Feasible (2026)

Book Review from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Make Capitalism History. A Practical Framework for Utopia and the Transformation of Society. By Simon Sutterlütti and Stefan Meretz. Palgrave McMillan.

The authors state that one reason for writing their book (which first appeared in German in 2023) was to get those engaged in various struggles to try to make things better under capitalism to seriously consider (rather than just in ‘late night pub talks,’ as they put it) what a feasible, rationally justified alternative society might look like.

Starting from the basic position that humans naturally want to satisfy their needs as they themselves define them, they argue that a free society can only be one where people are no longer forced to work by economic necessity and where people have secure, open access to what they require to satisfy their needs (they mention ‘places resembling modern-day supermarkets but without checkout’); work has to be freely chosen and people must be free to use productive resources to both produce and consume what they need; private ownership has to be replaced by ‘collective disposition’ (they prefer ‘disposition’ as ‘ownership’ has connotations of exclusion whereas productive resources and their products will belong to nobody but just be there to be used ). They call the new society ‘commonism’, but it is obviously socialism.

They are opposed to any form of central planning, on the grounds that it wouldn’t work and that attempting it would give power over people to the central planners. In fact, they are opposed to any central administrative body, even if unarmed and selected democratically. What they envisage is production and distribution taking place through ‘stigmergy’ (communication by signs) which apparently is how termites communicate to build their constructions. Capitalism does this without central planning with prices as the signs; ‘commonism’ would do it through (non-monetary) signals about needs.

They describe well that under capitalism the aim of production is that ‘money must be invested as capital in order to multiply itself’ (‘valorisation’)    and that this is ‘not the result of the greed of managers or shareholders’ but ‘derives from a structural compulsion to valorise that is built into the system’ and enforced through competition: ‘if producers display inferior valorisation, therefore less profit than their competitors, they will be at a disadvantage vis-à-vis advertising, the development or acquisition of new machines, the design of new products and so on. That is why, in the short or long-term, they will be defeated in competition and disappear from the market.’ The state has some autonomy to resist this as it acquires money not by exchange but through taxation; this autonomy, however, ‘remains relative, as state taxes in turn depend on a functioning economy … Therefore, the economy is the dominant sphere encompassing the state’.

They don’t regard state-dominated economies, such as the former USSR, as capitalist — in fact they follow the annoying practice of Continental academics of referring to them as ‘Real Socialism’ in the sense of a ‘socialism’ that really existed— but as being subject, through participation in the world market, to the same economic compulsions; also that state ownership is still a property form, excluding the majority.

The second part of the book is devoted to discussing how to get to ‘commonism’. Here, they insist, a free society can only be established by people who want it and freely choose to establish it; people cannot be forced to be free; a free society cannot be introduced from above by the state, as envisaged by gradualist reformists as well as by violent insurrectionists. Beyond not taking this route, the authors are fairly agnostic, though they also rule out the idea that worker cooperatives could outcompete capitalist corporations on the market or that voluntary communes (‘commons’, they call them) could spread by-passing the market. They seem to envisage as most likely the ‘transvolution’ (their alternative word for revolution) being set off by some catastrophe such as an economic collapse of capitalism or an ecological collapse.

In the last chapter they relent a bit on their opposition to political action and concede that it is conceivable that the state could support the spread of ‘commonist forms’ before dissolving itself — they write of a ‘suicide state’ — giving the movement for a free society a leg-up, or as they put it ‘a stirrup holder, an accomplice to emancipation’.

Adam Buick

Under-population? (2025)

Book Review from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire. By Henry Gee, Picador, 2025. 279pp.

This book takes a long view of human history. Going back to the very dawn of hominid existence, it charts the rise of one species of human – our own – among many and looks ahead to where the current slowing down of population growth and the widely expected future decline in population may lead us. Extinction, in fact, is what the author thinks is our likely destination, since smaller populations will find it difficult to summon up sufficient expertise to manage the challenges of an inimical environment and shortage of core resources. The only long-term solution to avoid extinction, he argues – and he doesn’t do it jokingly – is to branch out into space. He insists that, unless we are able to do this, the end for humanity will come within 10,000 years at the most.

