Correspondence: Next one please. (1915)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

To The Editor.

The S.LP. of A., in dealing with the criticism of A. E. J. in the “Weekly People” dated the 6th of March. They say: Pure and simple politics fail and always will fail the workers because they fail to attend to the one Source of Power which the workers possess, the economic power, that is, that power which the workers daily have in their hands when they are in the workshops—the power over industry.

A. E. J., in the “S.S.,” April issue, in the course of his remarks on the above criticism says: The idea that the workers have power over industry is exquisite foolery. What conceivable force gives them any such power, etc. In your July issue you tell the workers to use its supreme economic power for the liberation of human kind from wage slavery. Is that not a contradiction of A. E. J.’s remarks which you have endorsed by the fact that you gave publication to. What is economic power ?

Yours truly,

T. W. Creswick, 

Kennington, S.E.

———————————–

If Mr. Creswick had given the matter a moment’s thought he would have saved himself the labour of writing. The contradiction only exists in his own mind.

We may take the definition given in his own letter. That definition is narrow, but it will suffice. Economic power is power over industry. It is, as stated by A. E. J., exquisite foolery to say that the workers have this power in their hands when they are in the workshops. It is as absurd as it would be to say that the slave who lugged laboriously at an oar in a Roman galley under the lash of the slave driver had economic power in his hands. The differences between the chattel-slave and the wage-slave in this respect are due to the political rights of the latter, which are in turn the outcome of economic necessity.

In the leading article of the July “S.S.” the statement occurs, referred to by our correspondent, of the need for the working class to “become masters of the State, and use the supreme economic power for the liberation of human kind from wage-slavery.” This, of course, is the very reason we are a political party. It is because the State has supreme “power over industry.” The article in question showed how the State was rapidly becoming more and more the direct exploiter of industrial undertakings. The political State, with its armed forces and machinery of government, is ever more obviously the supreme “power over industry” that must be captured by the working class. Until the workers control it, they are themselves controlled by it both economically and politically, that is to say, both by government and by private capitalists.

The essential difference, therefore, between economic power and political power, in this connection, is that the political power is the supreme economic power. Individual capitalists only wield economic power by virtue of their political control of the State, which guarantees, enforces, limits or extends their economic power.

This simple fact, that the political State is the supreme economic power, is always overlooked by Syndicalists. It enforces the need for political action above all, as the coordinate and culmination of the organised wages struggle ; and it shows how entirely correct was A. E. J. in his stricture upon the S.L.P. of A.

Ed. Com.

Correspondence. (1917)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

F. A. H. (Leicester.)—Taking your points in the order in which you give them we append our criticism.

“(1) That social development takes place through the action and reaction of economic and political power.”

This question assumes that there is an “economic” power apart from political power, but this assumption is incorrect. Actually “economic” power is a misnomer, and is merely a term for actions of an economic character which take place under the shelter and protection of the political power.

To take a well-known historical instance : It was not until the merchant class—the forerunners of the modern capitalists—had gained a large share of political power that they were able, effectively, to fight against and finally overthrow, the feudal rulers.

Fundamentally social development takes place because of the continued discoveries and inventions in the methods of producing and distributing wealth. When these changes reach a certain stage in their growth they come into conflict with the social arrangements and order that were made to suit the older methods. To continue in existence society must alter its form and order, that is, re-adapt itself to the new conditions. Obviously the class whose material interests are bound up with the old methods will endeavour to retain and preserve the old form and order of society, while the class whose interests are connected with the new method will endeavour to bring about a change. The power to make this change—since the institution of private property in the means of life—rests in the control of the political machinery, that is, the machinery under which laws are made and the force raised to carry them out. Hence as Marx says: “Every class struggle is a political struggle,” because it is only by obtaining possession of political power that the new rising class can establish the social forms in harmony with the economic changes. History shows this in every change that has taken place in the forms of society since private property was established.

“(2) That each developing class takes the line of least resistance, which is to say, of course, that it takes the one that is open to it.”

Not until a series of struggles and experience’s have shown them the error of various ways do the developing class find the right road—which is really the line of least resistance—for the object in view. Over and over again a developing class has been deceived and misled by the ruling class of its day into taking a road quite contrary to its (the developing class’s) own interests. How often have the modern working class been, misled in this way !

“(3) That the difference of the coming revolution from previous ones lies in this, that some measure of political power must first be acquired, and this results from the fact that in the movements which have previously led to revolutions it was not necessary at their inception to visibly deprive the then ruling classes of property, this being effected by the development of the means of production or the property forms themselves.”

