Introduction
It is interesting that social democrats express themselves in different ways. Thus, Professor Noonan, a professor at the University of Windsor (Ontario, Canada), who teaches Marxism, among other courses, presents a few truths that give credence to a number of distortions and silences in his recent post on his blog (see https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/25539351/posts/5759).
Distortions and Silences
Idealization of Bourgeois Democracy
Let us start with the distortions and silences. Noonan claims the following:
For better of for worse, “bourgeois” democracy is all that we have got. It is vastly superior to the known alternatives, because it does not pre-determine how the political space for mobilization that it opens can be used. Different parties can be created, candidates chosen, and policy options pursued that can make real differences in real people’s lives.
Does Noonan provide any proof to substantiate such an assertion? Why not? And what are these “known alternatives?” Workers’ assemblies? Neighbourhood communities? Noonan ignores the Paris Commune, the soviets and so forth.
As for the claim that bourgeois democracy “does not pre-determine how the political space for mobilization that it opens can be used,” Noonan needs to explain then why the various bourgeois democracies throughout the world have not challenged the class power of employers but have generally only aimed at limiting that power in one form or another.
Noonan ignores completely certain facts. Firstly, bourgeois democracy is characterized by an “extended state,” that involves a set of professionals (like himself) who support the formal government or state machinery or apparatus. From Sonja Buckel (2021), Subjectivation and Cohesion Towards the Reconstruction of a Materialist Theory of Law, page 145:
It is possible to show that law, with its prestige and claim to universality, produces an important effect for maintaining ruling class hegemony. This prestige is communicated through the influential, professional, technical and intellectual sector, which manages the legal system. The argument here is also very similar to that with regard to the extended
state – defined as ‘hegemony protected by the armour of coercion’– so that one can speak of an ‘extended law’: this is not only state repression as conceived in its potential for sanctions, but beyond that and perhaps most of all hegemonic in the sense of a ‘tool’ for generating consent through practices of everyday life.
I have already indicated, in another post, a personal example of this “extended state”:
- We can expect a network of “professionals” to reinforce each other in judging the mental health of individuals–on the assumption that our society is somehow rational.
- The social-democratic left generally fail to consider the extent to which this network of individuals and professions reinforces the fundamental structure of the power of the class of employers and the associated economic, political and social structures of exploitation and oppression.
- The underestimation of the extent to which there exists a network of individuals and professions that serve, ultimately, the interests of the class of employers thereby overestimates the ease with which social change can occur without a decided strategy for addressing such institutional, ideological and individual oppression.
- What is needed is open and systematic critique of such individuals, professions and institutions.
- This requires that the radical left discuss such issues and formulate measures and organize to counteract these oppressive individuals, professions and institutions.
- It also requires the radical left critique the social-democratic or reformist left since such reformers are blind to the oppressive nature of such institutions.
Noonan simply ignores (or is probably unaware) of this extended nature of “bourgeois democracy.”
Ignoring the Class Power of Employers in a Bourgeois Democracy
Secondly, Noonan idealizes bourgeois democracy without taking into consideration that “bourgeois democracy” has as its counterpart “civil society.” From Mark Neocleous (1996), Administering Civil Society: Towards a Theory of State Power, page viii:
The state concept, it will be argued, only makes sense if one uses it in conjunction with ‘civil society’, and vice versa.
Civil society, includes, in addition to the family and other social relations, employers and workers.
Let us now listen to a previous assertion by Noonan in another post about this relation:
Whether or not it was ever practiced in reality, the principle of collegial self-governance is the goal to which universities should aspire. Unlike for profit businesses, universities do not have owners whose goal is to maximise profits. Instead, all members of the institution– faculty, librarians, learning specialists, lab technicians, students, support workers, and administration have the same goal—the advance of human knowledge and creativity in the widest and most comprehensive sense. If that claim is true, then it should follow that all the groups who together make up the university ought to cooperate (not without respectful disagreement) in the determination of the budgets, policies, rules, and goals that guide the institution’s mission. The best ideas emerge through deliberative and democratic argument—no one group knows best just because of the position they occupy in the hierarchy.
