Change the World (2025)

Book Review from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Replace the State. How to Change the World when Elections and Protests Fail. By Sasha Davis. University of Minnesota Press. 2025. 175pp.

A book with a title like Replace the State cannot but catch the eye of an organisation like the Socialist Party that advocates a stateless system of society. Appearances can be deceiving of course. So to what extent does this book live up to the promise of its title?

The first thing to say is that, for the author of this book, replacing the state does not mean establishing a society without a state or states. What it means is small groups taking ‘direct action’ to manage or take over ‘contested sites’ where the existing system may be oppressing local communities and causing societal or environmental damage. Many of these sites referred to in this book are ‘indigenous’, that is to say they are what remains of the local original communities there before they were taken over by governments for use as part of the state and the capitalist juggernaut. The kind of action the writer is talking about is occupation of spaces (the term he uses for this is ‘counteroccupations’) in which, for example, excluded people can be offered sanctuary, or people can demonstrate their opposition to unwanted local projects (eg military or nuclear bases) and in so doing engage in mutual aid and what he calls ‘participatory governance’ and ‘inclusive and sustainable practices’. Specific examples of this would be, in his own words, ‘worker-run cooperatives, community land trusts and farm spaces dedicated to sustainable food systems and social justice’. And examples he gives of successes in this area are the civil rights movement in the US and the stopping of military training and bombing on one of the small islands of Puerto Rico. ‘Relational governance’ is the umbrella term used here to identify this way of operating, which, the author states, ‘arises from a worldview that recognises the fundamental interconnected and interdependent nature of our societies, ecologies, economies, political systems, bodies and minds’ and ‘contrasts sharply with the view many modern states conceptualize the world and act towards it’.

In terms of ‘worldview’, there is little here we would disagree with. But, given the overwhelming planetary presence of the capitalist system and the power of the national states that exist to administer it, we would have to regard the kind of action the author advocates as a drop in the ocean. He seeks to make a clear distinction between the activities and campaigns he would like to see undertaken and those protest movements that demand social change or reforms via petitions or demonstrations or support for one party considered more ‘progressive’ than others in elections. He refers to such activities (and quite rightly in our view) as ‘chasing our tails’ since, though they may sometimes have the effect of making life a little more bearable for wage and salary earners, they cannot change the fundamental nature of the system of massive wealth inequality we all live in. But it is hard to see how the kind of activity he does recommend – carving out small spaces in the existing system where he hopes things can be run more fairly, more justly and more sustainably – can make a great deal of difference either, or how any benefits arising from it can be more than short term. The writer himself seems to recognise this at one point when he states that, though in many places activists have managed to carve out ‘spaces of self-determination’, it is a strategy that rarely works meaningfully in the long-term and rather, as he puts it, ‘frequently succeeds only for a short period of time and/or in a relatively small space’. Even so, seeming to share the playbook of Trotskyist groups, he insists that workers’ experience of such struggle and striving is essential as it will build to a point of consciousness which will lead them to revolt and to bring in wholesale changes of a radical kind. It can cause, so the author tells us, ‘alternative ways of life to be practiced, modelled, and disseminated’. Yet nothing of this, it must be said, is borne out by examples of this happening in the real world.

We would not, of course, want to seem to be pouring cold water on what are clearly genuine and long-term efforts on the part of the author to propose and encourage ways of changing the world for the better in the face of what he rightly describes as ‘the cascade of catastrophic problems coming at us from every direction’ and of seeking the achievement of what he refers to as a system of ‘equality, inclusion and environmental protection’. He shows clearly too that he recognises the class-divided nature of capitalist society (‘owner vs wage earner’) and the role the state plays in preserving it (‘The State Won’t Fix Our Problems’ is the title of one of his chapters) and sees no mileage in trying to address social ills through the institutions that have caused them. But we would have to ask him to consider whether activity to secure real, widespread – in fact global – social change which he would no doubt wish to see doesn’t rather reside elsewhere. To be precise, whether it doesn’t reside in campaigning to change the outlook of the majority who, the world over, have to work for a wage or salary to survive, and to bring them round to the self-emancipatory consciousness that impels them to vote for an equal, inclusive and environmentally sustainable society of common ownership and democratic control, a society that will genuinely ‘replace the state’ and enable all to fulfil their potential both individually and collectively.

Howard Moss

Electronic democracy (1998)

Pamphlet Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Autonarchy, the Ultimate Democracy. By Akiva Orr. Pamphlet can be downloaded from: http://www/autonarchy.org.il

Autonarchy, a word coined by Orr himself, means literally “self-rule” which in his view can be achieved by instituting what he calls “Magnetic Card Direct Democracy”. Every citizen would have a magnetic card and their own PIN number and all telephones, public as well as private, would be equipped with a device to read these cards. This would enable people to register their votes, which could be counted almost instanteously, on any policy issue put before them (Orr in fact argues that all policy decisions should be made in this way). Questions requiring a policy decision would be drawn up as a range of options by experts in the particular field concerned or proposed by a minimum number of citizens. A special TV channel would be devoted to discussing the pros and cons of the various proposals for policy decision which citizens could look at before deciding which way to vote.

Orr adds some other refinements but the basic idea is clear. Modern communications technology has opened up the possibility for mass participation in decision-making:

“The revolutionary changes in communications technology make it possible, for the first time in history, to sum up millions of decisions taken far apart into a single total in seconds and to display this continuously on millions of TV screens. Political decision-making by millions of people is now possible”.

This is undoubtedly true and some socialists have suggested that it could be used extensively in socialism. Certainly, socialism would be the best framework for such an “electronic democracy” and no doubt this will be incorporated into the democratic decision-making procedures which will be a feature of socialism. Whether people will want to go as far as Orr appears to and have “magnetic card direct democracy” as the only such procedure appears more doubtful as “indirect” elected delegate democracy also has its advantages. Not all decisions can be reduced to a simple “yes-or-no” question, nor can people spend all their time voting.