As for the present and the less far-flung future, Gee, senior editor at Nature magazine and author of the prize-winning A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, has what can be regarded as an enlightened take on many facets of social organisation, in which, as he puts it ‘homo sapiens faces a series of political, social, biological and environmental crises unique in its evolutionary history’. For example, he kills stone dead the myths of current over-population and never-ending population rise and at the same time welcomes migrations of people seeking better lives elsewhere (‘the natural state of humanity’, as he puts it). This is not only for their own well-being but also because of the likely benefits for the places they migrate to, since ‘technological advancement requires a substantial resource base in the form of human brains’ and ‘fewer brains mean technological stagnation’. He celebrates too ‘the reproductive and educational empowerment of women’ that has spread to significant parts of the world. Nor does he fail to point out that the way society has been organised for the past 10,000 years (ie settled agriculture, private property, states, rulers and ruled) constitutes a tiny time period in the 315,000-year history of modern humans, little more than 3 percent in fact. And before that settled agriculture period, humans lived without leaders, states, private property and material inequality.

In addition to his view that ‘humans are running out of genetic resilience’ (ie, there won’t be enough of us), another reason he looks at space migration as a future recourse for humanity is that, in his view, climate change will bring upsets such as flooding, storms and droughts that will become increasingly difficult to deal with and are likely to cause high levels of food insecurity. He points to some food insecurity existing already, but he sees it as having ‘more to do with such human foibles as poor governance, corruption and warfare than crop failure per se’. This is undeniable, since, as multiple indicators show, there already exists enough potential food (and all the other necessaries of life) to satisfy the current population, and probably a far larger one. If it does not seem like that, this is because, as this book glimpses but does not delve into, the world’s money economy (and the rationing and conflict over resources that go with it) denies reasonable access to the means of living to a significant proportion of people. So if, as Gee has it, ‘famine is riding down hard on us, faster than ever’, this is not for lack of food or the means to produce and distribute it. It’s to do with the economic system – capitalism (a word never mentioned in this book) – that currently rules the world and causes so many ‘to starve at the banquet’. Unfortunately, this book’s unspoken assumption is that we are stuck with the form of social organisation that causes this.

For all that, however, it remains a fascinating and immensely readable piece of work, wearing its expert and up-to-date knowledge lightly over a wide range of scientific fields. It is written with verve, brio and no little humour. Particularly fascinating to some will be its depiction of a possible space settlement in the far-flung future where a hollowed asteroid is the habitat of a city or cities transported from the earth’s surface and ways have been found of creating artificial gravity – a project described by the author as ‘not insuperable’ with people by then having come to think of it as ‘entirely natural’. Who knows?

But what about the nearer future, ie, before the time comes when we, according to the author, will have to make a choice between reaching for space or becoming extinct? Well, despite his ultimate pessimism about life on earth, he does have some clear ideas about how he would like to see things pan out in the meantime. He suggests, for example, that the strain on the planet’s biological diversity could be reduced by the use of hydroponic farming, so cutting back on the need for farmland. He also recommends reducing ‘meat on the hoof carnivory’, since ‘by eating plants directly, rather than eating animals that eat plants’, humans would use ‘less of the earth’s natural bounty’ and more people could be fed.

But could they? While it’s true that the system we live under has allowed a far greater proportion of the planet’s population to live more comfortably than at any time in the past 10,000 years, that system is, by its very nature, always going to give priority to profit-making over meeting people’s needs. The author perceives quite rightly that homo sapiens has a knack ‘for getting himself out of trouble’, but surely this lies in the more ’united earth’ that Henry Gee says he wishes for rather than in humanity seeking refuge in space. Yet a ‘united earth’ will only be truly possible once we reject the profit system that currently rules humanity and in its place establish a society of common ownership and cooperative organisation with free access for everyone to the ‘earth’s natural bounty’.

Howard Moss

Capitalism versus nature (2008)

From the June 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is bound to come into conflict with nature. It cannot go green because it cannot change its spots.

It is by no means unknown for a society to collapse for ecological reasons, which is to say, because it did not treat its environment with care. By ‘collapse’ here is meant a drastic reduction in living standards and population, not that everybody who lives in a certain place dies. One example would be Easter Island in the Pacific, where the population had fallen to just a few thousand by the time it was discovered by Europeans in the eighteenth century. Deforestation had led to soil erosion and a consequent cut in crop yields, so that the isolated island could no longer support the numbers it had previously. Another would be the Mayan civilisation of central America, which declined gradually through the ninth century, leaving great ruined temples and cities behind. Though it is more arguable in this case, the probable reason was a combination of drought and deforestation leading to a big drop in agricultural production.

