The theory of white skin privilege, as put forth in the article White Blindspot (WBS) by Noel Ignatin and elsewhere, has been in circulation among the Left movement since the mid 1960’s. Still today some groups say that they are working under this theory, and elements of the theory appear sometimes even in the ideas of those who claim to oppose it. Therefore, a thorough critique is still necessary today, and more so since it was neglected in the past.
This critique attempts to investigate and answer a number of important questions. Firstly, what is the essence of the White Blindspot, white skin privilege theory? Where does that statement of the theory itself come into contradiction with the realities of the world today? Is it a complete and adequate strategy for the U.S. revolution or will it lead us up the wrong path?
THE DEAL: “The U.S. ruling class has made a deal with the misleaders of American labor and through them with the masses of white workers. The terms of the deal.. .are these: you white workers help us conquer the world and enslave the non-white majority of the earth’s laboring force and we will repay you with a monopoly of the skilled jobs, we will cushion you against the most severe shocks of the economic cycle, provide you with health and education facilities superior to those of the non-white population, grant you the freedom to spend your money and leisure time as you wish without social restrictions, enable you on occasion to promote one of your number out of the ranks of the laboring class, and in general confer on you the material and spiritual privileges befitting your white skin.” (p. 1 WBS)
Two, CENTRAL TASK AND PREREQUISITE The fight against white supremacy and white skin privileges become “the central immediate task of the entire working class.” (p.3) “Communists.. .must go to the white workers and say frankly: you must renounce the privileges you now hold, must join the Negro, Puerto Rican and other colored workers in fighting white supremacy, must make this the first and immediate and most urgent task of the entire working class...” (p.6) ”As soon as white supremacy is eliminated as a force within the working class, the decks will be cleared for action by the entire class against its enemy.” (p.6)
Three, KEYSTONE TO POWER “It (race privilege) is the keystone and mortar of their (the bourgeoisie’s) overarching power.” (p. 15, Can White Radicals Be Radicalized)
Four, REPUDIATION The way to fight white skin privilege is for white workers to repudiate them. “For nowhere in your (P.L.’s) literature do we find a single appeal to the white workers to fight against white supremacy in the only way possible, by repudiating their white skin privileges and joining in a struggle with the rest of the working class for the demands of the entire class.” (p.4) “.. .there are only two paths open to the white workers: with the boss or with the Negro workers, abandonment of all claim to the share in the shaping of our destiny, or repudiation of the white skin privileges for which we, in our very infancy, pawned our revolutionary soul.” (p.8)
These four points comprise the essence of the white skin privilege theory. Are they correct? Do they conform to reality?
THE DEAL: “The US ruling class has made a deal with the misleaders of American labor and through them with the masses of white workers.” etc. We presume that by mis-leaders here is meant primarily union misleaders.
This is a sort of social contract a la Roussseau. It implies a sort of swap, a trade between equals or if not equals at least some kind of bargaining. But let us examine it further.
How can a deal have been made through misleaders with the masses of white workers? Firstly, only 25% of the work force is unionized and therefore capable of making a deal through misleaders. Secondly, a deal made with misleaders is not necessarily a deal made with the rank and file, especially in the US where labor aristocratic petty-bourgeois fat cat leaders are completely divorced from the rank and file and are indeed only the “labor lieutenants of the capitalist class.” A deal with them is merely an enactment of this or that policy of the bourgeoisie’ and implies very little about the masses of white workers. Thirdly, what of the union leaders who did not go along with these “deals”? For instance, elements of the CIO during its major organizational drives, the packinghouse unions under the leadership of William Z. Foster in 1919 when white packinghouse workers march through the Black district of Chicago demanding that the police withdraw from their provocative occupation of the Black community; even the UAW fighting for equal hiring of Black workers at GM plants after WW II when these plants refused to hire Black veterans, etc. Is it such a monolithic situation today or historically that such a pretty package as a “deal” can be conjured up, or is it in reality a very complex situation with many battles and skirmishes, many different situations, two contending, contradictory forces – with now one, then the other making headway? Fourthly, what of the poor white worker, not the skilled, semi-skilled, but the poor white worker? Has he or she too made a deal? Aren’t there many among them who hate the privilege system also; who see it as an obstacle to class unity and who support Black workers in struggle against it and indeed have little or nothing to lose from this struggle, little or no “white skin privileges” on the job (and often even in the community)? We think there are these elements among the white workers.