As shown in the answer to No. 1, the idea in the first portion of the above statement is wholly incorrect, and the reason given in the second portion is equally erroneous. To go back no further than the French Revolution of 1789, the feudal owners were completely dispossessed of their property, which was handed over to the peasants under conditions laid down in the Code Napoleon. When chattel-slavery was abolished in America it meant the confiscation of a huge amount of property—for, of course, the chattel-slave was property in every sense of the word—from the slave owners. And this has been true of every revolution in history.

“(4) When the S.P.G.B. is attacked for not defining in detail the method of organisation and procedure, am I right in saying that if their general principles are correct efficient organisation will naturally follow; and to a certain extent the details must be dictated by circumstances yet to arise. Also that their organisation, will be, by its very nature, sufficiently pliable to meet all the needs of the revolution ?”

Your answer generally is right, but it may be noted that a real understanding of correct principles is necessary for sound and efficient organisation. Then the direction of such organisation will be retained in the hands of its members, who may vary its details to suit circumstances.

—Ed. Com.

Jenks on politics. (1905)

From the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

By Politics we mean the business of Government, that is to say, the control and management of people living together in a Society. A Society, again, is a group or mass of people, bound together by a certain common principle or object. A mere chance crowd is not a Society; it has no definite object, it collects and disperses at the whim of the moment, its members recognise no duties towards one another. It has no history, no organisation.

Professor Jenks.

Hopes and Fears for Democracy (1941)

From the September 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the present war the word democracy is continually being used by many who have different ideas as to its meaning. We are supposed in this country to have developed a means of democratic expression to a point beyond that reached by the people of other lands, but so long as the means of production are owned by the capitalist class democracy is worked in the interest of the exploiter. Bertrand Russell, in his book “Power,” brings out a point or two in this connection.

  In democratic countries the most important private organisations are economic. Unlike secret societies, they are able to exercise their terrorism without illegality since they do not threaten to kill their enemies but only to starve them. By means of such threats, which do not need to be explicitly uttered, they have frequently defeated even governments, for example, recently in France.

The above is interesting and induces one to recall certain incidents nearer home, but the most striking statement in the book is the author’s contention that exploitation can take place in a country where the means of production are in appearance “commonly” owned if there is not full and free political democracy.

 Under any form of Socialism which is not democratic those who control economic power can, without ‘owning’ anything, have palatial official residences, the use of the best cars, a princely entertainment allowance, holidays at public expense in official holiday resorts, and so on and on. And why should they have any more concern for the ordinary worker than those in control have now? There can be no reason why they should have, unless the ordinary worker has power to deprive them of their positions. . . . To suppose that irresponsible power, just because it is called Socialist or Communist, will be freed miraculously from the bad qualities of all arbitrary power in the past is merely childish nursery psychology.

Of course the author is wrong in calling this a “form of Socialism.” The old Socialist was not far out when he wrote : “There can be no Socialism without democracy and there can be no democracy without Socialism.”

The suppression of democracy in Germany, Japan, Italy and Spain is an attempt to turn the clock back, and we are interested in the matter inasmuch as we are desirous of knowing to what extent the dictatorships are in line with the economic development. In other words, is there to be a curtailment of democratic privileges even in the so-called democratic countries? Capitalism is a system that will last until it is replaced, and those who live by exploiting labour power will not hesitate to use any means they may possess to safeguard their ownership of the means of life.

Who would have thought even five years ago that the French people, after over a century of democracy, would be compelled to submit to decrees of a dictator ?

Things slip back very quickly under certain conditions ; the privileges the working class are supposed to have enjoyed for generations may disappear overnight.

Some three years ago there appeared a book by Aurel Kolnai, “The War against the West,” which clearly depicted the dangers of “National Socialism.” The literature published by German writers was little read here before the present war, but a study of it shows that “National Socialism” is, and prides itself on being, the great counter-revolution against the Western revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

It is, according to Auriel Kolnai, an uprising against the ideas of 1789.

 Against liberalism and the rights of man, against any rational universal order and against the bare attitudes of Christian and Greek civilisation. The doctrines of National Socialism are deeply rooted in German history and expressive of some aspects of the German mind. Nazism is more than Prussianism has ever been, it is more than National Chauvinism. It bears within itself the seeds of pan-German Imperialism as well as a semi-religious pan-Fascist Imperialism. It is therefore not only a menace of war but a fountain head of propaganda. All economic and social issues in Germany have since the rise of Hitler been subordinated to one central thought—the approach of the epoch of the Germans on world history.

With the victory of the counter-revolution over the West, the nation “that will crush the humanitarian life of Europe and hoist the banner of true order,” will necessarily become the undisputed head and leader of Europe and all mankind—so runs the Nazi creed.

