Strategy makes distinctions among adversaries

The High Road starts by dividing the capitalist class into two main groups: the productive sector and the parasitic sector. Productive capital is mainly engaged in creating new wealth. It makes money by assembling the means to produce the goods and services needed for mass consumption, infrastructure and the reproduction of factories themselves. Parasitic capital is mainly engaged in speculation. It creates no new wealth, but makes money by moving profitable factories from high-wage areas to low-wage areas, speculating on the difference. Or it liquidates profitable businesses in one industry to reinvest in another with a higher short-term rate of return. Or, in its most pure form, it simply gambles in the global derivatives market, betting millions on whether a given currency is going to go up or down in the next hour.

Productive capital has many conflicts with speculative capital. Speculators can simply buy publicly held corporations and liquidate them. Speculators can also wreck entire industrial areas or sectors by liquidating or moving key anchor industries. Or they can degrade entire regions by forcing down corporate tax rates and the ability of government to renew infrastructures. The productive-speculative conflict, moreover, does not only exist between firms; it also can exist as two trends or two competing blocs of owners and managers within a firm. Nor is size the issue. Some large multinationals can be productive while others are parasitic.

By making this distinction primary, Swinney is directly criticizing the "anti-corporate" and "anti-monopoly" strategies of much of the left has held for some time. A large corporation can be a high road producer, while a small business can be a low-road runaway sweatshop. The critical point is to evaluate a firm by what it does and what path it is taking, rather than mere size or form of ownership.

Similar distinctions can be made among government bodies and among politicians. Almost all of these are tied to business interests of some sort. The critical point is finding out which are tied to high roaders and which to low roaders, and on that basis develop an appropriate strategy and set of tactics.

"We recognize the positive aspects of the market and use them, just as we see and oppose the negative aspects," Swinney explains. "We reject the 'command' as well as the 'neo-liberal' or approaches to the economy and government. We are committed to economic democracy and an expanded level of public participation in all aspects of society, and in all aspects of the economy.

This is essential for the development of people, as well as the success of our initiatives. It must take place in the firm and community, as well as in government and civil society. The High Road strategy also requires adoption and development of the strategy in local, state and federal government. We must contend for the use of all the power of the state to take the High Road strategy of development."

In classical Marxism-Leninism, making use of these sorts of distinctions among capitalists has been referred to as deploying the "indirect reserves" or "indirect allies" of the working class. When China was occupied by Japan, for instance, the Chinese Communist Party made a distinction in the enemy camp between Japan, the main enemy, and the U.S., an indirect reserve, since the U.S. was also at war with Japan. The CCP, with some degree of success, worked to develop a temporary wartime alliance with the U.S. and Chiang Kai-shek. In this period, the "direct allies" of China were the other national liberation movements, and the socialist and working-class movements around the world.

This leads to the question of the difference between strategic and tactical alliances. Generally speaking, strategic allies are those who share an interest in achieving the overall goal of the struggle, while tactical allies are forces who share an interest in winning a particular battle or campaign. Strategic alliances are thus generally long-term and close relationships, while tactical alliances are more limited in scope and duration.

High Road Strategy & Tactics: A Case in Point

The High Road gives a number of examples of these alliances in the fight for jobs and democratic control of local economies. The Brach Candy campaign stands out as the clearest and most comprehensive. As Swinney describes it, Brach Candy, a major employer on Chicago's West Side, was in a management crisis after being purchased by a Swiss billionaire. Jobs were being lost by the thousands and the fear was that the plant would be broken up and the more profitable parts shipped abroad. African-American workers first raised their concerns through their churches and community organizations. These groups sought help from MCLR, which in turn helped bring in the Teamsters Local in the plant into the effort. This would be the core strategic alliance: the African-American community and the union. They mainly pressed Brach's owners to take the high road, but also made it clear that they would try to buy them out if they didn't.

Other Chicagoans were drawn into this alliance as well, including politicians representing the area, and small businesses dependent on Brach's existence for their customer base. All shared not only an interest in keeping Brach open, but also in job retention and the democratic development of the area. Then there were the forces associated with Brach itself. While the current owners were the main enemy, it was also clear that Brach's management had been in turmoil and divided. A good number had been dismissed. They were differentiated into low roaders and high roaders, with a grouping of the high roaders becoming supporters of the community forces and coming to play a key role in the campaign. These tactical alliances in high places emphasized that a Brach shutdown was simply bad for business and sought out others on that basis. But they were critical for another reason: they helped MCLR and the Brach Coalition put together a web of financial commitments tha t gave credibility to a potential offer to buy out the company. This managed to split the City Council, with one grouping going with the community and another with Mayor Daley, who opposed the Brach campaign on the grounds that capital's prerogatives shouldn't be challenged.