The collapse of present-day society, then, might involve far fewer people surviving and at a far lower standard of living, but it would not result in the end of humanity and certainly not of the planet on which we live. Yet how likely is it that there will be a societal collapse caused by climate change or other ecological factors?

In answering this question, we need to look not mainly at technical questions such as how energy is produced and how crops are grown, important though these of course are. Rather, we need to examine the economic basis of society and see the implications of the ways in which production as a whole is organised and of how priorities are considered.

For present-day society is capitalism, which means that it is based on ownership of the earth and the mines, factories, offices and so on by a small part of the population, leaving most people to rely on selling their labour power to an employer in return for a wage. Unless you’re one of the small minority of owners, you cannot live under capitalism without working for a wage, or living with someone who does so. Moreover, production takes place because of the need of the owners to make a profit, and they have no choice but to strive to maintain and increase their position of power and wealth. Since production is guided by the profit motive, it inevitably comes into conflict with the rest of nature.

As a small example, many high-street shops leave their doors open because it looks more inviting to potential customers, even though it increases their heating bills and the amount of energy consumed. An instance on a grander scale was the recent decision by Shell to withdraw from developing an offshore wind farm in the Thames estuary. The sizeable initial investment needed and rising costs — including the impact of raw material prices on the production of the turbines themselves — mean that oil is currently more profitable than wind. Shell noted that reviewing existing projects and focussing on efficiency were simply normal business practice, and sadly that’s just what they are: ecological concerns take very much a back seat.

Perhaps the worst single occasion of capitalism’s priorities coming into conflict with the health of the planet and its people is the explosion at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India in 1984. This saw toxic gas released on a wide scale, with up to eight thousand people dying immediately and many more in the aftermath, to say nothing of those made seriously ill. In The Enemy of Nature, Joel Kovel looks at the background to this disaster. The factory was losing money, so Union Carbide took various steps to reduce costs. Among other things, valves were not repaired, alarms were not maintained, and in general safety installations were inadequate. It may not have been ‘an accident waiting to happen’ exactly, but pursuing profit increased immeasurably the chances of an explosion taking place.

Equally, deforestation in the Amazon is caused primarily not by subsistence cultivators but by commercial interests clearing land for pasture. Cattle ranches occupy vast areas of cleared land and result in huge profits for the owners. The devaluation of its currency, the real, made Brazilian beef more competitive on the world market and increased the profits of the ranchers. The loss of animal and plant species and of renewable timber resources are simply not part of the profit-and-loss calculations.

Moreover, writers on energy constantly refer to economic considerations in discussing whether their technological proposals are viable. James Lovelock, for instance, regards renewable energy as ‘inefficient and expensive’, hence his support for nuclear power. The Severn Barrage, meanwhile, is ‘an attractive business proposition’. In discussing ways to combat global warming, George Monbiot says he is looking for ‘the cheapest way to cut carbon emissions’.

It must be admitted that there are counter-arguments to the effect that capitalism and the profit motive can after all solve ecological problems. Companies which are more efficient in terms of energy use than their competitors will have lower costs and so are likely to have higher profits. Thus simple economic arithmetic will lead to more sensible uses of energy. And more generally, there is profit to be made in industries which are ecologically-oriented, from the manufacture of reusable energy sources to biofuel companies and even the humble bicycle repair shop. It might be argued, too, that international measures have been and can be taken to solve the worst environmental problems, from the banning of the pesticide DDT in the 1970s to the more recent Montreal Protocol that reduced the use of CFCs.

However, energy production and global warming are far different, being integrated as closely as they could be in capitalist production in general. Combatting them would not be a mere matter of disrupting the manufacture of aerosols or weedkillers, but of changing something which is part and parcel of the capitalist system and on which all companies depend. No company will take action which endangers their profits, just as no government will pass legislation that puts the capitalists whose interests they represent at a disadvantage. Capitalism is about competition and profit-making, and this is something which can never be done away with as long as it lasts.

Capitalism, then, is bound to come into conflict with nature. It cannot go green because it simply cannot change its spots. Jonathan Porritt once reflected in an interesting way on what a green society would be like. Among other things, it would involve production for use and work as an end in itself. He’s not a socialist, but in speculating on the meaning of greenness he did in effect realise that a society which lived as far as possible in harmony nature would be a socialist one, and that such a possibility cannot be realised under capitalism.

