Sanders, AOC and the Fighting Oligarchy Tour

Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have embarked on a National Fighting Oligarchy Tour.

According to the mainstream press, even though this is not an election year, they have managed to draw massive crowds. As those journalists phrase it, ’’The rally is part of a multi state push, highlighting growing concerns over income inequality, political corruption, and what the two call the erosion of democracy, by billionaire influence….they are challenging billionaires, corporations, and what they call a creeping threat to American democracy. …Sanders is accusing both Trump and Musk of manipulating political systems to favour the wealthy…AOC echoed the alarm, calling on supporters to stand united, in the fight against Oligarchy, and for inclusive democracy…a growing wave of progressive support…Sanders says it is not just a political movement, it is a moral one, and it is trying to confront what he calls the Oligarchy reality …supporters say they are drawn to the movement due to the populist message, and to what they see as an urgent call to restore power to working people …Sanders and AOC are making one thing clear, the battle lines are drawn, and they believe the power still belongs to the people.’’

Remarkably enough, this report, by journalists who work for the mainstream press, is quite accurate. Yet it remains silent on one key point: Who is funding this National Tour?

It is very likely that the Democratic Party is footing the bill. 

The reason I say this is because the monopoly capitalists, the imperialists, are not completely stupid. No doubt, they see that the Hands Off Movement has the potential to become ‘’another Occupy Movement’’! Perhaps stronger! In this, the imperialists are absolutely correct! This calls for a little explanation, one which is contained in the Communist Manifesto, CM.

As previously mentioned, in other articles, it was the industrial revolution that gave birth to two new classes. The burghers secured possession of all factories, mills, mines, railroads, banks and shipping lines, as well as anything else of any considerable value, and in the process, became transformed into capitalists, or bourgeois. At the same time, they hired people to run their machines, handle their money, and paid them by the hour. In this way, a second class was created, a working class, technically referred to as the proletariat. 

The Communist Manifesto documents the process the working class has gone through, as all members of that class progress, developing ever more class consciousness. For the purposes of this article, our concern is with the development of the working class. I have placed paragraphs from the Manifesto in quotes, with my statements following them. Now to the matter:

CM: ’’In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., (that is) capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed – a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.’’

The title bourgeoisie is a reference to the ‘’upper crust’’ of the bourgeois, the capitalists. In modern terms, that means the monopoly capitalists, the multi billionaires, the imperialists, are the bourgeoisie. As the bourgeoisie is ‘’highly developed’’, and as the ‘’modern working class’’ develops ‘’in the same proportion’’, it follows that the modern working class is also ‘’highly developed’’. 

That is most emphatically true. The modern working class is highly cultured. Most workers are literate, and have access to a great many digital devices. What is more, they know how to use them! They access the internet on a regular basis. Bear in mind that the essential works of Marx and Lenin are now available on the internet!  

Now to proceed with the effect that capitalism has, as people are transformed into workers, proletarians.

CM: ’’Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.’’

Before the industrial revolution, before capitalism was created, a great many people worked in various trades. They took great pride in their work. Yet they could not compete with mechanized production, and were ruined. Of necessity, they took jobs in the factories, as workers. This transformed those people.

CM: ’’Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.’’

This is another way of saying that these people, newly created workers, proletarians, are promptly degraded. It does not stop there.

CM: ’’The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.’’

The use of hydraulics has proven to be a great boon for the capitalists, as no great strength is required to pull levers. If a man can pull levers, so too, can a woman. Or a child, for that matter. And the capitalists can pay them less!

CM: ’’No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.’’

The capitalists make sure that all workers are completely ‘’fleeced’’ If nothing else, they are certainly thorough!

CM: ’’The lower strata of the middle class – the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants – all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.’’

We still have a few -a very few!- members of the lower middle class, including family farmers, but they are exceptional. As well, even the upper strata of the middle class is being ruined, sinking into the proletariat. Too Small To Succeed!

CM: ’’The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.’’

Now we get to the heart of the matter, the development of the proletariat, as a class. It begins with individuals struggling with capitalists, and quickly learning that they have no chance. Then they come to realize that there is ‘’strength in numbers’’. 

CM: ’’At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.’’

At first, it is the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, who serve to ‘’unite’’ the proletariat! For their own purposes, of course! But still united!

CM: ’’But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.’’

Now we get to the point where the workers gets to experience the first vague glimmering of themselves, as a class, with their own class interests. This does not mean that they are conscious of themselves as a class, but it is a step in that direction.

CM: ’’Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.’’

At this point, the proletariat is really making progress. The ‘’improved means of communication’’, which first took the form of railroads, telegraphs and telephones, have now expanded to include the internet. A true blessing! Thank you capitalists!

CM: ’’This organization of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.’’

It is not just the workers who are responsible for becoming organized, ‘’into a class, and consequently into a political party’’. The bourgeoisie also assist in this noble goal! And the workers, in turn, ‘’upset this’’, due to ‘’competition between the workers themselves’’. Yet each working class movement rises up again, ‘’stronger, firmer, mightier’’. The Occupy Movement died down, but the Hands Off Movement is rising up! It will no doubt become ‘’stronger, firmer, mightier’’!

CM: ’’Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.’’

To think that the bourgeoisie serves to train the proletariat! Strictly for their own purposes, of course, but train nonetheless. 

In modern terms, the bourgeoisie may be divided over the presidency of Trump. They placed him in power, in order to abolish the democratic republic, and establish the rule of the Oligarchy. Yet he has his own agenda. Trump is determined to restore competitive capitalism, to turn back the American economy to that of one hundred years ago, through the use of tariffs, and in the process, create another Great Depression.

