Organizing to Abolish Capitalism: Problematizing Lenin’s Trade-Union Consciousness with the Politics of Radical Care

Land acknowledgement: Since I am publishing this paper on a blog, I would like to acknowledge that it was produced in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal), the unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka. Tiohtià:ke has historically been a gathering place for many Indigenous peoples. I recognize that conversations about radical care and COVID-19 cannot take place without recognizing the disproportionate impact that the pandemic has had on Indigenous communities, both in Tiohtià:ke and across Turtle Island (North America).

Content Note: One of the primary tenets of radical care is to privilege the lived experience of the individual in question when attempting to come up with solutions to best accommodate them. I am a white university student who occupies a place of privilege: I recognize that I have access to resources and services that many others do not. I would thus like to make clear that radical care has been developed and articulated by Black and Indigenous feminists to talk about the abolition of capitalism. In effect, I wish to center their voices and not my own.

In What Is To Be Done? Vladimir Ilyich Lenin argues for “trade-union consciousness” to overthrow bourgeois ideology, or the economic supremacy of the bourgeoisie, a social class whose interests are fundamental to the preservation of capital (1902, III.A). Lenin defines “trade-union consciousness” as the unspontaneous organizing of workers into “broad” and “public” trade-union organizations with the help of “professional revolutionaries” (1902, IV.C). These professional revolutionaries are social democrats who “make revolutionary activity their profession” by bringing political consciousness to the working masses (1902, IV.C). I am defining Lenin’s trade-union consciousness to analyze its plausibility; how effective is it in actually abolishing bourgeois ideology and capitalism? In order to discern this, trade-union consciousness is compared to radical care, a theory of organizing defined by Professors Hi’ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart and Tamara Kneese that requires a grounding in our common humanity to care with, as opposed to for, others (2020, 2). I argue that Lenin’s trade-union consciousness is fundamentally incompatible with radical care which is problematic for Lenin’s theory because radical care is necessary to abolish capitalism. While some leftist activists have argued that radical care is not integral to capitalism’s dissolution, I challenge that, ultimately contending that Lenin’s trade-union consciousness falls short of overthrowing the capitalist system.

Lenin’s Trade-Union Consciousness

In order to argue for trade-union consciousness, Lenin distinguishes between spontaneity and consciousness. He specifically problematizes the “spontaneous awakening” and organizing of working-class movements as “leading to its own subordination of bourgeois ideology” because of the movements’ lack of political consciousness (1902, II.B). Political Theory Professor, Alan Shandro, explains that Lenin contextualizes his arguments in the 19th century Russian working-class movement: Lenin characterizes the spontaneous “smashing of machines” in the 1800s workers revolt as “consciousness in an embryonic form” in comparison to the 1890s worker-led strikes that formed a collective “class struggle” (1995, 274). This is the foundation of Lenin’s argument for professional revolutionaries as he believes they will alleviate the need for spontaneous uprisings by bringing intellectual knowledge about systems of power to the workers.

It is important to note that Lenin is not arguing against spontaneity, but rather ironically, he is stressing the need to limit spontaneity by organizing it in order to abolish capitalism. In What Is To Be Done? Lenin notes that “all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals, not to speak of distinctions of trade and profession, in both categories, must be effaced” in order to unite the two groups in one “socialist struggle against spontaneity” (1902, IV.C). Lenin then positions this unified struggle as a “permanent requisite of the class struggle”, contending that social democrats must combat spontaneous working-class revolutions by fostering and guiding them (Shandro 1995, 281). This contradictory notion of limiting spontaneous organizing by overseeing it reveals the dialectical relationship between bourgeois ideology and the spontaneous organizing of the working class, as both produce and reinforce one another (Shandro 1995, 281). In effect, the working class’ liberation from bourgeois ideology not only represents the overthrow of a social class, but of capitalism itself. The Care Collective defines capitalism as both an economic system that encourages competition and individualism on the basis of labor and capital as well as a social one rooted in enslavement (2020, 5). As such, capitalism in the twentieth century is understood as “neoliberal capitalism”; a system of power that institutionalizes capitalist ideologies of individualism and competition in everyday lives and social relations (Care Collective 2020, 16). Lenin’s trade-union consciousness is thus a theory of organizing to abolish power and its social control.