The Role of Worker Ownership

MCLR's approach to worker ownership is strategically positive and tactically critical. It details all the tactical pitfalls from its involvement in a number of worker-ownership projects. Still, Swinney is clear on his basic orientation:

A related lesson of strategy implicit in The High Road is not putting yourself in a situation where you confront all your adversaries at once. The critical function is to mobilize all positive factors and narrow the target of attack. To paraphrase the CCP again, strategy involves "uniting the many to defeat the few" by developing the progressive forces, winning over the middle forces, isolating and dividing the diehard reactionaries, and "crushing our enemies one by one."

The Brach campaign was a success because of these alliances. The company made a number of concessions: a better contract for the union, a stop to job loss and relocation plans. This partially satisfied the interests of all the forces in the coalition, which also consolidated organizationally.

The Brach campaign also raised other new issues. An important force to join the coalition, for instance, was the Chicago Archdiocese of the Catholic Church. Where did it fit in? Institutions like this bring an obvious moral and political force to mass campaigns. But The High Road also looks at them in fresh economic terms. On one hand, churches, foundations and other nonprofits are clearly part of the capitalist landscape: they have managers, employees, capital holdings and assets, and services to provide to members, clients and customers. On the other hand, as nonprofits, they don't have to pay dividends. They only have to meet their costs. Swinney places them in what he calls the "social economy." Others have named it the "third sector," as distinct from the private and public sectors.

So are the institutions of the social economy tactical allies or strategic allies? It's clear that its components are politically diverse. The Christian Coalition and its nexus of allied nonprofits are clearly on the right. Many others however, such as Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH, are on the left. Their political character is often determined by a complex mix of their initial charter and funders, their leadership and the input of their constituents. Swinney's key point is that there is nothing inherent in their structure that prevents them from surviving and even thriving in a democratic, market socialism. Thus, some components of the social economy are capable of being strategic as well as tactical allies.

Revolutionary Politics for Nonrevolutionary Times

Answering just who comprises the progressive forces, the middle forces and so on depends on a rigorous assessment of time, place and circumstance. Are we in a revolutionary or nonrevolutionary situation? Is it wartime or peacetime? Are we in a developed or underdeveloped part of the world? The High Road tries to put all these questions in a new context: the working class is still a progressive force, but in the U.S. deindustrialization has shrunk the blue collar sector while expanding the underemployed, the prison population, service workers and high-tech workers. Globalization, by eroding the structure of economic privileges between the "Great Nations" and the Third World, has both deepened the racial divide and created conditions for a new worldwide labor solidarity. Speculative, parasitic capital is wreaking havoc everywhere; yet the political situation is mainly nonrevolutionary. True, there are several profound structural crises building up e xplosive forces, but the ruling classes still maintain the ability to rule in the old way.

The left is often naturally biased toward drawing on the lessons of revolutionary upheavals and victories. The writings on a successful revolution's major turning points and final showdown are often what get translated, circulated and absorbed first. The experiences of the longer, defensive and nonrevolutionary periods are played down or ignored. Lenin's State and Revolution and other wartime writings are much more widely known than those on his parliamentary work or his battles with ultraleft liquidationists around 1910. Other important but relatively lesser known works would include Gramsci's prison writings, Bukharin's writings on the New Economic Period, Georgi Dimitrov on the antifascist front, Mao Zedong on the united front and even Andre Gorz 1960s work on structural reform.

In revolutionary times, strategic victories are mainly culminated by the seizure of power, the disintegration of the old government, and the consolidation of a new political and economic order. But what about nonrevolutionary periods, which, after all, take up more than 90 percent of history? Do we mainly subsist on the margins while waiting for the next apocalypse? Or do we fight with a strategy and tactics that prepare our forces to rule, that sustains us economically and develops our forces as a counter-hegemonic power? Do we define victory, not by whether we have won this or that demand, but by whether or not our forces have greater organization, strength and fighting capacity after the battle than they did before the battle began?

Swinney's High Road lists a number of organizations, enterprises and institutions that, albeit in embryonic form, already exist and can begin to serve as a sustainable base for a powerful challenge to the present order. Its importance is precisely because it is not a manifesto for a revolutionary offensive, but for nonrevolutionary conditions. It does not pretend to be the final word on the subject, but it does project some solid working hypotheses on how to gather forces and shape conditions for the radical upsurges of tomorrow.

Building the Bridge to the High Road: Expanding Participation and Democracy in the Economy to Build Sustainable Communities is available in booklet form for $10 from the Midwest Center for Labor Research, 3411 W Diversey, Suite 10, Chicago IL 60647. It can also be read on MCLR's "High Road" web site at www.mclr.com