That is not the reason he was placed in the White House! Now the bourgeoisie is no doubt divided, with a section determined to remove him from office, before he does more damage.

With that in mind, the bourgeoisie may appeal to the proletariat for help! A true ‘’political education’’. That is so sweet! The least we can do is express our gratitude, by using that training against them!

CM: ’’Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.’’

That is especially true today, as there are only five businesses that are ‘’Too Big To Fail’’. It follows, that all the others are ‘’Too Small To Succeed’’! Numerous members of the upper middle class are being ruined, forced into the ranks of the proletariat. They bring with them, their awareness of class conflict, of ‘’enlightenment and progress’’. 

CM: ’’Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.’’

The preceding paragraph accurately describes our current situation.   The ruling class is indeed in the ‘’process of dissolution’’. They are determined to abolish the existing democratic republic, and establish the rule of an Oligarchy. That is alleged to have cost Elon Musk alone, two hundred seventy million dollars! The cost of buying the presidency! He thought that Trump was ‘’in his pocket’’! Instead, the fool is going rogue!

Now the bourgeoisie must feel like the wizard who summoned a demon from the nether regions, and then lost control of him!

As yet, there is little sign of any portion of the bourgeoisie coming over to the proletariat, but no doubt, a few of the ideologists will do just that, and soon.  

CM: ’’Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.’’

We are now at the point where the ‘’proletariat alone’’ is not only the ‘’really revolutionary class’’, but is is also the only class! Only the remnants of other classes are in existence!

CM: ’’The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.’’

It is correct to expect a certain number of middle class bourgeois elements to join the proletariat. For their own benefit, mind you. In turn, they will expect to be rewarded, after the revolution, with professional jobs, such as in science or business administration, for example. This is completely reasonable, as such skills will be in demand. They can expect to be well paid, and they will also be expected to train advanced workers in their area of expertise.

CM: ’’The dangerous class, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.’’

If the revolution is broad and deep enough, even the lumpen proletariat, the ‘’social scum’’ may be ‘’swept into the movement’’. Yet this is unlikely, and we must be prepared to deal with them, and rather harshly, for that matter.

CM: ’’In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.’’

All workers, all over the world, are ‘’subjected to capital’’. All have a common enemy. To an ever increasing degree, they are becoming aware of this. Truly, the slogan of Marx is correct, ‘’Workers of the World, Unite!’’

CM: ’’All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.’’

Private property! If there is one thing the capitalists cherish, it is private property! More accurately, they practically worship private property! The very thing the proletariat is destined to destroy!

CM: ’’All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.’’

Under capitalism, all goods and services are produced, for the benefit of the tiny minority of monopoly capitalists, the bourgeoisie. The proletariat is destined to overthrow the bourgeoisie, smash the existing state apparatus, and establish the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and produce for the benefit of the vast majority. 

CM: ’’Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.’’

The American proletariat must first overthrow their own ruling class of monopoly capitalists, and then unite with workers of other countries, who have also overthrown their bourgeoisie. This is precisely that which gave birth to the Soviet Union.

CM: ’’In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.’’

This ‘’veiled civil war’’ is nothing other than the class struggle, of the working class, with the capitalist class. Very soon, it is about to explode into ‘’open revolution’’.

CM: ’’Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.’’

The final word: ‘’Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie’’ They must be overthrown, and then crushed, under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

CM: ’’The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.’’

Monopoly capitalism has succeeded in bringing together countless workers. Competition between the workers is at a minimum. The class struggle, between workers and capitalists, is now sharp and clear.

That previous, rather lengthy exposition, has a point. I went into it, in considerable detail, because it is so important. The Communist Manifesto foretold, in general terms, that which is taking place now.

Marx and Engels really knew what they were talking about! As the capitalists are well aware!

There are two kinds of people who closely study the essential works of Marx and Lenin. Social Scientists, Communists, and monopoly capitalists!

It is very likely that they have come to the same conclusions, as have I. They too, are of the opinion that the Hands Off Movement, has the potential to become even more powerful than the Occupy Movement. A threat to their very existence!

In order to forestall this threat, they have decided to send two highly respected politicians, Sanders and AOC. Their duty is to steer this popular uprising, in the proper direction, onto some harmless path of paltry reforms. Harmless to the capitalists!

As both are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, this makes perfect sense. After all, the political platform, of the DSA, contains a lengthy list of demands for paltry reforms. The complete list of demands could fill a book! 

It is doubtful that either Sanders or AOC, are aware that they are being used in this manner. Which in no way changes the fact that they are encouraging protesters, to rely on the Democratic Party, the Party of the ‘’little guy’’, to represent them. The same Party which is in the service of the bourgeoisie!

Now it is the duty of Leftist people, especially Communists, to persuade the protesters to study the essential works of Marx and Lenin. It is necessary to raise their level of awareness to that of Scientific Socialists, Communists. Paltry reforms are not sufficient. Trump is not the problem. The problem is one of monopoly capitalism, imperialism. The imperialists must be overthrown and crushed, under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

No doubt, at some point, certain intellectual members of the bourgeois, will come to their senses, see the ‘’writing on the wall’’, and join in the revolutionary movement. At the same time, they will assist in raising the level of awareness of the working class. 

Yet as those essential works are readily available, on the internet, there is no need to wait. Further, as Lenin stated, in the absence of a true Communist Party, internationalist workers will come together. As that is the case, they can assist each other, in making sense of those Essential Works. The creation of a true Communist Party follows naturally, after that.

Gerald McIsaac