I responded:
This view is ideology in the worst sense of the term. It is an appeal to what ought to be in some utopian world (“the principle of collegial self-governance is the goal to which universities should aspire”)–that can never be in the given context, and then assuming that the utopia is somehow possible in such a context (“the principle of collegial self-governance is the goal to which universities should aspire“). In a society dominated by employers–including public-sector employers like universities, it is highly unlikely that such workers as “lab technicians, students and support workers” have the same goal–“the advance of human knowledge and creativity in the widest and most comprehensive sense.” Such a view may apply in a socialist organization, but to assume such a situation in universities, which function in a capitalist context, is bound to lead to inadequate policies and theories.
The illogical nature of the assertion is called asserting as a fact what you are supposed to prove; more technically, it is called begging the question. Professor Noonan assumes that all the workers at universities have the same goal. This view can be criticized on a number of grounds.
The collectivity called the university, in a capitalist setting, involves the purchase of workers on a market for workers. The workers do not collectively and consciously get together to decide to form an organization called the university; rather, it is the employer who sets up a formal organization called a university and then hires workers as employees for a certain period of time. These workers “belong” to the university as a formal collectivity but, since they do not freely unite to form the university, this organization is something imposed on them as a force that is external to them. In other words, the unity which is supposed to be the university is a formal unity that is not self-organization of that which is organized or unified (the workers); the unity is imposed from without or in an external and therefore unfree manner.
The self-organization of workers and the formal organization of workers into a unity makes all the difference in the world in the quality of lives of the workers. In self-organization, the workers express themselves in their unity as something which they have made and to which they have freely subordinated themselves as a power that is their power. In formal organization, workers are brought together as a unity by an external force (in this case, through a formal organization that owns money); their own unity is not their unity but the unity of the employer. The workers then find that the unity is oppressive in various ways.
Consider support workers. I worked twice at a university library, once doing my practicum to obtain a library and information technology diploma (from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) between 1988 and 1990) at the University of Calgary main library, in the cataloguing department. One worker remarked, when I noted that the work was very hierarchical (something which academic Marxists seem to overlook in their own workplace often enough–at least on a practical level when they acknowledge, in the books they have published, the work of librarians, who necessarily oppress workers lower in the hierarchy, but fail to acknowledge the support workers), that she would prefer having a benevolent dictator than a mean one (implying that she had a benevolent dictator). Again, at the University of Manitoba, where I worked on a temporary library project for Dafoe Library, one of the library assistants, Juliette (a feisty Philippine woman) talked to me explicitly how her supervisor, a white German woman, had explicitly indicated that she did not want to have any more Asians filling the higher ranks of library assistants (library assistant 4, if I remember correctly). Juliette complained to the Human Rights Commission, which apparently found that such library 4 positions were indeed being filled illegitimately by non-Asians. Although Juliette was protected in some ways from being fired because of the finding that there was discrimination in the assignment of library assistant 4 positions, she also told me that one time she found feces thrown onto her car. Another time she found that someone had somehow opened her car doors and slashed some of the interior. Another time she was driving her car home from work when she found that she had a flat tire. When she had it towed to a garage, the mechanic remarked that it looked like someone had slashed her tires (perhaps with a knife).
Consider another situation at the University of Manitoba. The racism evident in Dafoe Library of the University of Manitoba led someone to post a petition for an Ombudsman’s office on racism at the University in the library staff lounge. I showed Juliette this, and she circulated the petition to library workers in circulation and in the cataloguing department. Only a handful of workers signed the petition (including Juliette and me), not because there was no racism in those departments but, according to Juliette, but because the workers were afraid to sign it out of fear of the possible repercussions from management–and fear is characteristic of many work sites among the lower levels of the hierarchy (whether public or private).
Of course, academics at the University of Manitoba knew nothing about this situation; despite their research skills, they are often blind to events that immediately surround them.
Professor Noonan evidently looks at the world in terms of class harmony–at least in his own environment. Such a world is not filled with degradation and oppression in order that he engage in his activity. Such a world can-without opposing his and all other employers–realize a world where all who work can freely pursue the same goal.
Where you work: Do you feel free? Do you participate equally in the decisions of the place where you work? Can you engage in one activity or another freely (say, be a cataloguer in the morning and tenured professor in the afternoon and a musician in the evening? Or are you oppressed at work in various ways? Are the decisions made at work not subject to your will at all? Do you find yourself restricted to engagement in one particular activity if you are going to live at all because you need the money to live?
