Introduction
John Clarke, former major organizer of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), recently posted the following on Facebook:
Never mind Luigi Mangione’s contradictions and inconsistencies. It wouldn’t even have mattered if it had transpired that Brian Thompson had fallen to a random shooter or been taken out by a jealous business rival.The point is that the CEO’s demise led to an outpouring of grim satisfaction that a key functionary of corporate brigandage suffered this fate. The shock and dismay that the framers of the official discourse wanted to promote had almost no effect in the face of this wave of jubilation.What this speaks to is a deep seated sense of grievance and a mood of anger that is enormously positive. Certainly, this is not enough but it’s clear that despairing liberal notions of a mass of duped Trump supporters don’t hold up. The issue isn’t a lack of class anger but of an effective political lead that can take it forward.
Class anger it may be–within limits. Many workers, citizens, immigrants and migrant workers who have been trounced upon by employers in general and the privatization of healthcare and other government services in particular may laud the assassination and perceive it as a particularlly apt form of justice.
Expressions of Anger Need Not Assume a Class Form
However, the welcoming of the assassination only expresses a potentiality that may may assume many forms or lead in many different directions. Clarke implies that the direction will assume a class form, but surely that is only one possibility. It may assume only an individual expression–such as another assassination attempt against another CEO–and another, etc. Individual expressions of class anger need not assume a class form. In industrial relations, it is well known that class anger can take the form of individual expressions of anger–individual sabotage, quitting, etc.
Clarke has been an activist here in Toronto, and at least he has been willing to be arrested and jailed for his activism. However, being an activist also has its dangers–and one of the major dangers is to assume that the working class is just about to leap into class action.
Going to the Opposiste Extreme and Ignoring the Potentiality of Working-Class Anger Is Not What Is Needed
There is, of course, the opposite danger–of assuming that the working class is purely passive or that it will never really act as a class. Herman Rosenfeld (retired national representation in the education department of the former Canadian Autoworkers Union (CAW, now Unifor) expresses just such a conservative radical position (see The Case of the Possible General Strike of Ontario Unionized Workers: Critique of Conservative Radicalism or Radical Conservatism). So too does Sam Gindin (former research director of the CAW, who tends to assume that workers should only act if they are thoroughly organized (see Once Again on the General Strike that Almost Was in Ontario, Canada, Part Two: Sam Gindin’s Analysis).
It is necessary to be realistic and guage not only the potential for class action but also the extent to which countertendencies are at work that impede such action. Clarke vastly underestimates the need for constant struggle against the class power of employers on many fronts, including the ideological front. For example, his recent pamphlet, written with Sarah Glynn, displays a lack of appreciation of the need to provide clear explanations of capitalist exploitation (see Review of the Pamphlet “Climate Change is a Class Issue” by Sarah Glynn and John Clarke, Part One: A Critique of the Identification of the Exploitation of Workers by Employers and the Exploitation of the Natural World).
In any case, there is no necessary connection with such praise and the development of working-class consciousness. Some of the support for the assassination undoubtedly is due to the increasing wealth of CEO’s such as Brian Thompson and the simultaneous denial of health benefits for any reason to needy sick people in the United States. The anger over such a situation exists and is expressed in such support for Mangione’s action, but it is a far cry from targeting the economic, political and social structures which Thompson represented.
Since Clarke (along with Sarah Glynn) neglected to enlighten workers about the nature of capitalist exploitation in their recent pamphlet, Clarke’s inference that all that is needed is “an effective political lead that can take it forward” seems to vastly underestimate the difficulty that is involved in having millions and millions of workers move in the same direction to end the class power of employers. It is hardly just about “leadership.” Until workers as a class both organize and do so with the aim of ending the class power of employers, it is unlikely that the Brian Thompson’s of this world will be stopped. It is the workers, citizens, immigrants and migrant workers coming to the conclusion that they need to get rid of an economic, political and social structure that exploits them and oppresses them, and not just “leadership” that is at issue. To do that, what is required is debate, criticism, more criticism and still more criticism–and action based on that, and not just “leadership.” Workers and others need to understand their situation–and that takes time and effort on their part, but it is they who will choose who their leaders are, and if they do not understand their own situation, either they will choose unwisely, or a so-called leader will arise that uses them as a means for her or his own purposes.
In Canada, the interpretation of Mangione’s action might be that what we need is to fight for the maintenance of public health care, without questioning whether public-sector healthcare itself needs to be criticized. In other words, his action might just reinforce their idealization of the public sector (see, for instance, a criticism of such idealization in A Protest Held in Toronto on May 30, 2024, to Oppose the Ontario Conservative Party’s Continued Privatization of Health Care).
Conclusion
Clarke vastly overestimates the level of class consciousness of workers, citizens, immigrants and migrant workers and greatly exaggerates the ease of channelling anger expressed in the support of Mangione’s assassination of Brian Thompson, CEO of an organization that profits at the expense of the health of many people, into a class form; they hardly just need leadership, but it needs both much debate, criticism, intellectual development and action based on that development, criticism of the action, reformulation of theory and engagement in action once again, etc. It certainly needs much more than mere “leadership.”
Of course, going in the opposite direction and underestimating the potential for workers, citizens, immigrants and migrant workers to demand more radical measures constitutes just as much an ineffective socialist strategy.
We need to be realistic by neither underestimating the difficulty of devleoping a mass movement towards a society without a class of employers nor underestimating the potentiality of class anger to assume a more class form under certain circumstances.
The Abolitionary 