Limited Choices (2024)

Book Review from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like? By Daniel Chandler. Penguin £10.99.

In 1971 the political philosopher John Rawls published A Theory of Justice. This has had a massive impact in the academic world, giving rise to a great many articles and books discussing its argument, but it has so far had few consequences in practical politics, and that is what Daniel Chandler sets out to alter here. He presents arguments for a ‘fair society’, which Rawls referred to as ‘realistically utopian’. This review will focus on Chandler’s proposals, sometimes looking at the theoretical background to these.

Essentially, a programme of reforms is set out, including universal basic income and a higher minimum wage. There would be increased taxes on capital income, more progressive inheritance tax and an annual wealth tax on the largest fortunes. Employees should have more say in how their workplaces are run, and co-management (which is found in Germany) would mean workers and owners sharing control rights within a company. Worker co-operatives might be an improvement on this, though. Fee-paying schools would be abolished, and more would be spent on children from less-advantaged backgrounds. University education would be financed by combining free tuition and income-contingent loans. Politics could be made more democratic if corporate donations to political parties were banned and there was a cap on individual donations. Each citizen could be given a ‘democracy voucher’, so they could make an annual donation to a party or candidate of their choice. A combination of electoral and direct democracy would make political equality more likely. Communities could be in charge of local budgets, perhaps by means of citizens’ assemblies.

Rawls’ work is based on a thought experiment. In Chandler’s words, ‘we should ask ourselves what kind of world we would choose to live in if we didn’t know who we would be within it’. Presumably people would opt for a world with little inequality or discrimination, with nobody’s life experience dependent on their gender, ethnicity or sexuality, with equality of opportunity as far as possible. But the trouble is that both authors’ views are stuck within capitalism. Chandler writes: ‘We should rely on markets to distribute most consumer goods and services because the alternative would be some form of state-controlled rationing.’ But this is not the only alternative: a society of free access and production for use based on the common ownership of the means of living could provide a decent life for everyone.

The few remarks made here about socialism are not at all enlightening. Chandler says it is not clear what sort of society socialists today stand for. In a note he states that socialists now advocate reforms, rather than the use of public ownership and central planning, as supposedly used to be the case. But acquaintance with the case of the Socialist Party would show that we oppose reformism and have a definite proposal for future society, and this does not involve central planning. A better response to Rawls’ thought experiment would be a world without money or classes or states or borders, and this is entirely realistic.

Paul Bennett

Starmer’s plan for British capitalism (2022)

From the September 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is your periodic (though unnecessary) reminder that the membership of the Labour Party elected as their leader – and thus chief spokesperson – a man who has accepted a knighthood. This speaks volumes about Keir Starmer’s attitude to the existing state of affairs, and of the political commitment and understanding of Labour Party members. He is committed to retaining and defending the existing state of society.

On 25 July this year he gave what, doubtless, his publicity team would consider a keynote speech. After the usual political lambasting of his opponents, he delivered his stunning prescription:

‘To give Britain the fresh start it needs, we need a new approach. The goal is straightforward – to maximise the contribution we all make to national prosperity. Every business, every person, every community.’

This is very much going back to the mantra of New Labour and using the state to co-ordinate and promote capitalist agendas. He also makes it clear that he is acting in the name of capitalism in general, because the problem has been:

‘The best of British business is the best in the world. But we have geared our whole economy to delivering only for those firms.’

That is, that only some capitalists are benefitting at the expense of others. This has the neat advantage of playing into the essentially apolitical attack line about Tory corruption, absent which, prosperity for all may rain down. It is also notable because it ideologically subordinates economic activity to ‘the national interest.’ As he says: ‘A strong national economy needs everyone making the best contribution they can.’ And ‘[L]ow growth countries are weaker at standing up for the national interest.’

Starmer sees it as a collective national effort, where the citizens work for ‘the nation’, but just that the citizens should be justly rewarded, and ‘hard work’ made to pay. Human freedom and treating people as ends in themselves is a long way from his imagination. So, he says:

‘To do all that we need three things: Growth. Growth. And Growth. That’s why I have told the Shadow Cabinet that every policy they bring forward will be judged by the contribution it makes to growth and productivity.’

A quick check on Wikipedia gives the following definition: ‘Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy over a certain period of time.’ That is, Starmer wants us to create ever more value. Above all else he is channelling the spirit of capital itself, value as the end in itself, not people; and we are all to be subordinated to that impossible voracious demand.

This is, of course, the essential social-democrat position, seeing themselves as removing the inefficiencies of the market system in order to save it and generate productivity. This saves them a lot of trouble, as they are able to argue against redistribution on the basis that a small (or even smaller) share of a bigger pie can be bigger than a bigger share of a smaller pie. It leaves them relying on the market system to generate increasingly cheap goods.