He concludes with Masaryk’s words: “Democracy is still in its infancy.” If we had to probe the subject more thoroughly we should in all probability find that the material conditions prevailing in Europe, and in Germany in particular, after the war 1914-1918, were in the main largely responsible for the appearance of Nazism and Fascism, but the ordinary writer does not look at things from a Socialist standpoint and considers that a particular ideology is responsible instead of reasoning the other way round.

The present struggle is spreading to every portion of the planet, and the ruling class of the democratic countries can only hope by arousing the working class of their own countries to be able to wage war whole-heartedly against the dictatorships.

To do this they must offer them something worth striving to attain, something worth the sacrifice, and Capitalism has nothing to offer. The question now arises, will democracy be maintained by the momentum of history by those people that are striving to subdue Hitler? Or will the working class of the democratic countries not only line up and fight Nazism but strive in the process to put an end to Capitalism and bring into being Socialism ?

We confess we do not know. Society springs many surprises upon us. Those who live by selling their labour power often take a course of action (generally a wrong one) which even Socialists do not anticipate. As stated before in these columns, events have taken charge and society is largely at their mercy. We cannot tell what is coming in the immediate future, but we know that Socialism must emerge in the long run. We also know what is our duty, and that is to boldly put forward Socialism as the only possible solution to the world’s problems. The common ownership of the means of life is now an economic necessity, and this, together with production solely for use under a democratic administration eliminates Nazism, war and economic worry.

When Socialism comes then is man free. Under Capitalism “the commodities control the producers.” Man is the creature of the mechanism of his own creation.

The war at bottom and in the last analysis is a blind attempt on the part of society to escape being crushed by the forces which man himself has developed and set in motion. Forces which he does not, and, under Capitalism, cannot control. He must understand the nature of these forces, and by understanding transform them from merciless masters into willing servants.

A knowledge of Socialism enables man to command by knowledge these social forces and change society for the benefit of all.

Charles Lestor

Society: Abstraction or Reality (2020)

From the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Such a thing as society?

Margaret Thatcher once famously said that there is no such thing as society, just individuals and families. It sounds like obvious nonsense, but she claimed that this remark was usually quoted out of context:

  ‘My meaning, clear at the time but subsequently distorted beyond recognition, was that society was not an abstraction, separate from the men and women who composed it, but a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations.’

This in effect negates her original statement, and she still seemed to forget the existence of companies, armed forces, the police and so on (though maybe she regarded those as ‘voluntary associations’). And Boris Johnson, while self-isolating in Downing Street, recently accepted that the contributions of NHS and other workers meant that the coronavirus crisis had shown ‘there really is such a thing as society’.

However, there are reasons for questioning the existence of society, not in general but specifically under capitalism. The historian Thomas Carlyle, for instance, wrote in 1843:

  ‘We call it a Society … Our life is not a mutual helpfulness: but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named ‘fair competition’ and so forth, it is a mutual hostility’ (Quoted in E.P.Thompson: William Morris).

William Morris was himself influenced by Carlyle, and more than once he returned to this idea that there was no such thing as society. In ‘True and False Society’ (from 1886) he set out three criteria for a ‘successful society’: that work be arranged so that each capable person should do a fair share of it and no more; that everyone who did a fair share of work should enjoy a due share of wealth; and that waste of labour should be avoided. None of those, he argued, could be satisfied by capitalism, ‘our present so called society’. Socialism, instead, would be  ‘that true society which means well-being and well-doing for one and all.’

He made a similar point in the Statement of Principles of the Hammersmith Socialist Society, written in 1890 after he and others had left the Socialist League. For workers, capitalism, ‘has ceased to be a society, and has become a tyranny’. In its place, ‘it is not the dissolution of society for which we strive, but its reintegration’ and ‘it is a true society which we desire’.

If, as dictionaries generally do, we define society as a group of people living together, then, vague though this is, capitalist society certainly exists. Yet Carlyle and Morris definitely had a point, that a society based on division into classes and antagonism of interests between them is not a true community, where people work together for the common good. In connection with our aim, a system of society based on common ownership, our pamphlet Socialist Principles Explained states: ‘A system of society alludes to the sum total of human relationships and is meant to distinguish us from those who seek to organise cooperative colonies, islands within a sea of capitalism.’

So yes, there is such a thing as society, but capitalism is not a genuine community or, in Morris’s words, a true society, where people co-operate for the good of all.