Orr puts forward his proposal as a move “beyond capitalism, socialism, anarchism”. While he understands the drawbacks of capitalism and anarchism well enough, he misunderstands socialism as “state ownership and rule by a socialist party”. This is not what we would recognise as socialism but is rather state capitalism.

Adam Buick

Letter: Principles of the future communist society (2021)

Letter to the Editors from the September 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Principles of the future communist society

Dear Editors

Nothing is more wrong than the view that we need not worry about the basic structures of the future communist society. On the contrary, only the attractiveness of the capitalist alternative creates, among other conditions, the preconditions for overcoming capitalism.

Despite its enormous destructive effects, the capitalist form of rule and mode of production managed in many ways to bind the majority of the population to itself. Many dependent employees today are of the opinion that capitalism has a number of weaknesses, but that there is no desirable alternative to it in view of the negative experiences with real socialism. Therefore, all efforts must be made to tame the capitalist system and make it socially sustainable.

This pro-capitalist imprint on consciousness, which is inherent in capitalism, can only be lifted if, in addition to the existing discontent and the associated everyday struggles, there is a well-founded and convincing concept of a communist future.

Capitalism contains endogenous levers that point to a post-capitalist society. These include its economic, financial, hunger, poverty, refugee, agricultural and state crises, its climate and environmental catastrophes, its wastefulness, its exploitation and undignified working conditions, its permanent wage pressure, its mass unemployment, its pandemics, its lack of sustainability and plundering of resources, its huge gap between rich and poor, its regional inequality, its technological developments, its overwhelming corporate power, its elbow mentality and its social exclusions and loneliness. But these levers will not bring about a change in the system unless wage-earners act as the gravediggers of capitalism and free themselves from its shackles. An overcoming of capitalism is only possible if the majority of the population loses confidence in the capitalist mode of production and fights for and builds up the communist system against all odds. It is the emancipation struggles of the wage-dependent population that bring about a sense of togetherness, strengthen their consciousness of power and their courage to fight, and break the capitalist shackles.

This gravedigger function arises:

a. by their own unbearable plight,

b. by the resulting discontent and protest movement,

c. by the insight into the inability of capitalism to reform,

d. by the insight into the superiority of a post-capitalist society,

e. by the existence of a revolutionary workers’ party, and

f. by the subsequent politico-economic struggles of wage earners to overcome the system.

The workers’ party has the task of enlightening, convincing, coordinating, showing solutions and supporting the revolutionary struggles.

In view of the negative experiences with real socialism, confidence in the communist society of the future presupposes knowledge of its principles. Marx and Engels themselves did not describe communism in detail, but stated the following principles:

1. the means of production belong to the community,

2. there is a council (direct) democratic society,

3. the economy is organized in a planned and democratic way,

4. income consists only of labor and social income,

5. gainful employment is reduced step by step to a minimum,

6. money is abolished in the long term and everyone can increasingly consume according to his needs.

7. in the transitional period, in the consumer market, money is replaced by labor vouchers, with the value of the goods and the income being based on the labor time incurred.

These principles are to be supplemented today by others, such as zero growth and the circular economy, but they remain the decisive measures by which the capitalist forces of destruction can be overcome.

They are not only valid in the distant future, but are already to be introduced and further developed within capitalism. It is not storming the government or waiting for the distant future, it is direct democratic transformation steps that overcome capitalism and lead to the communist mode of production.

What does this mean in concrete terms?

First, direct democracy must be introduced in all spheres of life and extended until it comes to power. Direct-democratic structures must be established in workplaces, companies, daycare centers, schools, universities, the military and retirement homes, and the population’s individual and collective self-determination must be substituted for external determination.

The direct-democratic transformation path demands a departure from parliamentary democracy and the struggle for comprehensive direct-democratic forms of work and life. In contrast to radical left and anarchist ideas, the direct-democratic path does not mean abandoning parliamentary work. Parliamentary activities serve the purpose of enlightment, to implement minor improvements for the broad population and to support extra-parliamentary struggles. However, participation in parliaments excludes participation in government, because the revolutionary left in government has no choice but to defend capitalism and thus abandon the overcoming of the system due to the constraints of the situation.

Secondly, it is not green market socialism that is to be striven for, but the repression of the market through an increasing supply of free goods and through the extension of national economic planning. According to the motto: planning as far as possible and market as far as necessary, digital planning systems are to be promoted, tested in practice and used. The market cannot be abolished immediately. It must be pushed back to the extent of free goods and macroeconomic planning expansion.

Taking their cue from bourgeois economics, many leftists criticize the planned economy. They argue that it is inefficient, leads to a scarcity economy and centralization. Under today’s technical and political possibilities, however, democratically organized macro-planning is more efficient than the anarchistic market mechanism. It improves the supply and leads to the extension of democratic decision-making processes. Only the democratic planned economy makes it possible to involve everyone in the shaping of the economy, to abolish the crises and unemployment, to avoid the climate catastrophes and to shape the way of work and life in a sustainable, peaceful and just way.

Those who continue to believe in the healing powers of the market (like the neoclassics) and/or in the healing powers of the capitalist state (like the Keynesians) are on an erroneous path that is incapable of reversing the destructive effects of the capitalist mode of production.

Thirdly, a progressive reduction of working hours causes working people to extend their leisure time and thus increasingly to shape their lives according to their own needs and to lead a fulfilled life. If this expansion of leisure time is increasingly coupled with the free supply of goods, a society will develop in which it is no longer money but individual freedom, based on solidarity, that determines well-being.

Fourth, the abolition of property and power income leads to a reduction of income differences to a small gap, and income development is determined by productivity progress and income distribution by respective area tariffs. Those who are unable to work for health reasons and who have ended their working lives receive an adequate social income.

Fifth, the climate and environmental catastrophes require us to say goodbye to economic growth and to shape the economy in a way that is compatible with the climate and the environment. Since neither is possible under capitalism, an effective climate and environmental policy presupposes a communist society.