The Exclusion of Domestic Care Workers from Trade-Union Consciousness and its Implications for Radical Care

One problem with Lenin’s trade-union consciousness is that Lenin is organizing a revolution based upon waged workers, which directly excludes domestic care workers and effectively, women. Trade-union consciousness argues for the organizing of workers into trade-union organizations because they can be of “tremendous value in developing and consolidating the economic struggle” (1902, IV.C). Lenin’s theory also requires social democrats to “assist and actively work in these organizations” as they can “become a very important auxiliary to political agitation and revolutionary organisation” (1902, IV.C). However, union organizing is only available to waged labor, which excludes workers who are paid through informal networks. As writer and activist Selma James notes, the “very structure of the union puts women off” and “fragments the class into those who have wages and those who don’t” (1973, 58). This is particularly harmful for working-class women who perform “⅔ of all paid care work and ¾ of all unpaid care work globally” (Care Collective 2020, 17). Paid care work refers to teachers, domestic workers, nurses and other services essential to industrialized economies, while unpaid work is typically domestic duties such as cooking, cleaning and caring for the home and children as well as people who are sick, elderly or disabled (Care Collective 2020, 14). Most care work is not validated by formal economic systems or unions, unpaid or paid very little, and is often “invisible” labor, especially in regards to domestic workers of color (Davis 1981, 128). Lenin’s trade-union consciousness thus presumes the need for regulated labor that is tied to a formal and exclusive economic system.

To not include domestic care workers in the fight to abolish capitalism is to perpetuate the same oppressive logics it is trying to dismantle. Domestic care workers are the backbone of industrialized economies who provide the everyday services and essential goods that are integral to keeping the world going (Care Collective 2020, 14). Their work is vital to the private operations of the family as well as to the public sphere of corporatism and office work. Political Activist and Philosopher, Angela Y. Davis, further illustrates this by distinguishing between the “private economy of the home’’ and the “public economy of capitalism”, arguing that the separation between the two has been “continually reinforced by the obstinate primitiveness of household labor” (1981, 131). The public capitalist economy refers to paid, corporate jobs historically performed by men, while women were confined to the home as mothers and wives (Davis 1981, 131). This separation between public and private spheres is thus rooted in the subordination of women as subservient and domesticated “housewives”, subject to caring for the home and children, while their husbands went to work outside the house (Davis 1981, 24). In ignoring domestic care work, trade-union consciousness fails to dismantle the separation between the private and public sphere, effectively ignoring the very roots of sexism that pervade and reinforce capitalism.

Similarly, neglecting to include domestic care work fails to address its embedded racism. Historically, white women were devalued through their marriages as housewives (Davis 1981, 24). Black women, by comparison, were not housewives, but rather subject to physical and abusive domestic servitude during slavery. Davis notes that “slavery itself had been euphemistically called the ‘domestic institution’ and slaves had been designated as innocuous ‘domestic servants’” (1981, 53). During slavery, Black women typically performed the work of “cooks, nursemaids, chambermaids and all-purpose domestics” for their white “masters”, all of which are present-day forms of domestic care work (Davis 1981, 55). Although present-day domestic care work cannot be equated to the domestic servitude of enslavement, it stems directly from blatant and violent racism which problematizes the current relationship between white women and women of color. This is especially relevant now as white women increasingly employ women of color, who are predominantly immigrants, to perform domestic duties (Care Collective 2020, 25). In excluding domestic care workers, trade-union consciousness is incapable of being antiracist.

Unaddressed racism prevents the abolition of capitalism because capitalism was founded on slavery. As Guyanese historian Walter Rodney outlines, the slave trade and the mining of resources such as ivory, cotton and diamonds led directly to the manufacturing centers that gave rise to the Industrial Revolution and the ultimate expansion of Western capitalism (1973, 57). As a result, slavery and the procurement of natural resources from Africa are the roots of modern capitalism which means that “white racism” is an “integral part of the capitalist mode of production” (Rodney 1973, 63). Fully abolishing capitalism thus requires eradicating racism from our systems and institutions. However, trade-union consciousness makes this impossible because it fails to include domestic care labor which is rooted in racism.

