Every year on May 1, International Workers’ Day, leftist parties and all political currents that claim to defend the working class, even if they have been dormant at other times and lost their connection with reality, suddenly awaken and issue statements and congratulatory messages. Their statements carry such a sense of staleness and exhaustion that they hardly inspire any interest in spending even a few minutes reading them. A cursory glance is enough to grasp their entire content, making a full reading unnecessary. For these parties and political currents, International Workers’ Day holds significance only to this extent. Yet even if this occasion serves merely a symbolic role, it has at least this advantage: it rouses leftist parties and political currents from their deep slumber, prompting them to display some minimal activity. In addition, labor unions, once regarded as the vibrant heart of communist politics, have also weakened, appearing only on special occasions such as May 1, when they organize marches and actions to signal their presence.
This lackluster presence of left-leaning political parties and labor unions, reflecting the paralysis of the old left in both theory and practice, has created the perception among the general public and even within educated society that class struggle has become a relic of the past and no longer holds relevance. However, as will be argued below, the gravest political mistake would be to assume that class struggles no longer exist or lack political importance.
In the present era, what necessity remains for defending class struggle? This is a crucial question that leftists must answer. If by class struggle we mean what the old left claims, there is no doubt that it has long fallen out of relevance, and clinging to it is nothing more than a foolish illusion. In the intellectual framework of the old left, class struggle represents a reactionary reductionist approach to reality, one that ignores or downplays the struggles of middle strata, including women. This interpretation revolves around the centrality of the industrial working class, which, according to the old left, is supposed to lead the socialist revolution. Under current conditions, however, the industrial working class can no longer fulfill this role, because we are no longer in the era of industrial capitalism as in Marx’s time.
In post-industrial capitalism, immaterial labor plays a hegemonic role, while material labor, though it has not disappeared and still asserts its presence, no longer occupies the dominant position in the capitalist mode of production as it did in Marx’s era. When immaterial labor assumes a dominant role in society, exploitation is no longer confined to eight hours of work per day but becomes pervasive. As exploitation spreads throughout society, class struggle is no longer limited to factories or peasant farms but extends across all spheres of life. This expansion of struggle presents both challenges and advantages. It is challenging because class struggle becomes decentralized and loses organizational concentration. Although it exists, it becomes invisible due to its molecular dispersion, creating the illusion that it no longer exists. In the past, class struggle was more visible because it was concentrated in specific locations, such as industrial factories, with vertical and hierarchical leadership. However, this very vertical and hierarchical organizational structure of the working class or of political parties claiming to represent it proved to be crisis-ridden and disastrous, both for communism and for those parties that identified themselves as revolutionary, workers’ parties, and communist. This vertical leadership structure, significantly shaped and reinforced by Lenin’s theory of organization, paved the way for Stalinism, Maoism, and other ideologies rooted in personality cults and individual dictatorship. Ultimately, real socialism, which was itself a form of capitalism, was defeated in competition with other forms of capitalism that demonstrated greater flexibility and strategic awareness.
The advantage of the decentralization of class struggle in our time, however, lies in the growing skepticism toward representative and vertical organizational models. Struggle has increasingly taken on a horizontal and communal character. Time is needed for this form of struggle to consolidate itself and reach a level of maturity that would allow it to fully replace vertical leadership and create a sustainable common cause. The major challenge is how to establish this common cause in a way that endures and does not collapse over time.
Based on what has been discussed, since exploitation in contemporary capitalism has not only failed to diminish but has become deeper, more complex, and multilayered, resistance against it is naturally equally deep and multilayered and therefore cannot lack political significance. If class struggle, whether in the form of peasant movements, labor strikes, and justice-seeking marches in a vertical style, or in the shape of horizontal and anti-representational movements, did not exist, human society would not have reached its current level of economic, political, social, and cultural development. Even today, if the struggle of the subjugated for access to their fundamental rights, even if it remains local and limited and does not evolve into a universal and nationwide demand, were absent, “another world is possible” would never become possible.
A caricatured reading of class struggle
The chauvinistic left in Afghanistan, which is highly sensitive to the issue of language, reacts with intense anger when the defense of the Persian language against the excesses of Pashtun chauvinism is raised, accusing others of diminishing class struggle by focusing on “secondary issues.” One is easily accused of “betraying Marxism,” engaging in ethnicism, or playing linguistic politics. However, this reading of class struggle has little to do with Marxism. Lenin, as one of the authentic Marxists, adopted the most principled and correct approach to the issue of language and nationalism at the height of class struggles. Despite being of Russian origin, he firmly opposed Russian chauvinism and defended the right of nations to self-determination. It is said that in a discussion on the national question, when Stalin defended the superiority of the Russian nation over others, Lenin responded with a deeply meaningful remark: “I am Russian, but you seem more Russian than I am.” In other words, despite all your claims of being freedom-loving and revolutionary, you remain a Georgian enslaved by Russian chauvinism, so deeply that in defending the superiority of the Russian nation, you do not even realize that you are still unfree and, unfortunately, take pride in this subjugation.
Stalin’s disastrous record in strengthening Russian chauvinism after Lenin’s death shows how accurate Lenin’s concerns were. One can only wish that he had not died at that critical and decisive moment and had the opportunity to restrain Stalin. Lenin had realized better than anyone else that the Soviet Union was not moving in the right direction of history. At the last congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during his lifetime, he openly expressed doubt that the communists were leading the Soviet Union, suggesting instead that they were being led. This is the same Lenin, the authentic communist and a complete Marxist, who still serves as a theoretical reference for us.
The chauvinist left in Afghanistan, however, despite constantly invoking Lenin in every issue, conveniently ignores him in this context, acting as though they are unfamiliar with a figure of such prominence and recognition in communist thought. In discussions of the language issue, they go to great lengths to argue that language is a “secondary issue” that will be resolved with the realization of socialism; therefore, one should abandon this secondary debate and devote all energy to the sacred class struggle.
In sum, class struggle must be transformed from a reductionist, rigid, and worn-out framework into a comprehensive, inclusive, and dynamic discourse. It is not expected that the old left will undertake this transformation, as it lacks both the capacity and the will. Class struggle must become an essential discussion, and this is not possible without a radical critique of both the past and present of old left political currents, which consider class struggle their exclusive domain and accuse critics of neglecting or downplaying it. Yet for them, class struggle is reduced to issuing a statement or a congratulatory message on International Workers’ Day, after which no further trace of these self-proclaimed champions of workers can be found.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