For Marx and Engels, communism is both a social goal and a social movement. The principles outlined formulate the set of goals and the movements result from the struggles to abolish the capitalist condition. Marx and Engels did not depict the future post-capitalist society in detail like the utopian socialists. The details will emerge in the transformation process and will change with the historical and regional conditions. But those who renounce the recognition and implementation of the principles of the future communist society will remain in the capitalist swamp and the struggles will not get beyond the critique of capitalism.

The process of direct democratization will not fail because of the resistance of capital, as long as it is supported by the broad population. It is a necessary and successful way to replace the rule of capital by the rule of the people (the dictatorship of the working class). Those who today renounce the direct democratic path and seek their salvation in parliamentary work inevitably end up with Bernstein and his politics of the further development of capitalism.

Only in the practical implementation of communist principles is there a chance to dissolve capitalism and to build a new peaceful, just, crisis-free, environmentally friendly and needs-oriented society.

Alfred Müller, 

Germany

Reply:

We agree with your criticism of capitalism and that a communist (or, as we normally call it, a socialist) society can only come into being if, and when, a majority have come to want and understand it and have organised themselves democratically to get it. We also agree that the socialist movement should contest elections with a view to entering parliament. However, you seem to be suggesting that some ‘communist principles’ could be gradually implemented ‘within capitalism’ by ‘direct-democratic steps’; that workers should form more and more democratic councils until the point is reached where they are so widespread, including in the military, that the state is dissolved. We don’t think this is a realistic scenario.

No doubt, as more and more ‘dependent employees’ come to want and understand socialism, they will organise outside parliament in the sort of ways you suggest, both to wage the day-to-day class struggle and to take over and keep production and essential services going once capitalist ownership is ended. But the state cannot be ignored or by-passed as that would leave it, and the coercive power it is able to wield, in the hands of those opposed to socialism. It needs, at the very least, to be taken out of their hands. Incidentally, insistence on the need to win political control is a key omission from your list of Marx and Engels’s principles.

This does not involve ‘storming the government’ in an insurrection. It can be done by turning universal suffrage from an ‘instrument of dupery’ into an ‘instrument of emancipation’. Since you say that socialism can only be established when a majority understand and want it, and also that socialists should contest elections and enter parliament, then a socialist majority outside parliament will reflect itself as a majority in parliament. This, where political democracy exists, will be enough to give the working class political control which they can use to formally abolish capitalist ownership of the means of production, allowing workers in useful production and essential services to take over their workplaces without hindrance and begin to run them on behalf of society.

Your list of Marx and Engels’s ‘principles’ is a mixture of principles (the first three) and an obsolete proposal for labour vouchers, as an expedient for dealing with need-based consumption, that would only have been relevant if socialism had been established in the nineteenth century.

It is not clear what ‘transitional period’ you are talking about – that between capitalism and socialism or that between a first phase of socialism (when distribution according to needs would not have been possible) and a higher phase (when it would be). Unless you regard labour vouchers as money (which Marx didn’t) then it doesn’t make sense to envisage money existing in the second period.

In any event, we ourselves have never supported the idea of labour vouchers and have never considered such a system as being either necessary or workable. It wasn’t necessary as there were other ways of bridging the gap between there not being enough, and full free distribution. Direct rationing, for instance. That would have avoided the need to give consumer goods a labour-time ‘price’ and so have a quasi-market for them, with the danger of this degenerating into a real market and an evolution towards state capitalism rather than socialism.

It is now nearly 150 years since labour vouchers were first suggested. In the meantime the problem they were put forward to deal with no longer exists. Socialism (the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources by society as a whole) can be introduced just as soon as a socialist-minded majority wins political control. Capitalist ownership today is not individual possession but through limited liability companies and corporations. Since these are legal entities created by states they can all be abolished in one go. Similarly, the forces of production have developed to such an extent since 1875 that, right from the beginning, free distribution according to need can be introduced immediately for the vast majority of goods and services. So, despite what you say, money and markets can be abolished immediately. Today socialism can be a post-scarcity society from the start

Editors

Letters: That ‘S’ word again (1999)

Letters to the Editors from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

That ‘S’ word again

Dear Editors,

Re Aki Orr’s letter which you entitled “Should we drop the word ‘Socialism’?” in the February edition of the Socialist Standard.

Orr’s letter was an excellent analysis of what many Socialists believe is a primary impediment to universal acceptance of our philosophy, and your reply was off-target to a point of irrelevance.

Orr’s hypothesis is that the word “socialism” intrinsically alienates understanding of our object. I can confirm from my experience in Bermuda.

A couple of years ago I was able to get published in the Bermuda Times’s open editorial pages two very lengthy articles on Socialism. These articles were over 1,500 words in length and took up two half-pages over two editions each.

In these articles I defined capitalism, Socialism and state capitalism and other crucial areas. Using the leaflet Some Questions and Answers about Socialism I covered all the salient points that I could in the space I had available. I especially emphasised the meaning of Socialism and how it will solve the problems of society.

However, in spite of my efforts, the only letters to the editor regarding the articles kept harping on about how Socialism has failed etc, etc. I replied to these criticisms pointing out their misinterpretations, briefly reiterated our position and finished by urging them to carefully re-read the articles. However it was totally futile as back came another letter once more chastising me about my definition of Socialism, for example “What was the Allende government in Chile if it wasn’t Socialist”, etc, etc. a complete communications breakdown . . .

Even when discussing the subject face-to-face with so-called intelligent people I find that it is almost impossible to break through the barrier of preconception that the word “Socialism” evokes. It is almost a Pavlovian reaction: ring the bell and the dog salivates.

What I am suggesting is, I know, nothing new yet in my heart of hearts I know that if Socialism is to survive, we must change our name.

