BY MARK CURTIS
FORT MADISON, Iowa - Under the impact of strikes, wars, and going to prison, a person's view of the world around him and of himself often starts to change. Previously held beliefs, like, "I'm an American," or "I'm a free individual," are replaced by questions like "Who are my people?" and "What is the history and the future of others like me?"
The search for identity leads some into the blind alleys of religion, race-based theories, and crack-pot notions. Some will seek out scientific explanations as they are attracted to communists they meet in struggles like the democratic movement in South Africa, the Cuban revolution, or demonstrations against police brutality.
I've seen men heading in all these different directions inside the penitentiary. Here at Fort Madison three of us have been getting together to study these questions. Our first choice was to read the Communist Manifesto. We meet once a week, in the yard around a table or in the gym. Occasionally someone will see us and come over to join the discussion.
The Manifesto was written by two young Germans, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, in 1848. Why study a pamphlet first published 147 years ago? For one thing, it answers the question of who we are and where we are going.
For most of the group, eager to know what socialism is, it was a surprise to read the first section of the Manifesto, which deals with capitalism and its two main class components, "Bourgeois and Proletarians." These words mean "capitalists and workers." This section dissects the society we live in and explains that all of us belong to classes based on our place in the economy as either producers or exploiters.
Understanding social classes is the beginning of wisdom to understanding all history and politics. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles," wrote Marx and Engels.
One of the first practical applications of this theory came up in the study group when someone said that the cause of the U.S. Civil War wasn't slavery, but taxation. His argument was the fact that President Lincoln was willing to allow the southern states to continue slavery if they would put down arms and end the war. Lincoln's tactical and changing positions, however, were less important than how the interests of the different classes collided in 1860.
When we used the class approach to identify the slaveowners, slaves, northern capitalists, workers, and small farmers we saw how slavery was supported or attacked by the different groups based on their interests as classes.
This applies not only to the past, but to the present too. When we got to section II, "Proletarians and Communists," we came across this sentence: "They [the communists] have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole."
Political questions are class questions
Every political question then, has to be answered by
each class in their own interest. Supporting President
Clinton's plan to send troops to Bosnia, for example, has
to be answered not from the starting point of what is best
for "American interests" but what is best for the working
class - in Bosnia, in the United States, and everywhere
else, "as a whole." Immigration, abortion rights, the
question of who the police really "protect and serve" are
all, under the outer skin, class questions.
It is the destiny of the proletarians, according to the Manifesto, to put an end to class conflicts by first becoming the new ruling class and ruling in the interests of the "immense majority" rather than for the profits of the bourgeoisie.
"Would it be fair," asked one member of the class, "for a talented inventor to make the same amount as an ordinary worker would under socialism?" "Doesn't the dream of becoming rich keep people motivated?" "How can people be made to see the `big picture'? Doesn't it go against human nature?"
Marx and Engels anticipated some the objections that "universal laziness will overtake us" without the drive to acquire private property. "According to this," they answered, "bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work."
What the class will read next hasn't yet been decided. The framework of class politics that we are in now will make easier to understand other concepts as well as current political events.
For me, rereading the Communist Manifesto underlined the most urgent reason of all to organize a movement that can do away with capitalism: the natural workings of this system are driving the working majority into deeper poverty, misery and brutality.
As Marx and Engels put it, "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...."
James P. Cannon, an American communist, said that when people begin to fight to throw off the unbearable shackles of their exploitation, there is nothing more powerful than the knowledge that their struggle is "historically necessary, theoretically sound, and that a new and better world can be won."