Paul Bennett

Will capitalism collapse? (1927)

From the April 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Five years ago in these columns (Feb., 1922) the present writer criticised the doctrine of the “Collapse of Capitalism.” During the same month a leading member of the Communist Party admitted that the plans of the Communists for world-revolution were bound up with the acceptance of this catastrophic view of social development, and agreed, in answer to a question, that ten years would prove or disprove the soundness of their view of events. Ten years would show the Communist movement within striking distance of final victory in this country, or it would show Communist policy to be false and the Communist Party would be deservedly dead and damned. Another Communist, Mr. Palme Dutt, likened capitalism to a house in imminent danger of collapse. It was beyond repair—reforms could no longer prop it up—and there was no time to organise and educate the majority of the workers to a recognition of the need for deliberate steps to take over power from the ruling class and set about reconstituting society from the bottom upwards. The “psychological moment” had arrived, capitalism was in ruins, we must get out or go under. (I wonder what has happened of recent years to our old Communist friend, “Psychological Moment ? Did she die of overwork and hope deferred, like “Soviets for Britain” and the “United Front”?)

Half of the allotted time has passed, and many Communists themselves have now come to see either that the theory of collapse was radically unsound, or that the nearness of that happy event was grossly exaggerated. We would be pleased to see the Communist Party approaching a more realistic view of the working-class position, but unfortunately, in driving out the false conception of social revolution, the lessons of experience have in many cases driven out also the desire for revolution itself, and large numbers of disappointed ex-Communists have followed Ellen Wilkinson, Philips Price and Walton Newbold into the ranks of the anti-revolutionary Labour Party, or have altogether lost their interest in politics. The Communist Party in this country, judged by results, and especially in view of the enormous sums of money spent on advertisement and propaganda, has not been a success, and its want of success can be ascribed to this erroneous theory more than to any other single factor. If that theory were correct, it would be sound to attach far greater importance to getting the attention and sympathy of politically backward workers, than to educating them. It would be wise to try to develop “mass organisation” of the unemployed and manoeuvre Communists into official position in the Trade Unions and the Labour Party. But the theory was all wrong, and the abundant enthusiasm of Communist members has brought no good to their party or to Socialism. Where, now, are the unemployed organisations? What is there to show for the energy devoted to supporting Labour candidates and trying to get into the Labour Party? After fluctuating violently and falling as low as 3,000, the membership of the Communist Party has during 1926 leapt up again and is now, apparently, about the same as in 1920. Is this progress? It is certainly not the success they looked for. Communism in the eyes of the mass of workers has come to be associated not with the real and unassailable Marxian position, but with a press-distorted version of the policy of the C.P.G.B., and the ability of the press to misrepresent is largely due to the foolish actions and erratic changes of policy on the part of Communists themselves.

What, then, is this theory which has, in our view, done so much to give a wrong direction to the efforts of many workers? In its most general form it is a belief that friction and the contradictions which result from the basic structure of capitalism will inevitably produce an economic crisis such that the system itself will cease to function. The War, by increasing productive powers and at the same time blocking so many of the normal channels of capitalist trade, aggravated the problems of the capitalist class to a degree which would make collapse certain and imminent. Declining trade, industrial depression, growing armies of workless, stupendous burdens of war debts and taxation, a more than ever infuriated struggle for markets and raw materials— these were the bombing party who were going to blow capitalism into the air.

Where is this conception at fault? In the first place, let us make it clear that it is not Marxian. A system of society is not a pack of cards, or a house, or a piece of mechanism; it is a complex organisation of human beings. The organisational machinery of capitalism, like actual machinery, has no power or purpose of its own; it is governed and, if necessary, changed, by the class who are in control of society. Capitalism might conceivably be rent asunder and destroyed in a long-drawn-out struggle for mastery between contending classes, but, barring the failure of the natural physical basis of human life, it cannot fall and cannot be revolutionised except by the actions of the men and women who compose it. That capitalism contains within itself the germ of its own destruction is not inconsistent with Marx’s words, “Man makes his own history.” The development of capitalism has brought with it a deepening of the cleavage between wage-earners and property-owners, and has relegated the latter more and more to the position of a passive parasitic class simultaneously with an undreamed of growth in their individual wealth and their power over the lives of the workers. The interests of the workers more and more obviously conflict with those of the capitalistic owners of the means of wealth production. “From forms of development of the forces of production these (property) relations turn into their fetters” (Marx, “Critique of Political Economy,” Kerr, 1911, page 12). In this process lies the germ of the destruction of capitalism. The production and distribution of wealth on capitalist lines do not become impossible; the system does not cease to function, but it becomes visibly an anachronism and therefore detestable to the workers. A period of revolution begins, not because life has become physically impossible, but because growing numbers of workers have their eyes suddenly opened to the fact that problems which they hitherto accepted as part of man’s unavoidable heritage have become capable of solution. Life need not have become worse than before—it may have become better—but it becomes intolerable from the moment of realising that only the interests and institutions of the ruling class prevent it from being better still. From that moment the workers forget the consolations of religion and the innumerable conventional barriers in the way of action, and concentrate their energies on attacking the privileges of the capitalist class. Mere suffering, whether through unemployment or a declining standard of living, will not automatically produce such a result. It will not do so if the material conditions are not ripe for solving the problem, or if the victims lack knowledge of the solution or lack confidence to act. Famine in India produces apathy, not revolution. Unemployment in England may do the same.