At the moment we are banging our heads against the wall. Some people seem to believe that if we are only able to get our message out to the masses that they will come flocking to the cause. My controlled experiment here in Bermuda suggests that nothing like that will happen. The name confuses people and they switch off before you are able to explain who we are and what we stand for. A change of name (perhaps patented/copyrighted?) will focus our identity and possibly act as a catalyst to a faster revolution.

Paul Azzario, 

Bermuda  

Reply: 

The people you couldn’t convince of the real meaning of Socialism would seem to have been opponents of the whole idea. Would those who are sympathetic to the idea be put off from investigating further by a mere word? – Editors.  

Democracy

Dear Editors,

Thank you for printing my reply to your review of my pamphlet Beyond Capitalism/Socialism/Anarchism—AUTONARCHY, the ultimate democracy (February, Socialist Standard).

I expected you would reject my ideas—as you did—in a fraternal manner. I did not expect your misunderstanding of my main points. Allow me one short comment to your reply.

Auto-narchy (nothing to do with “Anarchy”) is based on two principles:

   1. One citizen—one vote, on every political decision.

   2. One employee—one vote, on every decision at work.

I argued that Autobank technology, used daily in every bank in the world for more than a decade, could easily be adapted to political decision-making by millions people. It handles millions of decisions daily, summing them up into a single decision in seconds. Whether decisions are on financial issues or political issues is irrelevant to the technology. When people grasp this the struggle to implement the two principles will begin. This will challenge capitalism—irrespective of economic issues—far more than Socialism.

Your reply made two points:

“Direct democracy . . . would also have to involve ‘indirect’ democracy via elected Delegates” (last paragraph on p.15). NO, it would not! Autobank technology enables millions of decisions to be summed up into a single decision in seconds thereby making political delegates obsolete. If you do not understand this you do not understand my argument.

You say I am wrong in stating that the struggle today is over decision-making authority “rather than over the ownership and control of the productive resources by which society lives” (top of second column on page 16).

Have you ever asked yourself what “Ownership” and “Control” mean? “Ownership” is simply “authority to make all decisions concerning what is owned”.

Authority to make all decisions concerning X—is “ownership” of X. “Control” is decision-making on that which is controlled”. Both “ownership” and “control” boil down to “authority for decision-making”.

If you have other definitions of these two terms I shall be delighted to hear them.

Aki Orr, 

Kfar-Shanaryah, Israel

 

Reply: 

We still say that direct democracy, whether by mass meeting or autobank technology, need not be the only form of democratic control in socialism. For many, perhaps most decisions, decision-making by a committee or council of elected delegates (subject of course to public scrutiny and recall) will be more appropriate.

We can go along with your definitions. That’s why we said that in the end “common ownership” and “democratic control” of productive resources are the same. However our views are not identical as you write in your pamphlet that “equality of authority at work means that all employees have the right to vote on every decision related to their work. This includes all decisions on profits, investment, hiring and firing.” We say that “equality of authority at work” will mean the end of the employee/employer relationship. How can there still be profits and hiring and firing when there’s common ownership?—Editors.  

 

Correction

Sackcloth and Ashes. 

In the letter from Bryan J. Fair, last month, in the second paragraph it said “At present these are taught by the majority of teachers in a politically biased way.” This of course should have read unbiased.

Capitalism and the Internet (2): The Internet and Ideology (2000)

From the February 2000 of the Socialist Standard

Link 1

  The Internet is being hailed as a saviour by both capitalists and anti-capitalists alike. Rarely has any technology been so universally viewed as a holy grail by sworn mutual enemies. Who is right? Will it destroy capitalism or rejuvenate it?

At the Christopher Columbus school in Union City, New Jersey, a dustbin school with a dropout rate as high as its pass rate was low, an experiment was conducted in 1993. Each student was given a home PC and taught online, with both teacher and parent training to assist. The dropout rate fell to near zero, the daytime attendance rate rose to near perfect, and test scores rose 10 points higher than the NJ state average, in every subject. (http://www.gip.com).

Though schooling is unlikely ever to be entirely online, for social reasons, the possibilities of education in general via the Internet are nevertheless enormous. Traditional education—in real time—relies on too many ingredients being present in the right order, amount and quality. Virtual schools can tailor classes to individuals to a far higher degree of precision. Night school does not have to be at night, or local, or regular, or in one place, or reliant on one teacher. Educators have literally a world of resources to draw upon, while self-educators have the best access to knowledge of any generation that has existed. The establishment of the global knowledge network which we are now seeing has been aptly described by Douglas Rushkoff as “the hard-wiring of the global brain” (Cyberia 1994). Education, once the province of the rich and jealously guarded by them, is being democratised at an unprecedented rate. And ideology cannot change without a change in education.

Education is also about debate, and the lack of a public domain or sphere in which to discuss ideas has been held to be a key factor in late 20th Century ideological stagnation (Habermas, Schneider, Rheingold, quoted in Alinta Thornton’s Masters thesis, University of Sydney, (Link). Now, however, Usenet, the global network of mailing lists and newsgroups, is becoming an organic encyclopaedia and coffee house which permits debate on every issue 24 hours a day. As the Romans had the Forum, so we have Usenet. It is the new theatre in the war of ideologies now heating up. Good ideas will spread there. Bad ones will die there. Usenet is where theorists become activists, and where activists learn their theory. Capitalist ideologues are going to have to work harder in future, for educated populations cannot be fobbed off with fairy tales. They start to expect things their forebears didn’t even imagine. They start to make demands.

The DD Digerati

The first demand is more democracy. Capitalism in its advanced form relies on a model of liberal democracy to get the best out of workers, but it has to take a chance on them asking for too much. Now, governments from Britain to Malaysia to Costa Rica are “enthusiastically” experimenting with virtual council meetings and online voting in an effort to keep abreast of the public expectation of more open government. That this enthusiasm is ambivalent is shown by the fact that many of these same governments are also trying to legislate controls into the Internet—unsuccessfully as it happens. The cybergeek contingent—the “digerati”—are excitedly lyricising about running society with Direct Democracy instead of representative government, which they somewhat naively imagine was a democratic expedient imposed by geographical and other practical limitations.