Like all “social contracts” things don’t happen like that. While indeed there are privileged outposts jealously guarded (usually by craft unions) such as construction jobs, etc., these do not make up the “average” for the American proletariat and the white workers within it. The picture is very varied with white workers being divided into different strata and not in their mass in a “deal” with the bourgeoisie. Indeed, to pose the question of the masses of white workers in a deal is to obscure the real situation and to impose upon the masses of white workers the material situation of only a small upper stratum.
But what of the deal itself? According to the paper the masses of white workers are supposed to go out and conquer the world’s colored laboring masses in return for a few crumbs. We ask: how are they supposed to do this? In modern capitalist society the usual method of conquering is through the large standing army. But what color is this army? Do we not see large numbers of Black and Third World people in the army? Now, why would Black and Third World people join the army if they are not getting these few crumbs that the whites have made a deal to get in return for which the whites are supposed to be in the army? Possibly because there is a gun to their heads? And quite possibly there is also a gun to the heads of the whites also?
In other words, it is not any particular “deal” that is the main reason why whites (and Blacks and Third World people) help the bourgeoisie enslave the non-white majority of the earth’s laboring forces, but it is the coercive force of state power that forces the whites and Blacks and Third World people to do this, against their wills. If race privilege enters in at all, it is to make coercion more palatable for some whites, to confuse the issues and divide the working class. But as a means of compulsion, it is absolutely secondary and therefore a mistake to put it primary as the DEAL does. It is established as a system on top of the workers whether the whites had agreed to it or not. And in fact, many whites, through force of circumstance or through conscious or semi-conscious rejection have not partaken of the most blatant race privileges, have, in fact, made no deal whatsoever.
KEYSTONE, CENTRAL TASK and PREREQUISITE The contention that the fight against white skin privilege is the central immediate task seems to rest on the poorly defined idea of the system of race privilege being the keystone of the US bourgeois system and that “as soon as white supremacy is eliminated as a force within the working class, the decks will be cleared for action by the entire class against its enemy.” (WBS)
This is simply another way of putting a secondary tactic of the bourgeoisie’ in primary place generally. Not many people will argue that the struggle against race privilege is not an important task of the proletariat. In many specific cases it may be the most important task, the primary task. But these are specific tactical cases that arise in the course of struggle. The question is: is it the central, immediate task of the proletariat today and does it hold the position in the power structure of US capitalism that the words “keystone” and prerequisite imply? Does the proletariat have to wait for white supremacy to be eliminated before it (through its vanguard) takes action against its class enemy? Or is white supremacy eliminated precisely in mobilizing the proletariat (through its vanguard) against its enemy and in the process eradicating white supremacy and other wrong ideologies as they appear in their true form as obstacles to class unity, to class struggle?
The difference between the two is the difference between putting the fight against white supremacy as primary or secondary and subordinate, within other struggles generally. We assert that in speaking of strategy generally, the latter is the correct position, though in particular circumstance the struggle against racial privilege may be or become the primary question. Why? Because race privilege and racism will not disappear of itself but only as it is challenged and confronted by an opposing force: class solidarity, that stands in contradiction to it.
The main practical task at this time is uniting those white workers, and Black and Third World workers who do not partake to any great degree in privileges or their maintenance, and uniting them to struggle against their class enemy, educating their more backward brothers and sisters. The WBS analysis, if logically followed, leads to working with the more backward white workers, not the more progressive white, Black and Third World workers.
REPUDIATION This whole concept reeks of the concept of original sin. In the Christian religions all mankind is tainted with sin, for originally, in Eden, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge against the wishes of God. In the paper, way back “in our very infancy, (we) pawned our revolutionary souls” when we partook of white skin privileges. Like nuns and priests who vow celibacy and give up worldly goods (supposedly), revolutionary workers should repudiate these white skin privileges.