In other respects, too, those who held the theory of the collapse of capitalism were mistaken. They produced evidence, but their “facts” were one-sided, and their conclusions did not logically follow.

They selected the British Empire, and particularly Great Britain, as their example. The staple industries, they said—iron, coal, and cotton—were in a bad way. Competitors were stealing the pre-war markets of British producers, production in these lines was declining, and exports generally. Unemployment was great and growing, new producing and exporting countries were coming into the field, and pre-war competitors were rapidly recovering or surpassing their pre-war levels of production. On this evidence the outlook appeared to be gloomy and hopeless for the capitalist class ; but was the picture a complete one? It would take too long to deal with each industry, but it should suffice to mention some general conditions which were, and still are, ignored and which upset the assumptions behind that argument. First of all, it must be remembered that technical advance is always accompanied by the scrapping of old and the quick growth of new processes and new industries, and the country which has, like Great Britain, concentrated largely on a few main industries is naturally most affected either by world disturbances of trade or by the exploitation of new processes. But, however difficult the transition might be, was there ever any warrant for the belief that British capitalists would prove less willing or less able to adapt themselves than others? And does the bankruptcy of an old industry accompanied by the prosperity of a new one spell ruin for the capitalist class as a whole? Cotton might be depressed, but artificial silk has been taking its place. Coal might be in difficulties (as it was all over the world) but oil and electricity have been going forward by leaps and bounds. The amount of capital sunk in all branches of the very prosperous British electrical industry is estimated at no less than £768,000,000, and Sir John Snell predicts that the number of units of electricity generated will be trebled within 15 years (Daily Telegraph, Jan. 3). The development of the chemical industry has been crowned last year by the formation of the £65,000,000 Mond Combine. What has misled some observers is the quite natural desire of the capitalists in declining industries to howl their woes from the housetops, and the equally natural reticence of those in other industries who were making enormous profits.

Again, allowance should have been made for the familiar recurring depression which is a century old feature of the system. Such a depression affecting almost all the world in 1921, no more justified the prophecy of ruin and collapse for British capitalism than depression did in pre-war days. Since 1921 unemployment in this country has been almost halved, currency problems in most European countries have been from a capitalist standpoint satisfactorily solved and no one now supposes that the war debts present any special difficulty. To say that pre-war capitalism had its problems, too, and that a return to approximately pre-war conditions does not signify undisturbed stability, is true, but the essence of the case for the collapse of capitalism is that the war marked a turning point and the beginning of a new and troubled era from which there could be no return to the piping days of peace as it was known before 1914. Incidentally it must not be forgotten that even then the prototypes of the communists of to-day went on generation after generation making similar rash forecasts of collapse.

Much use has been made of figures showing a decline in exports, but rarely do the figures justify the use which is made of them. Although Great Britain depends largely on exports in certain industries, by far the greater part of production in this country is for the home market. The volume of production as a whole can and during the past few years undoubtedly has been increasing, while exports have been decreasing. Profits have since 1922 continually grown in this country, but declared profits again give only a partial indication of the magnitude of the proportion of wealth retained by the employing class. For years it may be the deliberate policy of expanding industries to devote to new plant the surplus which would otherwise appeal as dividends.

It is not suggested that the real position of the British capitalists is easily estimated. Our present purpose is merely to show that hasty answers based on a few declining industries are inadequate and certainly exaggerated, if not wholly wrong. It is by no means incompatible with the evidence presented that the nature of capitalist industry in this country is changing. The transition may be difficult and may disclose features which do not fit into current popular methods of measurement, but difficulties do not mean collapse, and it is always worth considering whether the standards of measurement may not themselves be inapplicable.

