Human development (2011)

Michael A. Lebowitz

Book Review from the January 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Path to Human Development: capitalism or socialism? By Michael Lebowitz, from the Socialist Interventions Pamphlet Series. Monthly Review Press., April 2009 Free download

This pamphlet, written to support educational and political discussions in trade unions, communal councils and political formations, particularly in Venezuela, was prepared for collective rather than individual readers with the specific purpose of ‘encouraging collective struggle against capitalism and for socialism’.

Lebowitz lays down some of the basics of the whats and whys of human development. The obvious prerequisites to any human development are the satisfaction of basic needs and the recognition that each individual’s self-development should be self-defined.

He compares the ‘vicious circle of capitalism’ with the ‘virtuous circle of socialism.’ Capitalism – people separated from the means of production with needs to be fulfilled having to sell their labour power in competition with others, thereby entering into capitalist production which gives them the need to consume but limited means to do so, locking them into a never-ending vicious circle. A vicious circle that is expanding all the while because capitalism requires growth and must generate new needs for consumption.

Socialism – in which producers enter into an association to produce for the needs of society and in so doing expand their capacities as rich human beings. So here we have producers who recognise the value of unity, cooperation and interdependence increasing the circle voluntarily, driven by the logic of human development with no limits – ‘except the full development of all human potential’.

The pamphlet is an attempt to raise socialist consciousness and, in Lebowitz’s own words, “It is important that we live the revolutionary process as a great organism and not as a vanguard atop a complacent mass”. Our hope is that workers around the world, and not just in Venezuela, take this advice seriously. If they did, a useful next step might be to remove populist reformists such as Chavez from office, and replace him with recallable delegates from their own ranks.

Janet Surman

A Correction

From the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In our review of Michael Lebowitz’s book, The Path to Human Development: capitalism or socialism?, in last month’s Socialist Standard, we attributed to him the passage “it is important that we live the revolutionary process as a great organism and not as a vanguard atop a complacent mass”. In drawing our attention to the fact that he did not write this, Michael Lebowitz said that “the phrase itself doesn’t embarrass me as I reject the vanguard party (but not leadership as such) as it is understood”. He added: “Incidentally, let me recommend to you and your comrades my new book, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development (Monthly Review, 2010), which explores much more deeply the themes posed in The Path. As for the vanguard question, I’m taking that up right now in the book I’m working on (The Conductor and the Conducted), which explores what I call ‘vanguard relations of production.’”

In fact the passage was a quote from a review of his book by Ivan Drury in the Canadian Trotskyist paper Socialist Voice. We apologise to him and are pleased to make this correction.