I objected in partcular to the following specific claim quoted above:
Instead, all members of the institution– faculty, librarians, learning specialists, lab technicians, students, support workers, and administration have the same goal—the advance of human knowledge and creativity in the widest and most comprehensive sense. If that claim is true, then it should follow that all the groups who together make up the university ought to cooperate (not without respectful disagreement) in the determination of the budgets, policies, rules, and goals that guide the institution’s mission.
His assumption that all workers at a university somehow magically share the same goal compares poorly with the following by Marx. The quote applies just as much to university workers (less so for university professors with tenure, undoubtedly) as to a capitalist factory (from Capital, volume 1, pages 449-450):
The control exercised by the capitalist is not only a special function arising from the nature of the social labour process, and peculiar to that process, but it is at the same time a function of the exploitation of a social labour process, and is consequently conditioned by the unavoidable antagonism between the exploiter and the raw material of bis exploitation. Similarly, as the means of production extend, the necessity increases for some effective control over the proper application of them, because they confront the wage-labourer as the property of another. … Moreover, the co-operation of wage-labourers is entirely brought about by the capital that employs them. Their unification into one single productive body, and the establishment of a connection between their individual functions, lies outside their competence. These things are not their own act, but the act of the capital that brings them together and maintains them in that situation. Hence the interconnection between their various labours confronts them, in the realm of ideas, as a plan drawn up by the capitalist, and, in practice, as his authority, as the powerful will of a being outside them, who subjects their activity to his purpose.
Professor Noonan may counterargue that the university is not a capitalist. True. However, this fact does not prevent the above description from being applicable to the situation of most workers at universities. Universities, from subordinate workers’ point of view, are impersonal employers, and as impersonal employers they constitute an external unity for workers that is imposed on them from without. Such an external unity assumes the form of despotism (some employers being better or worse, admittedly, but nevertheless all being forms or kinds of despotism.)
Professor Noonan’s position is similar to John Dewey’s position: assuming cooperation is somehow superior to class conflict and class struggle. As I wrote in my masters’ thesis (Towards a Critical Materialist Pedagogy: Marx and Dewey, page 121):
Philosophy, or the method of intelligence or democratic inquiry, according to Dewey, was to contribute to the resolution of conflicts through problerm-solving, just as in the natural sciences. Like Marx, Dewey posited that reason or philosophy (a means) was to be used to try to contribute to the resolution of social conflicts (achieve an acceptable end goal or end in view) (Brodsky, 1988). Problems would be openly breached and defined, and common solutions to the specific problems sought (Colapietro, 1988). However, this method is applicable only when the distribution of power is relatively equal and when relations of domination do not arise. When the distribution of power is skewed, as in a capitalist society, conflict can be resolved through reason only if those in power deign to listen. Moreover, those in structural positions of power will often see no need to change since the situation corresponds to their interests. They will deny that the situation is problematic and refuse to engage in debate and negotiation (Brosio, 1994a). What constitutes a problem will be more easily defined by those who control the working environment–the employers and managers. Similarly, solutions sought will tend to be in accord with problems defined by employers and managers rather than in terms defined by those who concretely use the means of production.
It is also typical of social democrats like the German social democrat Eduard Bernstein, who assumed as a fact what needed to be achieved politically: the control by workers of their own working lives. From Christoph Henning (2014), Philosophy After Marx: 100 Years of Misreadings and the Normative Turn in Political Philosophy, page 36:
In making these points [about the social nature of “joint-stock companies, cartels, monopolies and cooperatives”], Marx meant to encourage socialists to engage in political activity. Bernstein turns the political conclusion on its head by turning an anticipation of the future into a fully realised fact. In his work, actual political transformation is replaced by theoretical transformation. In Bernstein’s considerations, class antagonism, which rests on property relations, is simply elided [slurred over] – and with it, the capitalist character of ‘society’. …he [Bernstein] blurs the boundaries between theory and reality, turning a theoretical possibility into a reality by abstracting from the problems associated with it.