Trade-union consciousness’ incompatibility with domestic care work is additionally problematic because it prevents the development of radical care. Hobart and Kneese define radical care as constituting “a feeling with, rather than for, others” through “nonhierarchical collective work” in which communities live through and process hardship together (2020, 2–10). Radical care employs the Care Collective’s notion of “universal care” which recognizes that “we all have the capacity to care, not just mothers and not just women, and that all our lives are improved when we care and are cared for, and when we care together” (2020, 44). This directly refutes the separation between public and private economies, challenging the feminization of domestic care work and in effect, the sexism that is embedded in capitalist societies. Radical care ultimately organizes for an eco-socialist economy by “constructing and nurturing the commons, and collectivizing spheres of production and consumption” to ensure that everyone has equal access to “material, social, and environmental resources’’ (Care Collective 2020, 84). In this sense, radical care is fundamental to abolishing the capitalist system of policing and surveillance that exploits and harms people through notions of competition and individual security (Care Collective 2020, 84). In organizing against capitalism, we must be organizing for radical care, which cannot be done without domestic care workers.

The Individualism of Trade-Union Consciousness and its Prevention of Radical Care

Another problem with Lenin’s trade-union consciousness is that it individualizes worker experiences. Lenin’s theory of organizing attempted to be one of “class consciousness” that represents the interests of “every other social class in all the manifestations of its intellectual, ethical, and political life” (1902, III.C). However, the reality of Lenin’s focus on trade-unions is that only workers in a specific discipline can relate to each other and empathize with one another. As labor organizer Brendan Muckian Bates states, “trade-union consciousness emphasizes the shared experiences that workers share as a result of their trade. For example, only nurses understand the stresses of the nursing profession” and “only janitors can understand the stresses of janitorial labor…” (2019). He continues, “this type of consciousness stresses the fact that while these workers must sell their labor power in order to survive, they do so within a trade that only they understand inside and out” (Bates 2019). This confines the organization of workers and their struggles to a specific discipline or sphere, which prohibits universalizing movements.

The individualized notion of struggle and suffering also prevents the adoption of radical care’s non-hierarchical and collective coalition building. Universal care asks us to challenge the pathologization of dependency in order to focus on and to celebrate our “interdependencies” , organizing based on our common humanity, shared love for each other and the biophysical world (Care Collective 2020, 30). Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò describes this need for a collective response to power in his discussion of the politics of trauma. He notes that trauma and suffering can be “partial, short-sighted, and self-absorbed” which forces the traumatized to shoulder burdens alone “that we ought to share collectively” (Táíwò 2020). Inspired by philosopher James Baldwin, Táíwò speaks to the isolation and problematic discourse of trauma politics stating, “trauma and suffering is not what connects people, but rather ‘a concrete, experiential manifestation of the vulnerability’” that all of humanity shares (2020). When one becomes consumed by their own struggles and despair they fail to empathize and relate to other beings. This isolates people from one another and prevents the forming of a broader coalition against oppressive systems and institutions of power.

Trade Union-Consciousness’ Hierarchy of Knowledge and its Incompatibility with Radical Care

A third problem with Lenin’s trade-union consciousness is his attempt to democratize knowledge through professional revolutionaries. Lenin, although careful to point out that he does not argue for intellectuals “talking down” to workers, contends that social democrats must “bring political knowledge to the workers” in order “to discuss these questions with them”, enabling the worker-revolutionary to “become a professional revolutionary” (1902, IV.D). However, in trying to democratize access to knowledge from the intellectual to the common worker, Lenin reinforces hierarchical categories of knowing. He does so by first establishing different types of knowledge — the intellectual versus the worker — and then places them on different levels as the intellectual is meant to disseminate their knowledge to the worker, but not necessarily vice versa. Further, access to knowledge is implicitly tied to private, often exclusive spaces where knowledge is disseminated. Táíwò touches upon this in referring to rooms of “outsize power and influence” that confer and create social advantages (2020). These exclusive spaces are reaffirmed by Lenin’s statement that class political consciousness “can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle” because it suggests that the workers’ direct lived experiences of unequal power relations between employee and employer are less valuable knowledge to understanding systemic ideations and operations of power (1902, III.E).

Categorizing certain types of knowledge as more valuable than others fundamentally opposes radical care. Organizing for radical care requires that people come together on the basis of their common humanity to build a collective and united movement. It does not insinuate that one specific type of knowledge is required, nor does it presume that an intellectual background or education is needed to dismantle systems of power. Radical care asks people to care with one another “across class, race, ethnicity, religious, and state boundaries towards a common cause” (Hobart and Kneese 2020, 9). In doing so, it implores people to share their identities and personal experiences as knowledge. Radical care also asks people to listen to one another’s histories and experiences in order to create knowledge together about the world. These understandings of identity and personhood could be informed by elite education and intellectual curiosities, but they do not have to be. Further, there is no notion of “talking down” in radical care because you are “caring with” people. Radical care ultimately diverges from the idea that one type of knowledge is more valuable than another, requiring all perspectives, experiences and backgrounds to come together as a result of common and shared humanity.