“Repudiation” attempts to impose this concept on the whole of the white section of the working class, and take the individuality of this type situation and incorporate it into the cure. Repudiation is a very individual thing; moral, like confessions to the priest. Its whole conception is individual, corresponding to the situation skilled or craft unionized white workers find themselves in. For this reason alone, it is not applicable to the “masses of white workers” as the paper would have us believe. But what is even harder to fathom is: how do you do it? If workers repudiate their white skin privileges the way nuns and priests give up their worldly goods, then the revolution is indeed in bad shape.
The only place it makes any sense at all is in the case of a skilled craft union that is all white. In this case a white worker might say: to hell with this insulation, privilege and security. I’ll join the rest of the workers on the line and quit this lousy job. If a mass struggle is engaged in it can be only a struggle for the integration of the union and skilled positions and the necessary ’preferential’ hiring (until equality) of Black and Third World workers. This then is how this bunch of white workers would repudiate their privileges. But what if they don’t want to make this particular struggle themselves? Is the revolution lost? Of course not. There are millions of other white, Black and Third World workers in lesser privileged positions. (Should we even entertain doing any great amount of work among that privileged stratum of white workers at this time?)
But does this solve the problem posed by WBS – the problem of racism and white supremacy? Isn’t the problem something like this: because of white-skin privileges many white workers are racist. So how are we going to go to these white workers and ask them to struggle against their racial privilege when it is precisely their racism (stemming from this privilege according to WBS) that is preventing them from struggling? An insoluble problem in its own terms and this is how repudiation makes it a moral question, by summoning some mysterious force within racist white workers to overcome the evil within.
Well, we are supposed to be materialists, and therefore do not believe in mysterious forces. We believe there is a material force, and it does not consist in the first instant of thoroughly racist white workers. It is in fact the masses of progressive and open minded white. Black and Third World workers organized against their class enemy.
We have tried to show how WBS does not conform to reality. Now we must ask what are the main flaws in the WBS theory? Where do they come from both ideologically and historically? Can these ideas be practiced in the working class and what would their practice lead to? And how do Marxist-Leninists look at the questions raised by WBS?
The principal mistake in the WBS is its conception of racism. WBS states: the material basis of white chauvinism is the practice of white supremacy. (p. 3 WBS) This is a circular argument. Where does white supremacy come from? Does it fall from the sky? It is the equivalent of saying: class antagonism comes from the practice of class exploitation. This leaves out the material basis of class exploitation – the capitalist system. Any combating of exploitation that does not seek to destroy the capitalist system can only leave the basis for class antagonisms and exploitation intact. Likewise, any combating of the practice of white supremacy, unconnected to the capitalist system from which it springs and which nurtures it, leaves white chauvinism and white supremacy intact. This failure to understand that the basis of white chauvinism and white supremacy lies, in the final analysis, in the world capitalist system, leads to many errors. It leads to not placing the struggle against white supremacy as part of the main struggle, the struggle against capitalism.
Flowing from the principal error, WBS places the principal contradiction as a contradiction among the people, the contradiction between white and Black workers, and not the contradiction between the people and the enemy, the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and its allies. Conversely, WBS does not understand that contained within the struggle to unite the people, to combat white supremacy, is the struggle against the bourgeoisie and the capitalist system because it is from these that white supremacy and racism spring.
WBS calls for a more equitable division of the “pie” under capitalism as a means for combating white supremacy. 8% unemployment for all. Black and white together, then we can march together, shouts WBS. This is completely in line with making the principal contradiction among the people and not understanding that unemployment, white supremacy and white chauvinism are connected to the capitalism system. To leave us kicking about within the manifestations of the injustices of the capitalist system without attacking capitalism, leaves us directionless, forever condemned to warding off blows and not attacking our oppressors.
Implicit within the WBS theory is the idea that a vanguard party of the proletariat is not necessary, or not a vanguard. WBS rejects the idea that there is a force of white. Black and Third World workers that can be united and that this united group of workers can exert a unifying influence on the rest of the proletariat and lead it against the bourgeoisie, struggling against the divisions within its ranks along the way. WBS thereby reduces the role of a party to an assemblage to attack a section of the proletariat, not the bourgeoisie; reduces the party to being an anti-racist organization more or less accepting the capitalist system at least for the time being. But most importantly, WBS rejects the leading role of the party in uniting the proletariat. These are just a few of the errors that WBS makes theoretically.