Astonishing technical advance

Nobody who comprehends the class struggle will believe for an instant that the rich will allow Direct Democracy—except where it can’t do any harm and where it might bore us stupid with trivial decision-making. However, the expectation of more democracy is an important and empowering development nonetheless, for it represents a line of convergence with socialist thinking and away from the leadership mentality which plagues radical thinking. When it becomes loud enough, it will be a sign that the working class is gaining a little self-respect at last.

The second demand is a new agenda. As the organisational ability of “wired” protesters is now increasingly on a par with that of governments, as we saw with J18 and N30 and may see again with Mayday 2000, a new sense of potency seems to be sweeping through the radical mind. We don’t have to take it lying down. Corporations are not invulnerable. Individuals can be held to account. Even an entire social system can be challenged, as disparate and sometimes frankly deluded single-issue activists coalesce under the gravitational pull of common experience into what may yet become an embryonic anti-capitalism movement. Instead of being a passive consumerist mass, we can learn to think of ourselves as a proactive team of individuals. The Internet is creating a climate of new possibilities that cuts away at the dead growth of apathy and spawns a new idea: the network consciousness, a concept of interactive, interlinked human nodes in a vast, decentralised and co-operative process, a foretaste of working class consciousness.

Custodes custodiamus

Schooled however in the old thinking, we might conclude that the state will take over the Internet and use it as a new and terrible weapon of control over the working class. Accepting that they have always won in the past, we can only imagine that they will always win in the future. Is there not now a CCTV camera on every street corner? Do they not have their satellites, listening stations and Cray computers monitoring every move, purchase and phone call we make? Well, they may do, and those dedicated to underground criminal or insurrectionary activities may indeed worry about this, but there is something here for the monitors to worry about too—we can also watch them.

The near-level playing field of the cybersociety means that whatever they can do to us, we can do right back to them. This mutual integrated surveillance is already taking place, as US state governors now find themselves and their domestic affairs interrogated by an international brigade, and the government of Mexico finds its attempts to quietly crush the Zapatistas constantly harried and hamstrung by the unwelcome attention of the global online community. Amateur video of Rodney King helping police with their enquiries started the LA riots, and protesters now typically tool up with camcorders, laptops and mobile phones. Anything one protester discovers, all soon know. Governments, like the burglars they are, hate to work in the spotlight, and now it isn’t only the news media which are directing the beams. This is a game we can all play. Quis custodes custodiat? Answer: we do.

Bomb damage

Much is made of government censorship, and governments can certainly close down any website they don’t like. But only temporarily. Just as the forerunner of the Internet, ARPANET, was devised by the military to route around bomb damage to any node, so the Internet can equally route around censorship damage. Besides, the Net is global, whereas governments are local, and what one government dislikes another will frequently allow or ignore. China, so keen to imprison radical Internet users, is nevertheless in a minority of one where censorship is concerned, and its control of internal information flows is haemorrhaging at a thousand different points.

Monitoring of users worldwide is easily countered by the rapid growth of “anonymiser” sites (e.g. www.anonymiser.com), which strip out your personal details and let you roam without fear of identification. Autocensorship software is notoriously unreliable and it is easily outmanoeuvred. Besides, the rich themselves are not keen on government control. A book called Friendly Spies quotes the IBM office in Paris as having done a set of experiments to demonstrate the fact that the code keys they were required to share with the French government were being used for industrial espionage purposes (quoted in GIP).

It may not be states we have to worry about. The omniscient state may be an obsolescent dinosaur in any case, as capitalism militantly embraces the ‘free’ market and multinationals grow so powerful that “an estimated one quarter of all world trade now consists of sales between subsidiaries of the same firm” (Alvin & Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War, 1993).

  “The flow of information into or out of a nation can no longer be effectively controlled by the state; information is everywhere and accessible. To participate in the burgeoning economic benefits of world commerce means adopting practices that undermine state control . . .” (Carl Builder, Strategy analyst, RAND Corporation).

Riccardo Petrella, a former science and technology director at the European Commission, predicts the collapse of the nation state and the rise of a ‘hi-tech archipelago’ of city-states in conjunction with multinational companies, while Warren Christopher, former US Secretary of State, predicts “5000 countries rather than the hundred-plus we have now” and George Yao, Singapore deputy PM, foresees the disintegration of China into hundreds of city-states. (Quoted in Toffler).

Today, cutting edge; tomorrow, garbage

Were this to occur, it must be a disaster for fascist ideology, since it gives the nationalists just what they think they want, and lets them choke on it. People might fight for the right to be called Basques, Latvians or Chechens, but it is hard to imagine them fighting over Coke or Pepsi in the same way. In any case, war is likely to become increasingly hard to justify when the global working class is just that, global. Much of the hate propaganda necessary to stoke public sympathy for a war will be impossible to foist on an internationalised class which works together, online, every day of the week.

The String Vest of Secrecy

Even secrecy is on the wane in the future, if one believes the former science adviser to President Reagan, G. A. Keyworth. Pointing to the fact that traditional intelligence gathering has been on the monumental scale (the US Government produced 6.3 million classified documents in 1992 alone) and involves a huge industry of chaff sorting and “analysis paralysis”, he says: “The price of protecting information is so high that classification becomes a handicap”. Meanwhile Robert Steele of US Intelligence, a critic of the secrecy industry, says: “The hidden costs of secrecy are so immense they often outweigh the benefits by a wide margin.”