But even if British capitalism were doomed to lose its place in the front rank, does that signify a collapse of capitalism? If America ousts Britain is the system itself any weaker? If Europe and England become financial dependencies of the United States banks is it any less necessary for the workers to overthrow capitalism? Just as the decline of the cotton industry implies no necessary weakening of British capitalism, so the transfer of the supremacy from Europe to America may well be a cause of strength to the capitalist system; it is certainly not evidence of a collapse. Similarly the difficulties of the British Empire occasioned by the revolt of dependent countries, like India and Egypt, etc., only shows how virile capitalism yet can be.

India and Egypt, China and Mexico, are going through the painful birth processes of capitalism. British capitalist interests may suffer, but capitalism is not being undermined. In passing it is as well to repeat that in our view the danger to British capitalism from these quarters has been generally misunderstood and largely overestimated.

Let us face the facts. Capitalism is strong, and the capitalists are growing wealthier. They have forgotten their post-war panic and are confident of the stability of their system. The machinery of capitalist organisation, the banks, foreign trade, etc., may bring their problems, but it is absurd to suppose that the capitalists will in the long run allow unprogressive members of their own class to imperil the system by persisting in methods, such as unrestricted competition, which have become more dangerous than useful. The confidence of the capitalists in the stability of capitalism rests on the docility of the working class. Capitalism continues because the workers unthinkingly accept it. To devise means of prolonging this convenient condition of the workers’ minds is the chief and potentially fatal problem of the capitalist class. Capitalism will not collapse. It will end when the workers organise to bring it to an end. To educate and organise the workers for that purpose is the only problem with which Socialists should concern themselves.

Edgar Hardcastle

Worse is better? (2015)

Book Review from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Things are Going to Get Worse and Why We Should be Glad.  By Michael Roscoe. New Internationalist. £9.99.

The basic assumption of this book is one we can share: ‘Real wealth creation requires real work, and real work must involve the transformation of nature’s raw materials into something of value to us humans. There is no other way to create wealth.’ This is, of course, the basis of all labour theories of value including Marx’s, even though wealth and value are not the same.

Roscoe argues that, as wealth can only be material, the service sector does not create any, but just consumes it, even if the service is useful and/or contributes indirectly to future material wealth production. Education, healthcare and various personal services do contribute to this by maintaining and improving the workforce that produces the actual wealth. Finance, on the other hand, says Roscoe, does not. It can play a useful role in channelling funds to the productive sector but most of its activities since the 1980s have just been shuffling money between speculators which doesn’t help wealth production at all.

The growth of the service sector reflects  the rise in productivity in the productive sector (agriculture, fishing, mining, manufacture and construction) over the years. The extra wealth produced has gone to maintain and expand the service sector, absorbing the workers displaced from the productive sector by rising productivity.  Why, according to Roscoe, ‘things are going to get worse’ is that this can no longer continue because the service sector is being automated  too (and oil is going to run out and the financial bubble is going to burst). As a result unemployment is going to grow until the system collapses. As ‘it is only in times of crises that real change can be brought about’, this is ‘why we should be glad’.  In other words, worse is better.

This may (or may not) be true, but Roscoe’s ‘real change’ turns out not to be one. He wants to retain capitalism but modify it by government action, a return to the ‘mixed economy’ of before Thatcher which he oxymoronically calls ‘market socialism.’ Actually, it’s not quite a return to those days as one of the things he wants governments to do is to slow down growth (as it’s using up the Earth’s resources) by slowing down the rise in productivity. Given capitalism, that’s like King Canute ordering the tide not to come in. It won’t work and can’t work because capitalism is a system of capital accumulation driven by competition between profit-seeking enterprises,  both private and state, which imposes rising productivity and growth on them as the price of staying in business.

A disappointing book, then, which starts off making a good point but which ends up advocating an impossible reform of capitalism.

Adam Buick

The Left’s Catastrophic Logic (2013)

From the June 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Radical leftists’ cling to the belief that capitalism will collapse, thereby ushering in a new society—an illusion that suits their hazy understanding of socialism.

Back in 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Socialist Party of Great Britain went out on a limb, or so it may have seemed to many leftists of the time, by insisting that capitalism would certainly not self-destruct. In a pamphlet titled ‘Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse,’ it rejected the ‘wrong and lazy idea’ that capitalism would ‘collapse under the weight of its own problems’ and criticised the ‘fatalistic attitude of waiting for the system to end itself.’

