Some thoughts on the working class and the struggle against oppression
The Marxist tradition always assumed that the working class can only liberate itself by liberating ALL the oppressed of society. This thread starts from its very beginnings in the German Ideology and the Communist Manifesto. Workers can't possibly understand their position in society and take power if their mental horizon is limited to their narrow "corporative" self-interest.1
People (from diverse motives) can often misunderstand this. It can take an economistic "radical" form: the task of the working class is to fight to-the-max for its own egoistic interests, with the assumption that if it fights to-the-max enough, it will push beyond some fixed limit of the capitalist economy, and capitalism will simply burst apart. Or it can take a social-democratic form: the task of the working class is to fight within the realm of what’s possible for its own egoistic interests, with the assumption that if it is skillful enough at maneuvering, it will be able to preserve its egoistic interests within the bounds of bourgeois tolerance.
In both cases though, they assume that the working class fights for itself in some narrow egoistic sense. This fundamentally misunderstands what the "working class in power" means. A working class in power has to make policy for all of society. And it is unlikely to even take power if it hasn't, in preparation for the revolution, already demonstrated some ability to make policy for more than itself, narrowly conceived.
This is also why I'm somewhat unconvinced by the common solution given to how the working class will fight against oppression in the lead-up to socialist revolution -- "unite and fight". (Or a related concept: "universal demands", a common phrase in Jacobin magazine.) In the abstract, this is perfectly adequate for a certain limited context. It is useful for agitation. It can represent some deep psychological needs that can be guided towards solidarity. But it doesn't adequately delve into the core of the issue, which is this:
As long as the working class is a subject class, it cannot possibly satisfy all the needs of its subsections. The working class in subjection means a working class subjected to the pitiless competition of bourgeois society and the privileging of certain sectors in the social division-of-labor. Class struggle within the limits of capitalism can attempt to alleviate this, or try to overcome it piecemeal, but it can never undo these tendencies. People are generally aware of this, as expressed in the common sentiment that the ruling class “divides” workers to “pit them against each other”. But it is important to take the next step and draw certain inferences from this. And this is where it gets difficult, because it raises some deeply uncomfortable questions. Understanding this inference means realizing the process of organizing the working class for the seizure of power is more difficult and protracted than what it seems at first glance. Nevertheless, this inference has to be faced head-on and not papered-over:
As long as the working class is still struggling as a subject class, it is forced to make compromises between the partially-clashing interests of its privileged and oppressed sections. The fact that these partially-clashing interests “in the last analysis” are less determinate than the diametrically-opposed interests between the working class and capitalist class, doesn’t change the fact that within the working class, these interests do clash. It is not enough to say that, after the revolution, all workers will have more to gain from overthrowing capitalism than their petty privileges under capitalism. As long as the working class is not yet organized enough to overthrow capitalism, compromises will have to be made — as in, the self-interest of every person cannot be satisfied in full. This is why the privileged sections will in a very real sense have to make “sacrifices” of its egoistic self-interest for the sake of demonstrating to oppressed sections of the class their sincere desire for unity — no matter how small such a sacrifice seems when compared to the promised rewards of communist society, it is still a real sacrifice of egoistic self-interest. (Incidentally, this is why “universal demands” are impossible under capitalism — a subject for another post perhaps.) How the working class navigates these compromises and sacrifices; how the party balances between the competing demands of different sections — and, yes, difficult and painful judgement calls, which may very well disappoint or anger parts of the working class, will have to be debated and carried out; how, throughout all this, the party makes the best of this difficult situation without losing the thread; forms an important part of its political education, of learning how to one day manage a complex society as a whole.
Thankfully, the bourgeois myth of the egoistic homo economicus does not give an accurate picture of the full breadth of human psychology. People constantly make sacrifices, day by day, in the interests of solidarity. And in exceptional circumstances — such as the many examples of revolutionary wars and civil wars throughout the history of proletarian revolution — the entire class as a whole can demonstrate a tremendous capacity for sacrificing its own comfort and egoistic self-interest, for many years at a time. This is why the observations I sketched above do not in any way permit us to be pessimistic about the potential for revolution to succeed and overcome these divisions. But we have to start by being realistic about the difficulty of the task ahead of us.
"Corporative", a word used by Gramsci, though the concept pre-dates him for sure, is a pretty useful way to summarize what's at stake here. It refers to the organization of a class, insofar as it is merely limited to the A) economistic level — in the sense of taking for granted the historically-transient economic categories of a certain social formation as the only categories within which it can organize, for e.g. the isolated worker as a legal subject of an employment contract, as a consumer, etc.; or the B) sectoral level — in the sense of treating the social division-of-labor and all its associated superstructural reflections as eternally fixed.