Steele and others argue for an open system, with very little secrecy. It is surprising what is already in the public domain. Larry Seaquist of US Naval Intelligence reports that they get more useful information from one Internet PC than all their private and highly secret SPARC workstations put together. There are already few things which are really secret, even if we might wish they were. An underground nuclear cookbook called Basement Nukes prompts Michael Golay, professor of nuclear engineering at MIT, to say: “What’s classified today is how to build a good weapon, not how to build a weapon.” In a wider sense, the Internet will by its nature militate against the holding of secrets, for risk-free disclosure is a button-press away for any individual and information sharing has long been the accepted mode of transaction online. The global brain, one might say, will steadily illuminate its own dark areas. Capitalist ideology, insofar as it depends on secrecy, is due for a hammering.

Paddy Shannon

(Next month: we continue the discussion of the impact of the Internet on capitalist ideology.)

Link to part 3

GLITCH 

As if to prove that computer technology is not infallible, in Part I of this series the first two paragraphs on page 9 of the January Socialist Standard , were garbled as a result of the unexplained introduction of material from another article. The garbled passage should have read:

Yet talk of “boxes” is itself an obsolescent concept, as Xerox have perfected “e-paper” (Observer, 22 August) and research continues towards wristwatch computers and even brain implants, giving rise to talk of “synthetic telepathy” in the more distant future. And as science revolutionises the Internet, so the Internet is revolutionising science. With the spatial decoupling of the scientist from the task, the so-called “collaboratory” is born, enabling multiple users to share a singe physical resource, enhanced productivity with no travel time, and participation by experimenters in multiple, geographically-distributed projects.

Our apologies to readers and the writers—Editors. 

Beyond anarchism (2015)

Book Review from the December 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

'The Next Revolution', by Murray Bookchin. Verso. 2015.

Murray Bookchin was among the strongest of figures to come out of twentieth century American radicalism. As well as being known for the establishment of ‘social ecology’ (a criticism of social problems coupled with ecological concerns) he also developed a political programme known as ‘libertarian municipalism’ which he saw as a method for getting from our present society of minority control and environmental destruction to a new rational and ecological society of mass democratic control.

The basic building block of libertarian municipalism is the community or neighbourhood assembly, face to face meetings where citizens meet to discuss and vote on the issues of the day. These assemblies elect mandated and recallable delegates who then link with other assemblies forming a confederated council, a 'community of communities'. The difference between this form of delegate democracy and our current form of representative democracy is that in a representative democracy power is given wholesale to the representative who then is free to act on their own initiative; in a delegate democracy the initiative is set by the electing body and the delegate can be recalled at any time should the electing body feel that their mandate is not being met, thus power remains at the base.

Bookchin saw the setting up of such assemblies as a task that could be initiated now, even if the only functions they could have initially were moral ones. He also saw that, as a means for extending the democratic legitimacy and for the further confederalisation of these bodies, it would be necessary to elect town and city councillors sympathetic to the cause. This position eventually led to Bookchin making a break with his previously held anarchism. Bookchin criticised the anarchists for holding a false theory on the nature of power. Instead of seeking to abolish power, which Bookchin thought was impossible as it is always a feature of political and social life, the purpose of an emancipatory politics should be to ensure that power is in the hands of masses and is dispersed equally among them. Bookchin used the classic example of Barcelona in July 1936 to illustrate this point. The defeat of the military coup meant that the CNT (an anarcho-syndicalist union) and its armed militias were now the only real power in the city. Despite this, and because of their anarchist ideology, the CNT refused to enter the government and to exercise the political power that they already had, thus leaving the door open for the eventual Stalinist take over. By refusing to take power, Bookchin argues, the anarchists did not destroy power but merely transferred it into the hands of their enemies. While the CNT did hold power in the factories and workplaces a vast swathe of real governmental power, from the administration of military affairs and the overseeing of justice, was left in control of the liberals and Stalinists who would later use this power to reverse the gains of the July victory.

Through the gradual building up of the power and spread of assemblies Bookchin hoped that libertarian municipalism could lead to a situation of dual power where the authority of the assemblies would eventually challenge that of the state. This brings us to our criticisms. Bookchin held that there was a distinction between the statecraft of professional politicians as the administrators of the governmental machine and politics proper as practised by free citizens engaging in the direct democracy of their self-managed communities. Whilst this distinction may be fair to a certain extent the practical conclusions that Bookchin drew from this do not seem to be very cogent. Bookchin thought that, in order to avoid becoming agents of the state, councillors standing in favour of libertarian municipalism should only stand for posts in local elections. If the majority of the population were in favour of libertarian municipalism then they would be able to use their votes to elect delegates at all levels of the state and so realise their programme that way. Failure to exercise political power at all levels would have the result of handing power to their opponents. Despite his criticism Bookchin repeats the mistake of the Spanish anarchists.

Moreover, Bookchin thought that councillors favourable to libertarian municipalism should stand on a typical reformist programme with its 'minimal' and 'maximum' demands. We would hold that it is this, rather than the supposed principle of 'power corrupts', that led to the 'revolutionary' parties of the past degenerating into nothing more than mere administrators of the existing order. Once elected on a platform of short term reforms it is these that come to take precedence over any 'maximum' long term revolutionary goals which fade away permanently into the background. In order to stay in power the party has to appease those who voted it in on a reformist platform.

In recent years the ideas of Bookchin have found an unlikely testing ground in Rojova, a semi-autonomous Kurdish area in north eastern Syria. Abdullah Öcalan, a former Leninist and imprisoned leader of the PKK, came across the works of Bookchin whilst in prison and saw their potential for organising the Kurds, a people without a state.

As an introduction to Bookchin's thought this book is not a bad place to start but as this is a collection of articles republished from various sources there is a certain amount of repetition of ideas and themes. Despite some significant differences there is much that the Socialist Party would agree with and find of use.

DJP

Letter: Should we drop the word "socialism"? (1999)

Correspondence from the February 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Should we drop the word "socialism"?