‘The lesson to be learned,’ the pamphlet concluded, ‘is that there is no simple way out of capitalism by leaving the system to collapse of its own accord. Until a sufficient number of workers are prepared to organise politically for the conscious purpose of ending capitalism, that system will stagger on indefinitely.’

It would have been nice if the prediction had been wrong: if capitalism had done us the great service of ending its own life or if the calamity of economic crisis (or war) could have automatically converted the bulk of the working class to socialism. But in fact, over the eight decades since then, capitalism has managed to stagger or even strut along, defying the hope (or fear) that it would self-destruct or bump up against some absolute limit to growth.

Despite all the examples history has provided us of how capitalism can weather a crisis and how a social cataclysm is no guarantee that workers will be ‘radicalised,’ many leftists still cling to the hope that economic crisis, war, or environmental catastrophe could topple capitalism or suddenly transform the consciousness of workers.

This unfounded belief came to the fore again in late 2008 amidst an intense financial crisis, as even mainstream economists were toying with words like ‘collapse’ and ‘meltdown’ to describe the condition of capitalism. The crisis still continues today, of course, but then again so does capitalism.

Yet one can hope that some of these misconceptions will be reconsidered in light of how these five crisis-filled years have not shaken capitalism at its roots, and that ‘radical leftists’ will rethink the process of fundamental social change. One sign that this reflection on a failed outlook and strategy may already be underway is the recent publication of Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth (PM Press).

The book is a collection of four articles by ‘partisans of the radical left,’ critiquing those on both the left and the right who believe society is headed for some sort of total collapse that will either usher in a new age or ‘awaken the masses from their long slumber.’ The authors label this apocalyptic outlook ‘catastrophism’.

The article of most interest to socialists in the book is, ‘Great Chaos Under Heaven: Catastrophism and the Left,’ written by Sasha Lilley, the co-host of the radio programme, Against the Grain, on KPFA (Berkeley, California).

Lilley identifies the two sides of the left catastrophism that has ‘shaped the radical tradition for well over a century’—namely, the expectation that capitalism will collapse and ‘predestined forces [will] transform society for the better,’ on the one hand, and the ‘idea that the worse things get, the more auspicious they become for radical prospects.’ She also quite astutely points out how these mistaken assumptions are connected to ‘the twin dangers of adventurism (the ill-conceived actions of the few) and political quietism (the inaction that flows from awaiting the inexorable laws of history to put an end to capitalism).

The idea among leftists that capitalism would collapse is typically based on a one-dimensional reading of Marx, Lilley observes. She notes that, even though Marx had ‘argued that crises are essential to capitalism, he did not equate such crises with the collapse of the system;’ and that ‘those who believe the system will crumble from crises and disasters lose sight of the ways that capitalism uses crises for its own regeneration and expansion.’ Unfortunately, the misinterpretation of Marx’s theory of crisis took root within the German Social Democratic Party and other supposedly Marxist organisations, exercising a powerful influence throughout the twentieth century.  

Intertwined with the belief that capitalism will collapse is the idea that the worse things get, the better the prospects for revolution. Even though Lilley accepts that ‘social context’ obviously ‘shapes how people see their own situation and the forces at play around them,’ she emphasises that ‘there is no alignment of the stars that leads to collective, rather than atomised, resistance.’

The German Communist Party in the early 1930s provides the best example of where the ‘worse-is-better’ logic of the left can lead, encapsulated in their cheerful slogan, ‘After Hitler, our turn!’ Their turn to be rounded up and sent to the concentration camps, the Communists soon discovered.

The attitude of waiting for things to get worse (so that they can get better) is bad enough, but some leftists take it a further step, Lilley explains, by following the logic that ‘if worsening conditions are more propitious for radical change, then radicals should do what they can to make things worse.’ This is the asinine logic of the radical terrorists of the late 1960s and early 1970s who tried to ‘heighten the contradictions’ through violent or spectacular actions and bring down the state repression that could ‘mobilise the unmobilised.’

This strategy is riddled with problems, Lilley explains, ‘not the least of which is bringing repression down on others for their own good.’ Above all, it is a strategy that simply doesn’t work, she concludes: ‘radical mass movements typically grow because they offer hope for positive change,’ whereas ‘fear is corrosive’ and ‘demobilises.’