The common ideological thread running through WBS is subjectivism, laced with idealism – a one-sidedness. It takes the question of division, racial division, in the working class and examines it and attempts to resolve it as essentially a thing in itself, relegating the aspect of unity, of class solidarity, to the realm of the future. It fails to see how the two struggle together in the present, but rather ignores or is blind to the forces of unity which stand in opposition to the forces of disunity. Their strategy for resolving the disunity is thus not opposing the forces of disunity with the forces of unity, and strengthening the latter, but in mystically exorcising the forces of disunity, not seeing the source as the capitalist system itself.
Where does this error come from? The general source is petty bourgeois ideology. Mao says of this insidious way of thinking: ”The petty bourgeois method of thinking manifests itself basically in subjectivism and one-sidedness in viewing problems, that is, it does not proceed from an objective and comprehensive picture of the balance of class forces, but takes subjective wishes, impressions and empty talk for reality, takes a single aspect for all aspects, the part for the whole, the tree for the forest.” (p. 215, V. III, SWM, ’65 ed.) When surveying the situation of the proletariat such a method of thinking seizes upon a real phenomena, white racism, focuses in on this “tree” subjectively wishing to do away with it, while failing to see the “forest” of class forces.
Likewise, when WBS indiscriminately demands that the white workers in general give up their ’privileges’ (privileges which I have tried to show do not exist in general) is this not the position of the petty bourgeoisie, which, under the pressure of monopoly capital, faces ruin and envies the working class? Is it not the voice of the petty bourgeoisie seeing the main enemy, not in imperialism but in the proletariat? Is it not the petty bourgeoisie that seeks all around egalitarianism without striking at the source of inequality, capitalism, which, as it turns out, is likewise the source of the petty bourgeoisie’s privileges?
One of the main weaknesses of the communist movement in the U.S. up to this time has been its failure to deal adequately with the question of white racism and the Black National Question. The U.S. Communist party, though making some early advances on these questions, almost entirely corrupted itself under the leadership of Earl Browder in the early forties. In practice, some communist leaders of unions discriminated against Black workers for fear other white workers would not go along with greater integration of the unions; in the World War II effort of united front work, the struggle against jim crowism in the army was left to slide. Down to the present day, the Revisionist Party of America (R.P.U.S.A.) states that all Black separatist tendencies are reactionary and gives as an example the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.
Subsequent movements, seeking to correct the wrong path of the RPUSA, have also erred on this question. P.L., for instance, at first failed to see the proletarian aspect of the Black people’s struggle, tending to treat the proletariat as white, and Black people as allies of the proletariat, failing to see that Black people were also workers. It was partly in reaction and criticism to this tendency that WBS was written. However, when one is filling a void, there is always the tendency to be sucked into the vacuum and make opposite errors, and this is what happened to WBS. For instance, in its uncritical statement “As a white worker I declare that I would a thousand times sooner live under the Black Power of Stokely Carmichael than under the white imperialist power of Lyndon Baines Johnson!” (p.8) And similarly in its uncritical desire for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to evolve into a labor, “third” party in the U.S. (p.7) The tendency here being to treat all Black people as workers, as proletarian in content, and not making the class analysis, ’the distinction. In this respect it is a step backward from the Old C.P.’s position of 1928 which states clearly that the Black people in the US have a double leading role to play: “The Negro working class has reached a stage of development which enables it, if properly organized and well led, to fulfill successfully its double historical missions: a) to play a considerable role in the class struggle against American imperialism as an important part of the American working class; and b) to lead the movement of the oppressed masses of the Negro population.” (C.I. resolution, 1928) (We would properly today substitute “leading role” for “considerable role” and “essential part” for “important part.”)
The other main source of the WBS is the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. WBS, being written in 1967 and repeatedly referring to Stokely Carmichael, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), etc., draws heavily from this source. This movement, principally composed of Black people and white petty bourgeois liberals, aimed at securing bourgeois democratic rights for Black people. Toward the end of its highpoint in the South, 1967, the Back participants demanded of the white to “deal with their own”; to stop acting as missionaries to the oppressed Black people, but deal with the oppression of whites in the U.S. To stop acting out of a white guilt trip. This demand was also partly motivated by the fact that white liberal money was mostly in control of the civil rights movement (as long as it stayed in certain bounds) and this money was removed when things got too hot. Similarly, the Black participants resented certain options to “go home” that the whites had (and used). These options the Black people didn’t have. The Black participants rightly wanted control of their own movement from the moneyed, privileged, petty bourgeois whites. WBS, in part, was an attempt to take this positive demand forged in the civil rights movement and graft it onto the budding proletarian movement. Unfortunately, it did not take this demand objectively, but subjectively, incorporating the “white guilt trip” mentality with it, blaming all white workers essentially for the problems of uniting the working class.