Dear Editors,

Thank you for a friendly, though brief, review of my pamphlet Autonarchy. Allow me to make a few comments on the review and the SPGB generally. I am writing this in a spirit of fraternity, not hostility, and hope you'll construe it in the same spirit.http://www.autonarchy.org.il/You end your review by saying that my definition of Socialism as "State ownership and rule by a Socialist Party" is not what the SPGB would recognise as Socialism, but rather it is State Capitalism.. Having lived in London from 1964 to 1990 I am familiar with the various views on State Capitalism. I know Tony Cliff well, but I chose to be a member of London's Solidarity group, not of the SWP. However, what follows is my personal view and does not implicate Solidarity.

I am fully aware that all over the world there were (and still are) many small groups of dedicated socialists who for many years denounced the USSR as anything but Socialism. I myself belonged to two such groups, one in Israel, and one in London. These groups deserve great respect for their courage, honesty, dedication, and insight. However, this cannot change the fact that for most people on this planet the term "Socialism" means, and will always mean, "the political system that existed in the USSR, and in all Eastern Bloc states". The reason for this is quite simple: The USSR, with its immensely powerful propaganda means, declared repeatedly that it was the embodiment of Socialism. So did every state of the Eastern Bloc, as well as China, Vietnam, North Korea. This propaganda barrage went on day and night for many decades. Moreover, all Capitalist regimes too denounced the USSR and all Eastern Bloc states as "Socialist".

Did you ever stop to consider the effect this view, propagated for decades, by every government and media on both sides of the Iron Curtain, had on the vast majority of the world's population? I suggest you do so. Seriously. You and I agree that what existed in the USSR and all Eastern Bloc states was not socialism. But for 99.99% of the world's population these regimes were socialism, because this is what these regimes said and what their enemies said. Any political organisation which today advocates Socialism as an alternative to Capitalism will be considered by 99.99 percent of the population everywhere as advocating the regime in the defunct USSR and the Eastern Bloc states. It is not a regime most people desire, and we know it is a bad alternative to Capitalism.

Of course you'll say "But our definition of Socialism is different". It is indeed. But what matters is what most people understand by this term, not what 0.0001 percent understands by it. This is what Hegel meant when he said: "world history is world judgement". Your definition of Socialism matters a lot to you, but it is not what the vast majority of the people understand by that term. Actual history hijacked the term "Socialism" and no one can rescue it. I know you'll say: "But this is a travesty of the term". I agree. So you'll continue: "We shall explain to people what we mean by Socialism, and they will accept that". I'm sure you'll explain your version, but it will cut no ice with 99.99 percent of the population anywhere. You'll spend all your time and resources in an everlasting debate over semantics of a term. You might—at best—convince a handful.The majority will accept the meaning which this term acquired in actual history. A minority will be put off by the multiplicity of meanings and endless arguments over the meaning of a word. I am fully aware that all this will not convince a single one of you to drop their allegiance to the term. Fine. Just hear me out.

Socialists who seriously intend to promote a viable alternative to Capitalism, capable of capturing the hearts and minds of many millions of people all over the world have two problems with the term "Socialism". First, the term has been irredeemably sullied by a long history of abusive practice in the "Socialist" States and is irretrievably associated with this practice. Second, the original, unsullied, meaning of the term has become fuzzy, and dated. Anyone who wants to present an alternative to Capitalism today must spell out in clear, precise, and unambiguous terms, that alternative.

On page 2 of the Socialist Standard you print the principles of your alternative to Capitalism which the SPGB upholds since 1904. But society has changed significantly since 1904. First there were all the changes after WW1, then all the changes after WW2, then the changes after the '60s. Many ills of capitalism are still with us and that system must be replaced, but being unemployed in 1998 is very different from being unemployed in 1904. The social, economic, and political problems of 1998 are very different from those of 1904. Sticking to a language and a programme drafted in 1904 renders you irrelevant today. By all means stick to the principle of Common Ownership and rejection of Capitalism, but take account of the new socio-economic reality and adapt your language and tactics to it. I am saying this as a person who wants to see you become far more influential in Britain today.
Moreover, "Common Ownership" is a fuzzy term. How exactly will this "Common Ownership" be exercised? Who is included in this "Commonality"? You must give detailed answers because one form of "Commonality" was implemented in the USSR and people—including those in the USSR—rejected it. Next, you advocate "Democratic Control". How—precisely and in detail—will this Democratic Control be exercised? Here too people will rightly mistrust everyone who talks about the idea without providing detail about its substance.

Anyone calling her/himself "Socialist"—however that term is defined—will not escape the mistrust induced by the use of this term in the USSR. Anyone offering alternatives to Capitalism must see to it that this alternative is formulated in detailed terms. Otherwise they will be mistrusted. Rightly. The Autonarchy pamphlet provides a new term for the alternative to Capitalism. It preserves and updates the original spirit of Socialism but replaces the term. This relieves one from endless—futile—arguments over "Socialism", and offers a detailed political system based on Direct Democracy in the State, at work, and in sites of education.

Moreover, the call for Direct-Democracy at the place of work and at the place of education, can start right away, today. It will immediately win adherents in places of work and education. Many will accept the idea and begin to implement it in their daily life. The struggle to implement Direct Democracy in the home, in neighborhoods, at work, in education, and in the State as a whole, does not require the economic collapse of Capitalism! Autonarchy initiates a struggle to implement an alternative to Capitalism right away. Setting up CDDs (Committees for Direct Democracy) everywhere can start here and now.

Autonarchy is both a long term objective and a tactic to be implemented immediately. It is a mobilizing call for a struggle not over wages but over decision-making authority at the place of work, education, and in the State as a whole. The struggle for Direct Democracy is not something remote from people's daily life. It is a struggle for gaining control over one's daily life, in the home, at work, in education.

I have no shred of doubt this struggle can win widespread support within a few years. Society is ripe for Direct Democracy, and for the struggle to implement it. Think it over. Direct Democracy is not some utopian scheme that popped up in one mind during a dream. Nine million French workers demanded exactly what the pamphlet advocates when they went on a general strike for twenty days in May 1968.