It is typical of social democrats and social reformers that they idealize the public sector–as if working for a non-profit institution is somehow freer for workers. Professor Noonan, by making the assumption that the goal of a university is one unified goal–does the same and serves, objectively, as an ideologue of public-sector employers. It is also typical of social democrats that they idealize bourgeois democracy–hence Noonan’s idealization of bourgeis democracy. Of course, bourgeois democracy should be defended against those from the right who seek to abolish mechanisms that do indeed provide some protections against the class power of employers–but let us not idealize them. Looking further at Noonan’s post, we see his idealization of social democrats, such as the Canadian New Democratic Party’s (NDP) push for pharmacare and dental care as a condition for its support of the Canadian federal Liberal party (Canada has currently a minority government that requires the support of the NDP:
Coming back home across the border, two very significant steps were just taken in Canada with the introduction of a national Pharmacare program and a national dental care program. The Liberal government would not have implemented these significant extensions of public health care unless the social democratic NDP pushed them. Their initial shape is inadequate to the full scope of social needs, and comes at a time when the Liberals are also allowing provinces to erode public health care by floating the Canada Health Act. But they are unarguably progressive steps in the right (socialist) direction.
This is nonsense. Of course, such reforms are welcome–but at what cost? The silence of the NDP over such issues as the dictatorship at work (see for example Employers as Dictators, Part One)? Bismark in Germany introduced reforms from on-high–in order to stave off more radical measures being proposed from the working class. To claim that they are “unarguably progressive steps in the right (socialist) direction” is absurd. How does Noonan arrive at such a conclusion? Reforms may or may not aim for socialism–the abolition of the class power of employers and the associated economic, political and social structures and relations associated with them.
Do pharmacare and dental care in any way point towards questioning the class power of employers? Are workers, citizens, immigrants and migrant workers in any way more organized in such a way that they have become more capable of questioning the power of the class of employers? It is like saying that, since healthcare is relatively free in Canada when compared to the United States and therefore those who live in Canada are moving towards socialism; there is no evidence to that effect.
Noonan’s illogical conclusion points to the poverty of academic leftism.
Some Positive Aspects of Noonan’s Criticisms
The Need to Engage in Conversations with Right-Wing Members of the Working Class
Nonetheless, Noonan does express some valid points concerning the left. He writes the following:
Some working class Trump voters might express deplorable positions, but to reduce their politics to some sort of character defect is antithetical to the political engagement with them that the broad left needs to undertake.
Political engagement begins from trying to understand where people are coming from. If one is going to understand where people are coming from, one must inquire of the routes they have traveled to reach their current position. Isn’t that what a historical materialism should examine? If people adopt anti-immigrant positions, is that because they are inveterate racists? Or is their attitude shaped by the fact that they occupy precarious jobs and are worried that they will lose them to more desperate workers willing to work for even less than the nothing that they are being paid? Or are they are concerned that scare space and meager public services on which they rely, and for which they pay taxes, will be given to newcomers free of charge, and they do not see the fairness in that arrangement? Scolding, hectoring, and lecturing does not address those concerns nor will it change peoples’ minds. Quite likely, it will harden their positions and their heart.
The social-democratic and even some of the radical left here in Toronto certainly fail to engage in serious discussions with right-wing members of the working class; rather, they engage in self-righteous condemnation without engaging in any real discussion. (It should, however, be noted that Noonan assumes that it is possible to engage in such conversations. My former son-in-law was pro-Trump and a religious zealot who simply had faith in Trump; nothing I said would change his mind concerning Trump).
Note, however, how Noonan frames the issue–“meager public services.” He does not mention the other side of the coin–the experiences of working for an employer for many workers, whether immigrants or “native born.” Fear of losing one’s job or fear of losing public services on which they rely is a real fear among the working class, but such fear is often not balanced by the realization of the background class conditions (the existence of a class of employers) which generate such fear and precariousness.
