Ideology and the Line the March
of the Revolution
by Beth Gonzalez
With their moral outrage the American people are reacting to the growing gap between wealth and poverty, the enthronement of the corporations, and the spreading social and spiritual destruction. But until there develops an ideology of a class on a broad scale, there can be no action in the interests of that class and no resolution to the problems confronting society. We are approaching a phase of the revolutionary process in which it will be possible to develop class ideology on a broad scale in the U.S.
Objective conditions make shifts in ideology possible on a broad scale. But it takes the consciousness and deliberate activity of individuals to coalesce that ideology and ultimately determine the political outcome of the questions posed by history.
These individuals may be ordinary people like you and me. But people who are guided by a higher cause play a decisive role in history because they do what is required at a given point to advance the thinking of people so they can determine the direction of history. Such people are revolutionaries.
What do we mean by ideology?
The dictionary lists several definitions of ideology. Here we are talking about ideology in the sense of a set of beliefs, values, impulses, and commitments of a group or class in society. It is the lens through which you perceive the world around you and the perspective from which you react. Ideology defines your relation to the rest of society and guides what you do.
Diverse influences weave together the many fibers of ideology - the economic interests of a group or class, the cultural and intellectual inclinations of a country, morality, personal experiences, political conditions, and so on. Ideology is more than what you know. It depends on what you understand is possible; it determines what you do about what you know and feel.
Ideology is not static. The line of march of the revolution is the stages of development of the revolutionary transformation of society. It begins with the objective conditions, such as new methods of production. It goes through stages of polarization and destruction. Resolution and reconstruction depend on the development of the thinking of the people. Each step along the line of march calls for and makes possible a particular ideology on a broad scale.
Decisive role of ideology
As a war that ended the social system of slavery in the US and expropriated $4 billion from the slave-owners in the form of the emancipation of the slaves, the Civil War was one of the great revolutions in history. The growth, evolution, and polarization of ideology before and during the Civil War is an American story of the decisive role of ideology in the revolutionary process. Each stage along the line of march called for a particular stage of ideological development.
Frederick Douglass had observed that, “the slave power idea was the ideological glue of the Republican party.” How did such an ideology develop? When old bonds in society break, large-scale shifts in ideology become possible. The decades leading up to the Civil War saw a tremendous economic shift, which continually expanded the Western frontier. As the industrial North surpassed the slave-system South as the main market for Western agricultural products, the economic and social ties between the South and the expanding West began to break.
The political program of the industrialists spoke to the needs of both North and West; the Southern slaveholders held a solid grip on the Federal government and blocked that program. The broken economic and social connection between South and West was the objective basis for an ideology that opposed the slave-power South.
Not that this ideology was at first pro-slave or even uniformly anti-slavery. But the breaking of old social ties and the growing anger against the slave power represented an indispensable step along the line of march of the irrepressible conflict between the slave system and the “free labor” system.
There comes a point in a historical process at which the questions society is reacting to must be and can be fought out and resolved politically. This calls for another stage of ideological development. The ideology that opposed the slave power made it possible to take the North into the Civil War to save the Union. The military and political demands of the War itself called for the progression from an ideology focused against the slave power to one that was explicitly for the slaves.
This shift was coalesced by people like John Brown and the poets and philosophers who joined the cause for which Brown died with the morality and ideology of the American people. “John Brown’s Body,” composed by a Massachusetts regiment of the Union Army, was adapted and sung by all Union regiments. Countless songs, poems, and speeches inspired and emboldened Union soldiers to sacrifice for a cause worthy of their lives. This ideological shift was indispensable to winning the war against the slaveholders.
Implications for today
Today the economic revolution is destroying the connection between workers and capitalists in production and therefore in society. It is undermining the social contract that guaranteed economic and social comfort for a broad section of the American people and formed the material basis for the political and ideological dependence of the working class on their capitalist exploiters. Corporations close factories and invalidate union contracts. Social and physical infrastructures of entire cities crumble. Pension and medical benefits vanish.
The breaking of this social bond between the capitalist class and working class leaves people feeling economically, spiritually, and emotionally at sea. And they react – sometimes in counterproductive or dangerous forms: Families crumble in the face of lay-offs and financial insecurity. Suicides surge in the wake of the traumas of war, long-term unemployment, betrayal by a government that abandoned millions in the path of Hurricane Katrina.
The breaking of old social bonds and dependencies creates an ideological vacuum and makes it possible to replace an old ideology with a new one. But today there is no cohesion or direction to the response because there is no coherent class ideology that defines the response and directs what people do about what they face.
The ideology of taking what you can from society – and leaving everyone else to fend for themselves – can hold its grip on the thinking of people when society provides a decent life to the vast majority of people. Events today are pushing people’s thinking in new directions and making possible a widespread ideology of a class whose objective program is the abolition of private property.
The development of a class ideology offers the opportunity to pose communism not as an abstract or foreign idea, but as the economic solution to real problems. Today the question of communist ideology is not a simple question of the word, but rather ideology in the sense of the beliefs, values, reflexes, and commitments of a class. When the whole boat is sinking, ideas of getting what you need without rocking the boat give way to ideas of getting control of the boat. Ideas of respecting the private property of the exploiters and begging for some crumbs and concessions give way to the ideas of fighting for what everyone needs – without regard for corporations and their profits.
We are in the early stages of the revolutionary process in this country, but the process has begun. Society is beginning to react to the profound economic changes. Ideology has to coalesce and direct that response. Revolutionaries can’t simply create such an ideology and impose it on people. There are impulses in the right direction. Revolutionaries develop those impulses by crystallizing the ideology that expresses actual class interests.
Before the Civil War, the Abolitionists kept alive the cause of abolishing slavery until the economic, social, and political polarization developed to the point where society could fight out the question and determine it politically. The cause of abolishing the system that spreads poverty and destruction through society and around the world will produce the Harriet Beecher Stowes and John Browns of our epoch. Revolutionaries of today spread the vision of a world without exploitation and inequality and seek out the ways to unite that vision with the forces in society that will have the capacity to fight this question out and determine its outcome.
A sense of what people are fighting against and a sense of class identity are some of the fibers that makes up ideology. But ideology is more than that. Ideology also means the responsibility to do something and a sense of confidence that they can.
To develop such an ideology, revolutionaries struggle alongside those who are losing their jobs and healthcare. We take up the cause of the people who didn’t have the gas money or the cars to escape the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. We bring hope to the spirits broken by a system that abandons and betrays its young. We go beyond the bleak picture of how bad things are and how much worse they can get. We bring the message of what to do about it. We paint the picture of a new America and show how it is worth fighting for and possible to achieve.
This is the challenge before revolutionaries today. The League is organizing and preparing for these responsibilities.
Beth Gonzalez is the Vice-Chair of the Steering Committee of the LRNA and a founding member. In addition to her League responsibilities, she develops curriculum and teaches classes for the Institute for the Study of the Science of Society.