This comes with a price, though, as it centralises a certain blackmail: the owners of capital get to say that if they don’t get their profit, no-one else will get any benefits. Indeed, this claim has become a central mantra of Tory politicians of late, that social benefits depend on economic growth. In this topsy-turvy ideological world, capitalists are able to project themselves as wealth creators, who simply give out the jobs and benefits on which we all depend.

In the hands of Labour Party right-wingers, this is coupled with the liberal philosopher John Rawls’ notion:

‘That social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that “they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society” i.e. an unequal distribution of wealth or other resources can be just when it maximizes the benefit to those who have the lowest allocation of resources – the Maximin theory?’ (Link).

So, growth and wealth at the top should be encouraged and help should be targeted at the poorest. Given that without that growth they would have nothing, this allows the argument that letting some people generate huge amounts of personal wealth benefits more than the alternatives.

So Starmer, in his speech promises:

1. ‘We will be financially responsible.
2. We will be distinctively British.
3. We will work in partnership with business.
4. We will re-energise communities and spread economic power.
5. We will refocus our investment on boosting productivity.’

Leaving aside the blithering nonsense about being distinctively British, whatever that means — that’s just branding — financial responsibility means Labour will avoid interfering with property rights, by taxing, borrowing, and using resources within capitalist rules. He even invokes the ‘magic money tree’ to emphasise that they will be responsible, and to distance himself from his predecessor. He emphasises:

‘Modern industrial strategy isn’t about growing the size of the state – it’s about what the state does.’

So, partnership means partnership with, not state direction of, business; targeted support to help businesses grow, grow, grow. Interestingly he uses the term ‘mission-driven partnership’ which is suggestive of the ideas of the economist Mariana Mazzucatto, whose work John McDonnell also referenced as a source for his economic ideas (Link).

She notes that the state is entrepreneurial, and responsible for a lot of long-term investment in the economy; and advocates mission-based projects, akin to the moon landings, where the state can focus economic activity. This is suggestive that Starmer is triangulating talking to the right, while preparing some more Brownite interventionism, but all of this is ultimately dependent upon the grace and protection of the handful of people who own the economy. Ultimately, his plan for capital is about making the system work the way it does in its own imagination. It’s an ideological fantasy exercise.

Pik Smeet

Libertarian attack (1986)

From the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

A great deal of abuse is heaped on the Socialist Party by David McDonagh of the Libertarian Alliance, described by his organisation as a "libertarian writer and lecturer". McDonagh has filled the first issue of The Libertarian Student with stuff about the SPGB.

It consists of an "Address to Birmingham branch of the SPGB on the Virtue of Libertarianism or (Classical) Liberalism" and an article entitled "The Last Socialist Party". The first offering may have been all right as a talk but as a written piece it's disjointed and doesn't have a clear thread. John Rawls's theory of the "Original Position" keeps popping up and may be the key to the whole thing. But the explanation of it lacks clarity and this doesn't help the argument. We might expect better than this, because the Anarcho-Capitalists (or Libertarians) have a genuinely interesting case which can't be lightly dismissed. Unfortunately. McDonagh's piece makes you want to do just that because it's full of silly jibes that spoil and disperse the argument rather than give it weight. There is no need to repeat them but we can stick to the serious points which, with some effort, can be abstracted from the insults.

The basic argument is that you can't have socialism — a world moneyless society of free access without the market and without prices — because such a society would have no way of allocating what will always be scarce resources. "We would not know", says McDonagh "what to do without the market signals". And even "superabundance", he argues, would not solve the problem since the possible lines of production are infinite and "we cannot do all things at once". So, the argument goes on, even if water, for example, can be superabundant, "we could always be doing something else" and only the market can tell us the correct economic thing we should be doing. According to McDonagh, therefore, the practicalities of organisation make free access society impossible and what we should go for instead is a free market system operating throughout the world without states and with a single world currency.

McDonagh 's objection to socialism is one, he says, that the Socialist Party made no effort to answer till 1984 when it published an article in its bi-annual international journal. the World Socialist. The article didn't satisfy McDonagh but, for accuracy's sake, it should be said that a previous article on the topic had appeared in the Socialist Standard (December 1982), that other articles had dealt with it implicitly and that the Socialist Party has, since 1979, been debating with Libertarian opponents publicly and putting on public sale or hire tape recordings of these debates. And if before 1979 the Party had not dealt explicitly with the Libertarian point, this is because only since then has it started to be put to us. It may, as McDonagh tells us, have been around since the 1850s and been argued most strongly by Mises and Hayek in the 1920s. But if we didn't hear it. how could we answer it?