Paul Bennett

“Economic Power.” (1920)

From the April 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vague and misunderstood, or meaningless, phrases have proved useful weapons to the ruling classes, or would-be ruling classes, throughout history as means to rally to their support the mass of the population. Every class that has risen to power has exploited its own particular catch phrases to blind and mislead the rest of society.

The American smugglers and slave traders had as their watchword  “the inalienable rights of man.” When they had achieved their end it became evident that the people whose inalienable rights were to be safeguarded were the American exploiters of black and white labourers. The French bourgeoisie worked themselves into a frenzy over ”Liberty, Equality Fraternity”—the liberty, equality, and fraternity of the rising capitalists in the exploitation of the labour of the French workers. Throughout the 19th century the working portion of the population of Europe were ruthlessly suppressed and massacred in the name of “Law and Order”—the law and order of the exploiting class.

These historical incidents make it imperative that all phrases and catchwords should be carefully analysed in order that a true understanding of the expressions used may be arrived at, and the habit of giving blind adherence to pet phrases eliminated. Words have a tendency to take the place of ideas, particularly in revolutionary movements, with ruinous results.

A misunderstood phrase that has been bandied about a good deal of late, has acquired a mysterious potency for the advocates of so-called Industrial Action, is the expression “Economic Power.” Those who give allegiance to this phrase set out with the false premise: “Political power is based upon Economic Power.”

Let us examine the premise a little closer.

An investigation of history shows that political power generally reflects a certain stage in economic development, but all the elements necessary for the next stage in economic development are already in existence, and operating to a certain extent, before the political control corresponding to the previous stage is overthrown. Until the political control is overthrown the class at the political helm enjoys the fruits and emoluments resulting from the partially developed new stage.

A class develops into an important economic position in society, and feels the pinch and oppression of the existing laws and regulations before the idea of overthrowing the prevailing system arises in the minds of the oppressed class. This class feels the incidence and hardship of the shackling regulations and gradually reaches the understanding that these regulations must be overthrown. Hence political revolutions occur and new classes alter the constitution of society to suit their particular interests.

Political power does not necessarily infer economic importance, as instance the fact that economically important classes have supported useless classes in possession of political power for generations before the political supremacy of the parasitic class was overthrown, and often the former were swept away by the class in possession of political power.

In France the monarchical group lived like leeches on the French capitalists for generations before the French Revolution. They subjected the rising commercialists to a variety of methods of extortion, and the latter were powerless to check the diversion of a large portion of their wealth into the pockets of the ruling class until they had obtained control of the political machinery. Indeed, so frail was the “economic power” of the rising capitalists before they had captured political power, that the ruling class could, and frequently did, not only repudiate debts owing to them, but even dispossessed them altogether at a moment’s notice, as in the celebrated case of the Huguenots in the 17th century, when, according to Buckle (“History of Civilisation in England,” Vol. II., p. 145) half a million manufacturers and artizans were driven out of France.

From the 11th to the 14th century wool was the principle article of commerce in England, and the woollen industry grew to relatively large proportions. The individuals concerned in this trade became the commercial backbone of England. But political power centred in the hands of the sovereign, and the woollen merchants were drained of their wealth to provide luxury for the monarchical party and to finance foreign wars. The woollen traders were compelled to apply to the Jews and the Italian bankers for financial assistance, and the taxes were also farmed out to the latter groups. In fact, the Jews and Italians obtained such a hold that the carrying on of industry and the wars of the period largely depended on their financial aid. Their wealth and economic importance became immeasurably greater than that of any other section in the country. But they had no share in political power, and consequently the Jews and Italians were in turn bled by the royal power, and were finally ruined, imprisoned and driven from the country.

Referring to the position of the Jews H. de B. Gibbins writes :

  Their general financial skill was acknowledged by all, and William II. employed them to farm the revenues of vacant sees, while barons often employed them as stewards of their estates. They were also the leading, if not the only, capitalists of that time, and must have assisted merchants considerably in their enterprises, though only upon a heavy commission. After the death of Henry I., the security which they had enjoyed was much weakened, in proportion as the royal power declined in the civil wars, and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries they were in a precarious position. Stephen and Mathilda openly robbed them, Henry II. (in 1187) demanded one fourth of their chattels, and Richard I. obtained large sums from them for his crusading extravagance. From 1144 to 1189 riots directed against them became common, and the Jewries of many towns were pillaged. In 1194 Richard I. placed their commercial transactions more thoroughly under local officers of the Crown. John exploited them to great advantage, and levied heavy tallages upon them, and Henry III. did very much the same. They were expelled from the kingdom in 1290, and before this had greatly sunk from their previous position as the financiers of the Crown to that of petty money-lenders to the poor at gross usury.—”Industry in England,” pp. 103-4.