Aki Orr, 

Kfar-Shmaryahu, Israel

Reply:
1. As an organisation which campaigns exclusively for socialism (as we understand it of course) we are in a unique position to know how people react to the word. Your claim that 99.99 percent of people think that socialism is what used to exist in Russia is an absurd exaggeration (that would mean that only about 6000 people in Britain take the opposite few). But we get your point. Many more people think that Russia was socialist than agree with our definition of socialism.

You think that we should therefore give up the word and find some other term to describe our aim. Don't think that this hasn't occurred to us. Various other terms have been suggested—"world co-operative commonwealth", "world of free access". Others, outside our ranks, have come up with "economic democracy", "self-managed society", "free society".

Our experience is that, when people first hear us saying we stand for socialism, most do indeed take us to be standing for "state ownership and rule by a socialist party" (a far broader concept than what existed in Russia) but, when we explain what we do stand for, quite a number say "oh, you mean true socialism" or "pure communism". Significantly, those who have experimented with other terms are often met with the same reaction.

This reflects the fact that, despite the former regime in Russia dragging the name of socialism through the mud by associating it with dictatorship, secret police, gulags and the rest, to many people the word "socialism" still retains an association with maybe vague ideas of social justice, equality, democracy, community and production for use not profit. In other words, despite Russia, socialism still has an underlying positive image for many people.

Besides, we are part of an unbroken tradition going back to those who first used the word and which has retained the original meaning they gave to it despite and in face of Russia and Labour and similar governments. Why should we surrender the word, especially as Russia has failed and Labour-type parties are now openly pro-capitalist? The field is now free for us to assert the word's original meaning.

Having said this, we don't make a fetish of the word. On occasions we are prepared to use some other term to express what we stand for since what is important is what we stand for and not what it is called. So we have and do use alternative terms such as "world co-operative commonwealth", "world of free access" and "free society". However—sorry, we must be honest—we don't think we'll give "autonarchy" a go; take it from us, it would be a hopeless non-starter. "Anarchy", or words associated with it, tends to have an even more negative image among the working class than "socialism" or possibly "communism".

2. You also suggest that because we stick to the same basic principles as when we were set up in 1904 we are irrelevant since today things are very different from then. But are they? Read—taking into account the declamatory political style in vogue when it was written, of which it is a fine example—what our principles say: that present-day society is based on the ownership of productive resources by a small minority class; that there is a conflict of interest between this minority and the majority class whose work produces the wealth that keeps society going; that this conflict can only be ended by the majority organising consciously, democratically and politically to make the means of production the common property of the community under the democratic control of all the people.
What's wrong with that? Is or is there not a minority who own and control the means of production? Is or is it not the work of the majority that keeps society going? Is or is there not a conflict of interest between the dominating minority and the rest of us?

It is true that there have been tremendous advances in technology that have transformed everyday living (telephones, television, cars, etc) and that consumption levels for most workers in certain parts of the world have risen (even if less than profits), but work is still employment by another and just as alienating and stressful and unemployment just as devastating and excluding.

3. You ask us to be clear as to what we mean by "common ownership". Well, for a start, we don't mean state ownership; what you call the "commonality" is all the people not the state which represents only a section of society. At present the ownership of the productive resources by which society lives is divided up amongst separate individuals and institutions (firms, states, even co-operatives). Common ownership is the opposite of this situation: it means the absence of any such sectional control over access to and use of productive resources.

With common ownership, nobody or no institution exercises exclusive ownership rights over resources; it is, in effect a condition of "no ownership". Such resources are simply there at the disposal of all the members of society as a whole, to be used in accordance with their decisions. To make such decisions—i.e., to exercise democratic control—the members of society need to set in place procedures which allow every member of society the chance to have an equal say in the way things are run. Although this can be envisaged as involving "direct democracy" in neighbourhoods and workplaces, for wider decisions (as we pointed out in our review of your pamphlet) it would also have to involve "indirect" democracy via elected delegates.

If such procedures for exercising "democratic control" did not exist, then it would not be possible to talk about "common ownership" either, since, in that case, ownership of the means of production would be in the hands of those who did have the power to make the decisions about how to use productive resources. So, for us "common ownership" and "democratic control" of the means of production by all the people are one and the same thing; they are in the end just two ways of describing the same situation.

Further, with common ownership, what is produced, as well as the means to produce it, is commonly owned, so that it does not need to be sold. It, too, is simply there, to be distributed to where it is needed, whether this be another workplace for further transformation into a finished product or a distribution centre to which people can come and take what they need. Common ownership means the disappearance of buying and selling and so also money, markets, banks, wages, profits and the rest.

4. We knew Solidarity of course. One of our disagreements with them was precisely because they didn't regard "common ownership" and "democratic control" as being one and the same thing. They put all the emphasis on "democratic control" or, as they put it, "self-management", and believed that this could be achieved without ending the money-wages-profits system which is the essence of capitalism.

In 1972 Solidarity published under the title Workers Councils and the Economics of A Self-Managed Society a long article originally written in 1957 by Cornelius Castoriadis (who went on to become a French intellectual guru in his own right). This pamphlet painted a picture of factories and other workplaces being controlled by elected Workers Councils in the context of the continuation of the money-wages-profits system. Thus, in a given factory, the workers would elect a Council which would decide on the level of wages, the price of the product, the amount of profits to be re-invested, etc. This was Solidarity's conception of "socialism"; echoes of it can be found in your view that the struggle today is over "decision-making authority" in society (rather than over the ownership and control of the productive resources by which society lives). It was the completely impractical idea of direct workers' control of a capitalist economy.

If Solidarity had also envisaged the end of the whole money-wages-profits system this would have been socialism. But then "workers council" would have been a misnomer since socialism, being a classless society, involves the disappearance of the working class just as much as of the capitalist class. "Democratic councils" would have been a more appropriate term. A society where the means of production belong to everybody and run by democratic councils, that's socialism

- Editors.