Fight for Revolution, Become a Worker

The future is bleak. The promises of education, social mobility and progress were lies. Everyone can see this. Many young people are looking to the left for an alternative. And many have joined revolutionary organizations. But there is a difference between becoming a communist with the promise of quick success and making a lifelong commitment to the cause of revolution.

As young radicals contemplate their choices, we in the ICL encourage them to turn away from the illusory prospects of a white-collar career and to join the ranks of the working class. Look to strategic industries such as manufacturing, logistics, transport and healthcare. For a communist, such a decision brings one’s political and social existence into alignment. It makes fighting for the working class a concrete fact of life, not just an idea but a daily reality.

More than that, the movement needs young communist workers. Marxists today have lost most of their influence in the workers movement. We need the current generation of young radicals to go to the working class and help rebuild this influence.

The Limits of Campus Radicalism

For decades, the center of gravity for leftist politics has been the campuses. When the liberal era of world politics was at its peak, there was a place within academia for leftist intellectuals, even a few Marxists. Still today, campuses provide a recruitment ground for communists.

But on the whole, the overwhelming focus of Marxists on universities has had disastrous consequences, pulling the movement in an increasingly liberal and petty-bourgeois direction, far removed from the realities and concerns of the working class.

We do not argue that campus politics are dead or should be abandoned. But we think it is well past time for communists to radically rebalance their priorities. A revolutionary party must be forged through the fusion of declassed intellectuals and the vanguard of the working class. If we are to reach this vanguard, a certain proportion of young, declassed radicals needs to go to the workers. There is no getting around this if we are serious about building a revolutionary party.

Join the Working Class

For a young radical to get a working-class job is not only a good political choice but also reflects an objective necessity. As the number of unemployed graduates grows, some can still hope to pursue a white-collar career. But this road is closed to most. For them, the future lies in downward mobility: white-collar sweatshops, low-skill services, unemployment and proletarian jobs.

If this is the future for most graduates, why should so many young revolutionaries waste time at university, spending a fortune to get indoctrinated by bourgeois propaganda and learn unmarketable skills? Why not choose right now to get a skill and look for a job in the most strategic sectors of the working class? The same can be said for those who already have a degree and are struggling to survive on the margins of society. Working-class jobs can offer better employment prospects at a time when many countries are chronically short of skilled manual and healthcare workers.

As millions of youth are turned away or blocked from careers requiring higher education, young communists are faced with a choice. Where will you go? What will you do with your life? Part of making this decision is understanding the limits of the choices on offer. A comfortable middle-class life is not a choice for the overwhelming majority. The decision, then, is whether you as an individual should follow the bulk of your generation into a proletarian future or struggle against the current in the hope of securing a job from the shrinking pool of middle-class occupations.

While the latter is not incompatible with dedicating your life to communism, the first is essential if we are to win the young generation of proletarians to communism.

Build the Unions

While the left has been overwhelmingly focused on campus activism, it has increasingly ignored serious trade-union work. Meanwhile, the situation in the unions is dire. On the one hand, there are the bureaucratic husks of the trade unions, despised by growing numbers of workers for their complicity in the bosses’ attacks. On the other hand, in countries where the trade-union movement still shows signs of militancy, there are small pockets of working-class radicalism, all too often thrown into battle in isolation from the masses. Then there are the vast sectors of the economy where there are no unions.

There is a reason why revolutionaries were instrumental in building most unions, and why attempts to unionize giants like Amazon have so far failed. Conscious leadership is key. What is desperately needed everywhere is an infusion of young revolutionary cadre, determined to rebuild union power and fight the bureaucracy, but also to stand up to ultraleftism and substitutionism. The crusty leaders of the past are not up to the task. What is urgently needed is a new generation of combative trade-union leaders stepping up.

Existence and Consciousness

Getting a working-class job is not a moral question. Being a worker does not automatically make you class-conscious or a better person. What it does is bind your own life to the struggles and fate of the working class. There is no easy way out for a worker. Your conditions improve when everyone else’s do. A defeat for the class is a defeat for you, impacting your own daily conditions. Being a worker brings politics out of the ivory tower and into the living experience of the class struggle.

While a communist worker can still resort to abstract formulas when confronting difficult problems, these formulas will come into direct conflict with material reality. The only way for a communist worker to influence co-workers is to provide real answers to the problems facing the workplace and society. This connection with the reality and consciousness of the working class is essential not just for individual communists but for any communist party worth its salt.

As Marxists, we understand that existence determines consciousness. This does not mean that a party that is organically connected to the proletariat will necessarily have all the right answers. But what is certain is that a party that lacks a living connection to the realities and consciousness of the working class cannot hope to offer concrete leadership to its struggles. Just as workers need the party for leadership, the party needs workers to remain anchored in material reality and a proletarian political perspective.

How are communists to undercut the rise of right-wing ideas in the working class if they remain totally out of touch with the realities of working people? We certainly cannot adapt our policies to backward consciousness, but nor can we artificially insulate ourselves from it. If there is any hope of pushing back against reaction, it must be confronted politically on the shop floor and not just from the comfort of the armchair.

Are You Really a Communist?

Every revolutionary, no matter their class origins, must break with the values and norms of their upbringing. No one is born a revolutionary. It is a conscious choice. Generally, it is in the personal realm that the question gets posed most sharply: parental expectations, family responsibilities and the demands of a non-political partner. As the long-term economic and social consequences of revolutionary engagement become more acutely posed, every communist must decide on their class allegiance and commitment.

Becoming a communist is not a purely intellectual process; it is also a material and social act. It means pushing social acceptability and personal interests to the background and placing one’s existence at the service of a higher, historic cause. Very often, the questions of being an active member of a communist party and picking a profession get posed in tandem. This is normal. Choosing what you will do for a living (a privilege not available to most) concretely poses what you want to do with your life.

Deciding to become a communist worker fuses the question of livelihood with political commitment. It means abandoning the prospect of a petty-bourgeois career and tying your future to the working class.

For individuals brought up with the expectation of upward social mobility, it can often be easier to join a communist party than to become a worker. The first can be kept under wraps if necessary. The latter cannot. It means directly confronting family expectations and the stigma that the petty bourgeoisie puts on the working class. While this pressure is real, it does beg the question: how can one expect to fight for the working class through crises, wars and revolution if the prospect of living and working among the proletariat is too much to bear?

There is, of course, more than one road to becoming a communist. But at the current juncture, our appeal to young radicals is to not only dedicate their lives to proletarian emancipation but to do so as workers. There is no better revolutionary training than applying the principles of Marxism within the class struggle itself. And there is no greater need for the communist movement today than a steeled working-class cadre.