Such was the fate of an economically important class that was excluded from political power — material for the wielders of the supreme power to prey upon.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Italian bankers grew powerful.

  “Between 1297 and 1330 the country developed steadily in spite of the troubled times of Edward II. The Italian bankers grew more and more powerful and rendered increasingly important services to the Crown. The tin mines, the parliamentary grants, and the customs were constantly farmed out to them.”—”The Financing of the Hundred Years War,” Schuyler B. Terry, p. xviii.

The English woollen manufacturers were opposed to the Italians, partly because the latter were getting control of the wool trade, and partly on account of the debts they owed the Italians. When the latter had served the purpose of Edward III., the English monarch repudiated his debts and withdrew his support. Consequently they could not collect the other debts owing, as they had no power to enforce payment. The result was that they got into difficulties and eventually failed. After Edward’s support had been withdrawn they suffered from the persecution of the English merchants, and were confined in the Tower of London and other prisons for various periods.

Their economic “power” had proved a sorry weapon when they had no political force to back them.

From the foregoing it will be seen that economic “power” is a myth until political supremacy is attained. Correctly speaking, “economic power” as defined by the misguided Industrial Actionists, is a figment of the imagination. The ideas and conclusions derived from the phrase are the result of a complete failure to digest the lessons hammered home history.

The employing class of to-day do not rule because they have possession of the means of production, but conversely, they have possession of the means of production because they rule. The employer who spends his time wandering over the globe cannot retain possession of the wealth produced merely through the legal form—the legal form must have the power behind it, the power that enforces acceptance of the existing legal paraphernalia; and wild words, empty stomachs, or brickbats, are not effective combatting forces.

Capitalist private property differs from previous forms of private property, particularly in its present highly developed form. The capitalist of the present day does not privately own a factory, a mine, or a mill. He owns a number of shares in several mammoth corporations. The handling of the whole business of these corporations—even to the buying and selling of the shares—is in the hands of individuals receiving wages, or, in the case the more dignified but none the less oppressed, salaries. In other words, the whole of business is conducted by wage slaves. The function of the capitalist is, generally speaking, restricted to the spending of the continually increasing bank balance.

This illustrates the fact that, at the present time the working, or wage-slave, class is the most important economic class in society. Yet in spite of this the capitalist lives like a parasite on the industry that is run by others. The only way a useless class, divorced from production, can do this is by having supreme power and the supreme power is the governmental machinery.

Therefore it is necessary to wrest from them the only power they possess. The only way this can be done is by the workers organising politically for the capture of political power, which is centred in the Parliamentary machinery.

“Economic power” is but another of the delusions and shadows the workers must clear out of their heads, along with the other cobwebs, in the march to emancipation.

Gilmac.

Must There be a Ruling Class? (2017)

From the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is the social philosophy of Marxism a ‘pernicious illusion’, a variant of a ‘utopian dream’ which must cost humanity dear whenever an attempt is made to realise it? In other words is the realisation of socialism impossible?

They say ‘Yes’

A powerful argument against its possibility has been advanced in the political sociology of Mosca, Michels and Pareto. Their arguments are impressive, especially when we remember that, writing before the First World War, they were writing prior to the establishment of modern totalitarianism, and at a time when optimism was as general as pessimism is today. The fact that their predictions have been partially confirmed by events gives them added weight.

Anyone who has had experience of modern politics would tend to agree with Mosca’s theory; it has a high plausibility and contains much that is true. It asserts that political power in actuality never rests upon consent of the majority, that irrespective of ideologies or leading personalities, all political rule is a process, now peaceful, now coercive, by which a minority gratifies its own interests, in a situation where not all interests can receive equal consideration. As Mosca puts it in The Ruling Class:

  ‘Political power always has been, and always will be exercised by organised minorities, which have had and will have the means, varying as the times vary to impose their supremacy upon the multitudes.’

The means vary from public myths and legal frauds to direct brutal force, depending upon the conditions of the time. Whichever side wins the masses who have fought, bled and starved, lose. Their ‘saviours’ become their rulers under the prestige of new myths. The essential content of minority control and exploitation remains despite the fact that mythical forms change. For Mosca this is a ‘law’ of all social life which can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of everyone except the ‘dull,’ the ‘pious’ and candidates for political leadership. It is a ‘law’ accepted by every political partisan as obviously true for other organisations but as a slander when applied to their own.

