical Ethics

Eugene Kamenka 1962

The Ethical Foundations of Marxism

Published: by Routledge & Kegan Paul

George G. Brenkert, 1983

Marx’s ethics of freedom publ. Routledge & Kegan Paul

Paul Mattick 1965

Humanism and Socialism

International Socialism (1st series), No.22, Autumn 1965, pp.14-18.

Trotsky: 1938

Their Morals and Ours

The New International, Vol.IV No.6, June 1938, pp.163-173.

Human Activity and Production

Human activity in the production of the means of existence is basic to all moral practice, and this we call labor and is the essential groundwork for all of other activities, including the spiritual. Our moral philosophy is grounded in this theory. Theory comes from the practical struggle to gain knowledge of our world, in order to gain more power over our lives within the social-material environment. Knowledge depends upon behavior. Production of our material life is the most important and is the ultimate foundation of our awareness of the circumstances surrounding our lives cultural and physical. These are the properties of our total environment. Its basic nature and essential quality of its attributes, is the groundwork of the component elements of our culture. The relationship between humans and nature and humans and other humans rest with the idea we are always a part of nature because we are but one part of the physical nature of the world (Mao 1966: 1-2).

Communities are people cooperatively interacting with nature. We as individuals and members of the community take from nature the resources necessary to live. Through our cooperative labor our survival becomes possible. Through this cooperation not only our mere survival, but also the highest spiritual and cultural elegance is consummated. But to live and to achieve culture we must have access to the necessary resources for survival. This becomes the foundation of all other democratic struggle.

In class society the equal access to the necessary resources to survival is erased. Different classes have different relations to the means of production, and thus have different ethics representing these conflicting relationships. This continuing struggle between the competing economic and social classes has a deep sway on the growth and change of understanding. As a member of a specific class, thinking itself is a reflection of that class. History becomes a distortion of interpretation, instead of having a history we have several histories all grounded in the ideology of a specific class. The political and economic elite controls the telling of history for all classes. The morals of the working class demands telling their own side of the story and being told in the words of the working class (Trotsky 1938).

The questions of truth or falsity for the working class depends on the affect in developing its own theory and the relationship between this theory and the practice of gaining power over our own lives. To attain the expected accomplishments through our actions we must bring our ideas into conformity with laws of the actual physical and social world. Knowledge cannot be separated from practice. Theory and practice is the necessary marriage of all known reality. Theory guides our practice and from our practical activity theories develop. Morality is tied both to our subjective needs and our objective understanding of our universe. Through this connection between the theory and practice our actions lead to more authority over our lives. In this way both the objective and subjective manifestations of our needs can be understood and dealt with. Through a deeper understanding of the universal and the specific of our humanity and our struggles we can gain an understanding of the basic nature of our existence in its entirety, along with the internal links and the inherent arrangement of things in our environment. By way of understanding and deduction we are able to formulate reasonable insights based upon our discoveries. From these insights our morality is formed and not divinely revealed (Mao 1966: 2-7; Kropotkin 1925: 293-300; Kropotkin 1970: 109-113).

Democracy is a complicated word, meaning something radically different to a socialist than to a liberal. With the liberal revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries democracy became limited to universal suffrage, once achieved it become a completed project. The limited legitimate channels of political activity established the arena of democracy. Any expression of the community concerns out side of this arena with illegal and immoral consequences must be considered. With the growth of the professional classes of the 20th century was added to, but remained on the margins and somewhat outside of the democratic arena. Professional autonomy, limits democratic control of the job site by offering the expert independence from the interference by bosses as well as the general public over the job of the specialist. The radical view is that democracy is an on going historical process that has only just begun. Democracy is never a finished product. Democracy is a life style not limited to politics or the legitimate political channels. If those legitimate channels further popular power over our collective lives, then they must be used. If these channels inhibit democratic expression of all the people then they must be opposed.

To the radical democratic revolutions are built one upon the other in a never-ending series. In Western Europe liberal revolutions began the fight for the vote, equality before the law, merit replacing rank, capitalism, private property, and individualism. This forms the basis of the ideology of political democracy. The labor movement particularly socialism formed a new ideology that found liberal democracy to limiting. Weather moderately or radically economic democracy must be added to political democracy. Public control over the entire economy became the first order of the day. From this foundation other issues would follow to extend power over our own lives. Other social movements of the 20th century were modeled after the socialist movement. Each found liberal democracy too limiting. The feminist, civil rights, and environmental movements are cases in point. The third world national liberation movements are an attempt for democracy where there were no liberal revolutions. The first stage of anti—imperialism is followed by the struggle for socialism.

Socialism is the materialization of democracy. Without socialism no form of democracy is possible. Without democracy socialism is a bureaucratic sham. Bourgeois democracy is only political democracy at the most superficial level. Political democracy is carefully designed to blunt popular opposition to class rule. Political democracy demands the equitable distribution of power. Such a demand remains utopian without the equitable distribution of the rewards of production. Economic democracy demands this equitable distribution, and only by insuring that the resources necessary for this production remains under the collective control of all the people will economic democracy become possible (Mao 1971: 467-470; Allende 1973: 31-34; Che 1987: 196-202; Kautsky 1964: 25-58).

Just as economic