When it became apparent in the mid sixties that civil rights were not enough, and that the scope of the struggle would hive to be expanded, the demand of the Black people in the civil rights movement for the whites to “go to their own” was essentially progressive, for it created many honest revolutionaries from those who were once would-be reformers. But also the arena of struggle had changed to the whole working class and against the entire capitalist system. WBS seems to have been treating the new situation as if the white workers had the same petty bourgeois privileges that the white civil rights workers had in the late 60’s. They perhaps have transposed the demands of one situation on a new situation. But the new situation demands a material analysis of how to unite the forces of revolution and not the luxury of taking guilt trips of the mid-sixties.
Later, WBS played a leading role in the last SDS conference in 1969. Despite the fact that WBS took a leading role in opposing the forming Weatherman tendency, the concept of “repudiation of white skin privilege” had by then laid a foundation for the Weatherman thesis of “white armies” in support of the Black and Third World liberation forces. WBS had scouted the path leading to Weatherman’s individualistic, removed-from-the-masses, guilt-trip approach to “the question of overthrowing racism and imperialism. Weatherman and WBS share the lack of understanding of the material class forces involved in forging proletarian unity, and both put in their place an idealistic, individual moral force, essentially removed from the class struggle. Both are petty bourgeois subjectivist tendencies. (This is not to blame WBS entirely for the split in SDS and the rise of Weatherman’s incorrect tendency. We all must take some share of the blame for the lack of criticism of WBS earlier and the lack of ideological struggle in general which has greatly weakened the movement up to this point.)
It can be practiced by being put out as a line in working class organizing, but it is doomed to failure. Why? Basically because it leads to making the main enemy at this time the white workers in general, not distinguishing between them in terms of privilege, and thereby leads to perpetuating the division in the working class.
The only means of sustaining itself left to WBS, since its line is basically not practicable, is to ally with the small number of reactionary nationalists in an attack on the white workers, something which they must recognize as too repugnant to do as yet; or in practice submerge their line and keep it on the back shelf to be brought out at opportune moments. In the latter case the petty bourgeois ideology, at the root of it, is bound to emerge in another form since it has not been criticized but simply diverted out of practical-necessity.
There remains now to attempt to present the Marxist position on the various questions raised by WBS. Here we shall concentrate, not on the Black National Question, but on the question of white racism as a division within the U.S. proletariat, a different, though related question and the principal question in WBS. The questions covered shall be: the material basis of racism; racism as an ideology; the privileges and favoritism and racism; labor aristocracy and racism; how to overcome the divisions in the working class; on whom do we base ourselves?
White racism in the U.S. is an ideology. It is essentially summed up in the belief that white people are superior and entitled to superior things to the Black people, entitled even to rule over them. As Marxist-Leninists we recognize that all ideological forms arise from and reflect a material basis, the relations of production by which man satisfies his basic needs. What is this material basis for racism? It is: slavery and the remnants of slavery; capitalism; and capitalism in its highest stage, imperialism.
White racism arose as an ideological justification for the slave system of the South, which itself was the result of the expanding capitalism of Europe and its spread to Africa and the colonies. Witness the statement of Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, that the confederate system rested “. . .upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition. Thus our new government is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth.” They invent a “moral truth” to justify their blatant exploitation and oppression. But would WBS attack the exploitation and oppression? No. If logically extended back in time their position would be to demand that white workers be made slaves also to more equitably distribute the exploitation and oppression. This slave system, hardly three generations dead and still half alive in the South and the migrant labor camps of the North and West, is a main source of white racism in the U.S.