According to Pareto (in Mind and Society) differences between groups and conflict between their interests are always more persuasive than the harmonies which idealist philosophers discover more often than not by definition. Belief in the homogeneity of society is a fable for simpletons. Every society divides roughly into two classes – an elite which includes all who enjoy the fruits of recognised excellence in virtue of their strength, cunning, valour, wealth, social origin – ‘the lions and foxes’ – and a non-elite which comprises the rest of the population – the sheep. The elite, in turn, subdivide into a governing elite and a non-governing elite which mutually support each other. Like the poor, the governing elite we will always have with us. Whenever its members lack quality of vigour, will, discipline and readiness to use force in an emergency new members are recruited from the non-elite, those who prove that they are not sheep after all. ‘History is the graveyard of aristocracies.’ But we will always have aristocracies. Power may be taken in the name of humanity, democracy and freedom; it can only be wielded by a few.

Michels in Political Parties reaches the same conclusions, but they are based on a far more empirical study. Political power on behalf of any ideal, no matter how democratically conceived inevitable, involves the emergence of a leadership which in the (last analysis) controls the organisation. If it is defeated it is replaced, not by a functioning democracy, but by a new leadership. All democratic movements, therefore, are doomed by the ‘iron law of oligarchy’. According to this ‘the majority of human beings, in a condition of eternal tutelage, are predestined by tragic necessity to submit to the domination of a small minority, and must be content to constitute the pedestal of an oligarchy’.

We say ‘No’

We should distinguish between the descriptive analyses and the theoretical explanations these writers offer. After differences in political rule have been taken into account most of their conclusions are valid. Ruling parties are controlled by minorities, they do rely on lies, chicanery and naked force. These are the props of political rule. We couldn’t agree more. But in explaining these phenomena Mosca falls back upon a psychological theory of human nature as something given and fixed independently of its social and historical context. Almost every one of his major explanations and predictions involves an appeal to an original nature, seen as essentially unalterable despite its varying expressions. Political laws are derived from the unchangeable elements in the nature of humans. Mosca referred to them as ‘wicked instincts’. It is from this conception of original sin that his direct prophecies flow.

Pareto’s doctrine of the constancy of the residues – instincts, needs and interests – is summed up in the sentence: ‘The centuries roll by and human nature remains the same.’ Michels weakens the force of his arguments which are drawn from the technical indispensability of the division of labour in all political organisations by deducing that ‘the majority is permanently incapable of democratic self-government.’

An argument from human nature is invoked to support a sociological law. The analysis, although historical in form and content, is based upon a non-historical theoretical explanation. The sociological explanation is empty because it is devoid of history, that is, it is not based on theoretical activities of man but upon presupposed psychological qualities which give rise to these activities.

For the sake of argument we can grant their claims except when they speak in the future tense. Social problems are always specific, are always rooted in the concrete needs of a particular people at a determinate time. How they will solve these depends upon the conditions at hand – the knowledge they possess, for example, the knowledge of political and economic laws, the predominant social values and a number of other factors. The way people will act in the future will depend upon the problems they will have to solve and upon their state of knowledge, and not upon any unchanging nature. The problems themselves change with changing understanding. The problems facing the socialist are difference from those facing the non-socialist. Different problems require different solutions, thus different behaviour, different ways of acting, a different human nature.

It seems, then, that any attempt to find an invariant core of properties which constitute human nature will not stand up to sociological or historical analysis. We can only observe how people behave and act under certain conditions. What we are interested in is what people actually do and how they do it, and since human activity and behaviour is continually changing, the study of human nature must be a historical study. Historical traditions, habits and social institutions play a much more important role in political behaviour, and are more reliable in predicting the future than any set of innate impulses, residues, instincts or urges. By isolating the latter from their objective cultural setting, selecting from among them an alleged impulse to dominate, to be selfish, to fight, love or flee, the pattern of human nature can be cut to suit any political myth. This is precisely what the elitist theorists have done.

They have rendered a service in so far as they make us realise the need for devising institutional safeguards for the attainment and preservation of democracy. The most import safeguard being the replacement of the institution of private property by that of social property. These theories are pernicious in that they amount to a counsel of despair. If human nature is something unchanging and static then any social change is futile, since domination, oppression and exploitation will remain although masquerading in different forms and under different ideologies. Indeed Mosca and Pareto (Michels is in a different category, although a pessimist, he advocates struggle and social revolution) maintain that social revolution is meaningless. We cannot agree. We find the status quo impossible.

L.H.

Power, Overt and Covert (2017)

From the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

The concept of power is an important but contested one. For socialists the question is an important as they are engaged in a process challenging and ultimately transforming the existing power relations of society. How power is defined determines what is examined and what our conclusions about it will be. This article looks at how some key contemporary writers have approached the problem.