Radical Care as Fundamental to the Overthrow of Capitalism

There are leftist activists who argue that radical care is not fundamental to the overthrow of capitalism, but this view is misguided. Feminist and Organizer, Inna Michaeli, explains that these activists are concerned that radical care will be co-opted by the market logic of “self-care”, making it impossible to go beyond individualized notions of care (2017, 52). This is true; In recent years, “self-care”, or the care and preservation of oneself, has become commoditized in the form of meditation classes, breathing apps, sleeping pills, spas and other notions of wellness aimed at making people the most productive they can be (Michaeli 2017, 52). Productivity is implicitly linked to capitalism, as stressed and overworked workers are enticed by apps, drugs and activities to improve their health and therefore their levels of production at work, falsely obscuring the need for organizing and unionizing to change their working conditions (Michaeli 2017, 52). Although the co-option of self-care by the market is a pressing concern, radical care promises to challenge this commodification in its determination to provide equal access to material and immaterial resources by making the government, systems and institutions entirely public (Care Collective 2020, 46). This is fundamentally irreconcilable with capitalism’s privatization of care.

Radical care also has a long history in feminist and antiracist movements. Professor Michelle Murphy, for example, discusses the Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Centers (FWHCs), a coalition of feminist health centers that formed in the 1970s to raise consciousness about women’s reproductive health (2004, 124). These centers distributed panphlets on abortion and birth control as well as performed vaginal exams (Murphy 2004, 124). Another example is the Black Panther Party, a collective of Black activists and revolutionaries who sought to abolish capitalism during the 1960s U.S. Civil Rights Movement (Hobart and Kneese 2020, 6). The Black Panther Party centered care practices to fortify community strength, implementing a free breakfast program that fed over “ten thousand school children a day” as well as free medical clinics, and a plethora of housing and social services (Hobart and Keese 2020, 6). Similarly, Indigenous communities have adopted radical care to resist state and environmental racism, establishing urban Indigenous health clinics in the 1970s from the U.S. to Australia (Hobart and Kneese 2020, 6). More recently, Indigenous communities in the U.S. have created free health clinics and shared kitchen spaces in response to the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 that violently displaced them (Hobart and Kneese 2020, 6–7). Flash forward to right now, where community-led health, food and housing services (to name a few) are popping up all over the world in response to COVID-19. All of these examples demonstrate the building of infrastructure to share resources and provide free services to everyone, but especially to communities whose access to them is limited by the capitalist state.

Conclusion

Following this, trade-union consciousness’ incompatibility with domestic care work and radical care exposes Lenin’s theory of organizing as inadequate to abolishing capitalism. Trade-union consciousness’ focus on unions and waged workers inherently excludes domestic care workers which is problematic because it positions waged labor as more valuable than labor paid through informal channels. Lenin’s exclusion of domestic care workers also prevents his theory from fully addressing the sexism and racism that is intrinsic to the creation and preservation of capitalism. Without dismantling these oppressive logics, capitalism will never end. Trade union-consciousness additionally individualizes worker-struggles and presupposes a hierarchy of knowledge which further entrenches capitalist ideologies. Ultimately, trade-union consciousness’ failings reveal it to be deeply incompatible with radical care which is integral to capitalism’s dissolution. Radical care proposes an entirely new way of being and relating to each other and our biophysical world that is fundamental to putting an end to capitalism’s state-sanctioned violence. In other words, radical care is interested in eradicating homelessness, housing insecurity and food insecurity as well as abolishing prisons, immigration detention centers and all other institutions that operate under carceral logics to punish people for who they are. The need for radical care is especially dire in light of COVID-19 as millions of people around the world continue to die from the virus itself and/or the mental health impacts of the pandemic, revealing the utter lack of capacity and infrastructure that capitalist societies have to actually care for people. In sum, capitalism is not something that must change, it is something that must end. Otherwise, it will continue to sanction the bodies it considers disposable to premature death.

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