How is capitalism part of racism’s material basis? Capitalism by its very nature breeds ideologies of superiority. Does not the capitalist believe him or herself superior to the worker? Is it not a false philosophy of the survival of the fittest? The better person gets the money. Does not this philosophy contain the same kernel of untruth as does the philosophy of white racism? Is it not easy for the white capitalist to be a white racist, saying that generally speaking the Black people have not been able to acquire money and are therefore inferior people being fit to be ruled over by him, the white capitalist. (Of course, ignoring the enslavement of the Black people, the robbing of their land, the refusal to grant them forty acres and a mule, the impossibility of their accumulating any capital up to this point in history.) In this way the capitalist philosophy contains the essence of racism and needs only the slightest prodding to develop it.
When capitalism developed to its highest stage, imperialism, the last remnants of “free competition” under capitalism were thrown away; the ruling class became moribund and entrenched, squelching almost any possibility of any non-member of the ruling class to rise to the top, thus entrenching even more the “superiority” philosophy of capitalism. Moreover, there is added the advent of imperialist wars of conquest directed often against the oppressed people of the world: the Spanish American War, fought in Puerto Rico and Cuba, the Vietnamese War, the Mexican American War, the invasion of the Dominican Republic, the Zulu Wars of the English, the Opium War, etc. Add to this the actual control exerted on the underdeveloped countries of the world, making their peoples subservient to U.S. imperialism. Does this not add impetus to the ideology of racial superiority as justification for the actual position of conqueror?
We have tried to show how white racism in the U.S. has its material basis in: slavery, capitalism and imperialism. But we would be mechanical materialists if we did not understand that though an ideology springs from a material basis, that it also reacts again on that material basis and changes that material basis and becomes a force at times removed from that material basis. Therefore, although white racism springs from the bourgeoisie and its capitalist-imperialist system, it also infects the proletariat (though in proletarians, white racist ideology stands in contradiction to their objective class position and the ideology springing from that.) This understanding of ideology leads us to conclude that white racism as an ideology will not be eradicated simply by socialist revolution (though socialist revolution is a necessary prerequisite for its eradication) any more than bourgeois habits and methods of thought will be eradicated by the seizure of the state apparatus and means of production. It will require a more or less protracted struggle after the state apparatus is in the hands of the proletariat and utilization of the state to eradicate white racism in the U.S. To put eradication of racism as a prerequisite, as WBS does, is naive idealism and can only divert the revolutionary movement from its main tasks.
White racist ideology reacts back on the material production relations in many ways. One way is for the bourgeoisie to extend privileges (petty privileges of favoritism such as overtime, good jobs, etc.) to some white workers. (However, this is not always the case. Sometimes some Black workers are extended privileges (though far less often) with the same result – racial antagonism. Sometimes, though not often, there is a semblance of fairness in the extension of favors.) Another way is for white workers in an advantageous position to jealously guard this position against Black workers. Then there are some white workers who hold virtually the same position as Black workers but are nevertheless racist in many of their ways of thinking. This is a result of the general racist ideology that is part of the peculiar American scene. Of course there is the racism of the state officials, tied to the bourgeoisie, that results in ghettoes, etc. either as a plan consciously understood, or as an attitude, not consciously understood but resulting in the same thing. These are only a few examples.
Thus white racism arises from its material basis and then, once risen, reacts back upon this material basis being augmented here and there, consciously and unconsciously by the bourgeoisie and arising anew each time.
In understanding on whom we base ourselves at this time we must make two distinctions: one, between racist ideology among the proletariat that receives and is augmented and sustained with material incentive by the bourgeoisie and that which is not; and two, between those white workers whose racism is the principal aspect of their outlook and those whose racism is not the principal aspect of their outlook. The further elaboration of these distinctions is the subject of future articles, as are the discussion of the many other questions that WBS raises that are not within the scope of this paper. (The chief questions being: privilege systems that do exist within the U.S. proletariat and how to combat them; what is the labor aristocracy within the U.S.?; how does racism manifest itself among the white sector of the working class and how can it be combated?) Bearing the two above distinctions in mind, it can be asserted now that we must base ourselves on the least racist, least privileged and most advanced white, Black and Third World workers. We must unite this primary force for the overthrow of imperialism, for the attack on all bourgeois ideologies and practices aimed at disuniting the proletariat, seeking to isolate the die-hard agents of the bourgeoisie within the ranks of the proletariat. WBS is diametrically opposed to this strategy.