Writing in the 1960s, Robert Dahl came to the conclusion that while there was an apparent tension between equal access to voting rights and unequal access to power resources – such as ‘knowledge, wealth, social position, access to officials, and other resources’ –  a small elite did not dominate policy making and that a wide range of actors did take an active part in the process. Dahl based his work around study of political activity in New Haven, Connecticut, US and focused exclusively on the final decision-making stage of the policy process, where the actions of the various actors could visibly be studied. He measured success in terms of having a proposed policy accepted.

Bachrach and Baratz, in a later study, saw this as a shortcoming of Dahl’s work and argued that power can be exercised as much by keeping issues off the political agenda as by having a policy approved. For them Dahl’s focus on overt power failed to capture the whole picture, where covert influence – such as the press’s and politics ability to control the terms of the debate – played an important role. When an issue reaches the stage of political discussion a certain amount of obstacles have already been overcome.

Further criticism was raised by Steven Lukes, who looked at how the preferences of actors involved in the process of policy development were shaped and developed. For an issue to become a candidate for a prospective policy it has to be framed in such a way as to motivate sufficient interest and salience. Lukes argued that the way in which people think about an issue – about what is valid, realistic or fair – is shaped by the dominant values of their society and that these values therefore exercise a kind of latent power. For a certain set of ideas or values to become socially dominant a vast amount of persuasion and leadership must have already been drawn upon. Lukes was concerned with the broad value structures of society and how these shape outcomes.

Taken together these three outlooks can be seen as representing what Lukes in his 1974 book Power: A Radical View called the ‘three dimensions of power’. Dahl focuses on the visible vote winning and proposal acceptance, as one dimension. Bachrach and Baratz add the ‘none visible’ power of agenda setting as a second dimension of power. Lukes adds the third dimension, the most hidden aspect of setting the social norms and values that steer agenda setting. It is this third dimension that is of most interest to socialists, since socialism is not currently on the agenda and common opinion would still seem to be against it.

Many regular readers of the Socialist Standard may note the similarity between Lukes’ third dimension of power and Marx’s and Engels’ writings on ideology and false consciousness, and Luke’s would not deny this. The idea is that people do not act according to their real or objective interests because these have been clouded by false consciousness or a mistaken understanding of the facts. There are generally two objections to this proposition. The first is that the claim makes reference to some kind of privileged access to true knowledge; that someone, other than the person in question, is better determined to know their real interests than they are themselves. The second, more recent, criticism is that there cannot be such a thing as ‘false’ consciousness since there are multiple ‘true’ consciousnesses each generated and sustained by power. On this view, to impute false consciousness is mistakenly to believe that there even could be a correct view that is not itself imposed by power.

Lukes argued that it is possible to speak of false consciousness without claiming to have access to perfect knowledge. Our desires and beliefs are not fixed, as many of the criticisers of false consciousness imply, but can to a lesser or greater extent be changed through reasoning and reflection. The power of others can and does play a role in influencing our reasoning. We can be mistaken and misled in terms of what we desire and what we believe, and mistaken in the underlying beliefs that form these desires, so ultimately we can be misled about where out real interests lie.To deny the possibility of our being led astray is to say something highly implausible. We have many different interests and in some cases because of inaccurate or incomplete information we will not know what our real interests are.

Lukes gives examples drawing on what Bernard Harcourt has called ‘the illusion of free markets’ – the notion that markets are natural and state intervention or regulation is unnatural, that markets are inherently efficient and left to their own devices will achieve equilibrium. This has the effect of shielding from criticism the distributions of wealth that occur through the market and masks the role of the state and its regulatory and legal framework that is behind every supposedly free market transaction. So through these means you can have the example of unemployed followers of the literature and ideology of the US Tea Party who, though dependent on social security themselves, call for the end of government and spending and welfare so as to boost the economy.

Claims like these are depend on the truth of the assumptions behind them. It is possible to attempt to separate out ignorance of facts about the social world, from theoretical disagreement about how to explain it, and we can do this without making arrogant claims about our possession of the truth. If we make judgments about others, we must be able to adequately justify them, and the same goes for judgments we make about ourselves. To quote Lukes ‘To judge well –to assess rightly what policies or programs are in one’s interest –one needs, first, to have an adequate understanding of the status quo; second, to have a convincing view of what is (counterfactually) feasible; and, third, to judge whether the costs of transition to what might be a better situation are worth paying. Here too the recognition of these sources of fallibility involves neither an arrogant claim to privileged access to truth nor the claim that there is nothing for such judgments to be mistaken about.’