One thing is certain however. The Libertarians do have a serious argument which has to be answered. The best way to answer it would be to set out a blueprint for socialism showing exactly how resources can be efficiently planned and allocated without the market as an economic calculator. But this we cannot do: firstly because it would be quite undemocratic for the small minority we are now to think we can lay down detailed plans for how the majority must organise their democratically established society in the future; and secondly we have no way of knowing what the level of technology and expertise at the time of a socialist majority will allow in terms of planning and organisation. What we can do, however, and what we are doing is to put forward informed suggestions as to how a socialist majority, if it inherited the present level of technology and expertise, might decide to co-operatively organise the world's resources on the basis of production for need. It's probably true, as McDonagh suggests, that we don't have enough data to do this with any accuracy. However, this is not because the data can never be available but because capitalism, working as it does through the market, does not give the impetus for the large social task of assembling that data to be undertaken. A growing conscious majority anxious for socialism will have the impetus to undertake that task and will certainly make detailed democratic plans ahead of taking political power about how socialist society will be organised.

The speculative work we are doing at present on the details of socialist organisation won't of course satisfy the Libertarians' demand for a blueprint. But then it's not meant to be a blueprint. It's meant to be a move towards demonstrating in a practical way that it's well within the skills, the techniques, the intelligence and the powers of organisation of collective humanity to run the planet in its own common interest.

More about this is to be found in the recent pamphlet, From Capitalism to Socialism: How We Live and How We Could Live and in the soon to be published Socialism as a Practical Alternative. All Anarcho-Capitalists should read both.

Howard Moss

Rear View: Corbynism or socialism? (2017)

The Rear View Column from the November 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Corbynism or socialism?

Real socialism has recently been the subject of two articles in mainstream media in as many weeks. Such occurrences are very rare even during elections in which socialists campaign, leaving us to agree with Oscar Wilde when he stated ‘the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about’. Neither thesun.co.uk (28 September) nor nationalreview.com (6 October) score top Marx for accuracy, but many of their readers will have been shocked to see excerpts from our twitter account – @OfficialSPGB – such as ‘outdated failing capitalism must be eradicated and replaced with socialism and forget about wanting to manage capitalism to make it nicer’. The Sun is as superficial as ever, but National Review’s Jonah Goldberg tries harder. His best effort at critique invokes John Rawls: ‘any attempt to create a “true socialist” society runs into the Iron Law of Oligarchy. Every organization requires some small group of people to make important decisions.’ But no leadership has emerged since our formation in 1904 and our structure is based on democratic accountability and delegated function. Our registered ‘leader’ for electoral purposes is no different from any other member – other than that he had the misfortune for his name to be drawn from a hat!

Premier league parasites

Revolutionary change can only come about as a result of, as Marx and Engels put it, ‘the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority’. Until then, capitalism with its wars and want will remain. Until then, leaders and social parasites will continue to parade their privilege. ‘The Sultan of Brunei celebrated his 50 years on the throne of the tiny oil-rich nation in typically understated style. Dressed in gold brocade and festooned with medals, the sultan entered the capital – with his wife Queen Saleha and their children – on a gilded chariot pulled by 50 members of staff. The five-kilometre procession through the streets of Bandar Seri Begawan was part of a month-long celebration of his golden jubilee… Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Haji Omar Ali Saifuddien Sa’adul Khairi Waddien Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam is… the world’s wealthiest monarch and was once the world’s richest man, with a personal wealth estimated at £15 billion ($20bn) in 2008. He lives in an 1,788-room palace and owns one of the world’s most valuable collections of high-performance supercars’ (ibtimes.co.uk, 5 October). Two others playing in the same league, Russia’s dictator Putin and the Saudi king, met recently. ‘Asked about ties with Riyadh during a panel discussion at an international energy conference Wednesday, Putin responded that Moscow doesn’t see close US-Saudi relations as an obstacle for closer cooperation with the Saudis, and added that alliances tend to shift. “Is there anything in the world that stays unchanged?” Putin said. “I think that all things change”‘ (abcnews.go.co, 4 October). Which for the 99 percent means the more things change, the more they stay the same.

ICAN! UCAN’T!

Unsurprisingly, ‘NATO gave a chilly reception to nuclear disarmament group ICAN’s Nobel Peace Prize win Friday, saying efforts to end the atomic bomb must take into account the “realities” of global security.’ The reality is that nations compete over natural resources, trade routes and areas of domination. Such competition can and does result in war. ICAN, ‘the Geneva-based organisation, recognised by the Nobel committee for its decade-long campaign, was a key player in the adoption of a treaty symbolically banning nuclear weapons, signed by 122 countries at the UN in July. NATO, which has three of the world’s nuclear powers in its ranks, strongly criticised the treaty, saying it risked undermining the international response to North Korea’s atomic weapons programme. Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s secretary-general, welcomed “the attention given to the issue” of disarmament by the Nobel Committee and said NATO was committed to creating conditions for a world without nuclear weapons’ (en.prothom-alo.com, 6 October). UCAN’T expect peace in a capitalist world where war is endemic. Why focus on one type of weapon of war when the solution is to get rid of them all, and war itself by establishing socialism? ‘Our house is burning because it is made of inflammable materials—and people will keep dropping lighted matches. It is useless to tackle each fire as it breaks out. We must build ourselves a new house’ (A Message for Aldermaston Marchers, April 1960).