The lack of hope is at the heart of the politics of ‘left-wing catastrophism,’ Lilley argues, reflecting ‘a deep-seated pessimism about mass collective action and radical social transformation.’ This is certainly true, but socialists would add that this sense of despair is connected to the basic inability of leftists to envisage a true alternative to capitalism. In short, they are (at best) anti-capitalist but not pro-anything, really—at least nothing that isn’t upon closer inspection a variation of capitalism.

Lilley sidesteps this issue of what she and other radical partisans are for by inserting a sort of disclaimer in the introduction to the book and at the beginning of her article, stating that the aim will not be to ‘furnish prescriptions for mass action and revolt’ but to point out ‘what does not, and will not, work.’ She adds that a ‘militant radicalism with any prospects of success embraces catastrophism at its peril.’

Pointing out what does not work is certainly welcome, but one has the impression that Lilley limits the scope of her argument in part because, like the leftists she criticises, she has no clear idea of what a post-capitalist society would be like.

This muddled outlook is apparent from her attachment to words and expressions that sound revolutionary but are exceedingly vague, such as ‘militant radicalism,’ ‘radical collective politics,’ ‘mass action and revolt,’ ‘radical mass movements,’ ‘a broad anti-capitalist project,’ ‘mass collective action,’ and ‘radical social transformation.’

What does any of this mean, really? How can you advocate a ‘mass’ or ‘radical ’or ‘militant ’movement without saying even a word about what the aim of that movement is? Isn’t this lack of clarity among anti-capitalists precisely why they are so strongly attracted to the outlook of ‘catastrophism’ in the first place? Without a clear notion of a new society to replace capitalism, or of how workers could democratically bring it about, (anti-capitalist) leftists can only hope that a collapse will usher in a new age.

Instead of offering any source of real hope regarding the sort of society that could take the place of capitalism, Lilley concludes her essay with a sort of pep talk, reminding the reader that ‘navigating away from the stormy shoals of catastrophism ... requires a commitment to mass radical collective politics, in inauspicious times as well as auspicious ones.’ But some readers might wish to understand what ‘mass radical collective politics’ means, exactly, before deciding on their commitment.

Still, even recognising the limited scope of the book (whether intentional or inevitable), it is a valuable and timely contribution to those who are frustrated by the limitations of the left. And, in addition to Lilley’s critique of the left, the book contains interesting essays dealing with the right-wing version of catastrophism and the Malthusian outlook prevalent among environmentalists.

Michael Schauerte

Editorial: Crises and Catastrophe (2013)

Editorial from the June 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the market economy is booming there’s a tendency to assume this state of affairs will last forever – on so many occasions have we heard that ‘it’s different this time’ and that ‘we’re in a new paradigm now’. Yet when a slump occurs – as they do periodically – the mood of incautious optimism changes quickly and pessimism and despair can set in.

This has most obviously been the case with the present recession (or series of recessions, depending on how you define it). Since the first signs of crisis appeared in late summer 2007, the mood has been bleak. The nadir was probably reached in late 2008 when the collapse of Lehman Brothers led to massive falls in world stock markets and coincided with the seizing up of the credit markets. Unemployment and bankruptcies soon began to rise.

Since then the mood has hardly improved. Unemployment remains at over 2.5 million in the UK and in some counties – such as Spain, where it is 27 percent – is at levels that are at least as bad as the infamous depression of the 1930s.

Into such a space come the advocates of collapse and catastrophe. The end is nigh, they think, and we’d better buy some candles and get some tins in. Their underlying sentiment – that somehow the existing capitalism system is fundamentally flawed in many ways – is of course at least half right. But their fatalism that capitalism is in some way going to collapse around our ears in an economic Armageddon certainly isn’t. In fact, we’ve been here before – and are still here . . .

Much though theories of economic collapse may hold a curious fascination for those who want to see an end to the market system, they have been proven wrong time and again – in fact from the earliest days of the system itself. In this issue, we look at why. We examine why capitalism, for all its weaknesses and flaws, is a remarkably resilient system and why the conditions that lead to economic crises and slumps are replaced after time by conditions that prepare the way for a new boom and a repeat of the cycle.

Socialists have learnt that there’s no point waiting for capitalism to do us a favour and die. It’s just not going to happen. Instead, capitalism has to be put out of its misery and only a majority of convinced socialists can do that, democratically taking the reins of political power, so as to lay the foundations for a society where booms, slumps, crises and catastrophes are a thing of the past.