Expression of Some Half-Truths
Noonan also expresses some half-truths, as in the following:
Judging from people’s behaviour across centuries, they agree with Oscar Wilde: socialism takes too many evenings. Only a relatively small minority of people have any sustained interest in being political activists (and few of those manifest it sustain it across their lifespan). Many working people cannot afford to worry–in the monetarily literal sense of ‘afford’ — about what the climate will be like in 2050, or about a ceasefire in Gaza, because they are broke, the rent is due tomorrow, and their kid is failing school. Enthusiasts are moved by one another’s slogans, but most people ignore images, slogans, and stunts that concern problems that they do not regard as their own. The right- seems to understand political psychology much more than the left: they recognize that most people simply try to go about their lives, prioritizing the near term over the long term, the local over the global, and the concrete over the abstract.
Such a view essentially implies that the working class is necessarily reformist. Undoubtedly, many members of the working class do prioritize “the near term over the long term, the local over the global” (I leave aside references to “the concrete over the abstract”–is money concrete or abstract?). And? We should acknowledge these tendencies, but we also need to seek ways of overcoming such limitations. But Noonan, being a social democrat who sees in pharmacare and dental care a move towards socialism, has no intention of overcoming such limitations.
The Need to Bridge the Gap between the Short-Term and Local and the Long-Term and Global
I attended informally some lectures by Jim Vernon on the German philosopher Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit in the winter term of 2016 (January to April). Vernon pointed out that Hegel indirectly criticized such a view of focusing on the local and short-term since the social whole, if not addressed consciously, will come back to haunt the local and the short-term (the experience with Covid is a case in point). We should indeed recognize the tendencies of many workers to limit their attention to the short-term and the local, but we should also, as socialists, seek to find ways to bridge the gap between the short-term and the long-term and between the local and the global. As I wrote in another post:
Should there not be an effort to attempt to link up a critique of what is going on in Gaza and the West Bank with what is going on in Canada? Not just the Canadian government’s support of the genocide, but in the daily lives of Canadian workers, citizens, immigrants and migrant workers?
I suspect that many workers and community activists in Canada have a negative attitude towards the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank but a positive attitude towards their own employer and towards the class of employers in general. Internationalism requires that we see ourselves in others and others in ourselves–rather than excluding ourselves from the “poor other”–so typical of social reformers and social democrats. Should we not be attempting to shift towards a negative attitude towards all employers–towards the class of employers?
For example, I have tried to calculate the rate of exploitation of workers by PADICO, a Palestinian holding company that exploits workers in Palestine (see The Rate of Exploitation of Palestinian Workers at PADICO Holding, a Palestinian Capitalist Company). If possible, should we not try to calculate the rate of exploitation in Canada of workers in companies linked to the shipment of arms to Israel, such as Zim or Pratt & Whitney? (A preliminary look at the annual reports of Zim shows that it may be possible to calcualte the rate of exploitation of Zim workers in 2017 (in 2018 and 2019 there were profit losses. On the other hand, for Pratt & Whitney, the annual report for Raytheon Technologies, which owns Pratt & Whitney, there is no information for salaries or wages, and such information is necessary in order to calculate the rate of exploitation.)
Of course, there are undoubtedly other ways in which the common exploitative and oppressive situation of Palestinian and workers in Canada can be made explicit, but socialists need to make such efforts and not let the paternalistic attitude of “the poor exploited and oppressed Palestinian workers” and the “non-exploited and non-oppressed workers in Canada” prevail. The view that workers in Canada have “good jobs,” “decent work,” “fair wages,” “good contracts,’ and other cliches need to be constantly challenged.
Conclusion
Noonan’s claim that bourgeois democracy is the best form of democracy so far devised not only exaggerates the efficacy of bourgeois democracy but also ignores experiments by workers in other forms of democracy, such as the Paris Commune or the soviets and workers’ councils in various countries. It also ignores that bourgeois democracy has as its counterpart the dicatorship of employers directly at work. Noonan’s claim that the introduction of pharmacare and dental care in Canada constitutes a move towards socialism is simply absurd.
Despite the many negative aspects of Noonan’s post, it does contain a few positive aspects. Socialists do indeed need to engage, when possible, in conversation with right-wing workers, citizens, immigrants and migrant workers. Workers, citizens, immigrants and migrant workers often also focus on short-term interests and the local–but at the expense of the long-term and the global, to their detriment. Socialists need to bridge the gap between the two–but Noonan fails to see the need for such a bridge since his own limited focus is social democratic or social reformist.
The Abolitionary 