Logical conclusions (2019)

Book Review from the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left, by Ben Burgis, Zero Books 2019

Socialist Party pamphlets used to carry the slogan ‘Incontrovertible Facts and Logical Argument’. As far as humanly possible, we still use these essential tools in making the case for socialism. However, these days much political argument takes place via the Internet where SHOUTING and fake news often take the place of facts and logic. Ben Burgis exposes the logical fallacies used in contemporary political debate (mainly in the USA) and provides examples of well-formed arguments, such as:

Premise One: Either social democratic reforms will be sufficient to solve the problems of capitalism or those problems can only be solved by expropriating the means of production.

Premise Two: Social democratic reforms will not be sufficient to solve the problems of capitalism.

Conclusion: Those problems can only be solved by expropriating the means of production.

Burgis describes himself as a Marxist, but there is a curious reluctance to follow his arguments through to their logical conclusion. He argues that businesses which move from country to country in the search for lower wages is something enabled by ‘particular policy choices’. ‘Different choices,’ Burgis claims, ‘would lead to different outcomes’. But the particular policy choices here are the logical consequence of a global system of production for profit. And then there’s the antagonism between wages and profits – that (other things being equal) higher profits are the result of lower wages and, vice versa, higher wages eat into profits. Burgis says that ‘in a different economic system’ technological advances could mean that workers could vote themselves shorter shifts or working fewer hours ‘for the same paycheck’. Not if it interferes with profit-making, they won’t.

Burgis is clear that socialism is the movement for the working-class majority of the population to take charge of society. Winning socialism means ‘(a) convincing a huge mass of people who don’t currently think that anything but capitalism is possible that there even can be a different kind of world and that they should fight for one, and then (b) going through an immensely complicated process, full of pitfalls and problems, in which that enormous group of people figures out together how it can all work’. This is fine as far as it goes. The trouble is it is missing conclusion (c): that in any post-capitalist society worthy of the name, wage labour and capital have been abolished.

Lew Higgins