Darren Poynton

Smith or Gould—who cares? (1992)

From the July 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

No doubt it will be John Smith—the John Major clone—who will emerge this month as the new Leader of the Labour Party. Whether his rival Bryan Gould will get the deputy leadership as a consolation prize is by no means certain, but Gould has at least shown himself capable of discussing political ideas in a way that is rare in the top echelons of the Labour Party these days.

In a book published in 1985 entitled Socialism and Freedom he discussed what would have to be the features of a socialist society. The specific institutions of such a society, he argued, were not ends in themselves; they were means to achieve a situation where every individual human being would have the maximum freedom to shape their life. This, he went on, could only be achieved by spreading decision-making power as widely as possible. The “overriding aim" of socialists, therefore, must be:

to maximise the power (and therefore the freedom) exercised by each and every citizen. This can be done only by diffusing power as widely as possible—in other words, by sharing it equally.

On this definition, a socialist society was a “society in which power is equally shared by all".

At this level of abstraction, we can agree with Gould. We don't want common ownership and democratic control for their own sakes but because we think that these provide the only basis on which all humans can live the best life that is now possible. We can also agree that the way to ensure this is by diffusing decision-making power equally amongst all the members of society. However we wouldn't leave the argument there as Gould does.

This equal decision-making power must apply, in fact must especially apply, to the control and use of the means for providing for the material needs of the members of society. Every member of society must be in a position to have an equal say in deciding how the means of wealth-production—the productive resources, natural and human-made, at the disposal of society—are to be used.

What we are talking about here is a classless society in which the means of production belong to no-one in the sense that there is no group within society that has an exclusive, or even a more than equal, say in the way they are used. This is the same as saying that they belong to everyone—that they are “commonly owned”.

Needless to say, Gould doesn’t go this far. In fact he doesn't regard common ownership in this sense as being a necessary feature of a socialist society. Which must mean either that he is a sloppy thinker or that he doesn’t think that it is possible to diffuse power that widely.

Gould is, however, fully aware that we are living in a society in which decision-making power is far, very far, from being equally distributed. After giving some examples of progress made this century away from inequality (the main one being the achievement of equal voting rights in political matters for all men and women), Gould gives the following accurate picture of the situation today:

   The owners of capital—whether private or public, individual or corporate—still own, control and enjoy the fruits of the wealth-producing process and buy and sell working lives as though they were commodities. Economic power is still concentrated in their hands, with the necessary correlative that it is removed from the hands of the bulk of ordinary people for whom the wage relation bargain remains unequal and demeaning.
    The law still underpins the whole concept of succession and inheritance, so that private property—essentially an artificial, social concept which needs the backing of the law to protect it—can be accumulated to an extent well beyond that needed to satisfy even the most outrageous appetites for personal consumption.
    The welfare state, though valuable and important in itself, remains a palliative for dealing with the casualties of a system which necessarily produces major and self-reinforcing inequalities and injustices. The search for private profit remains the major motivation for economic activity.

Faced with this capitalist reality Gould rejects a policy of “total abolition and replacement" of capitalism in favour of one of “control and reform". This of course is the gradualist and reformist policy that the Labour Party has always pursued. At the turn of the century a genuine argument could go on between what appeared to be two alternative ways to socialism, but the experience of the last 90 or so years has settled the issue. The policy of the “control and reform" of capitalism is not a road to socialism at all. There have been five periods of Labour government, during which Labour was in office for a total of 20 years, yet the situation today is as described by Gould above.

In fact the failure has been even greater as instead of the Labour Party gradually changing capitalism it has been the other way round: capitalism has gradually changed the Labour Party. At one time Labour theoreticians like Gould would have argued that the long-term aim was to actually establish a socialist society in which power, including the power to control the use of the means of production, would be equally shared. Now, however, Gould is reduced to arguing that a socialist society is an impossibility and that the most "socialists" can achieve is some precarious progress towards less inequality:

Socialism is not a destination at which we shall arrive one day. There are no final victories in politics. Socialism is a constant struggle against the forces in society which naturally tend towards the concentration of power.

To a politician whose party has tried and failed to reverse the capitalist tendency towards increasing inequality, it must indeed seem that this tendency is “natural", and given the maintenance of the basis of capitalism—class ownership and production for profit—it does act as if it were a natural law in that there is nothing that can be done to stop it operating.

In using the word "natural" in this context Gould is admitting that all the Labour Party is now trying to do is not to make progress towards a socialist society, however confusingly defined, but merely to slow down and delay capitalism’s tendency to increased inequality. "Socialism" has become not a new form of society but merely the empty dream of a less unequal capitalist society.

But even this watered down version of Labour's original programme is too radical for the likes of Smith for whom a penny on or a penny off the standard rate of income tax is all that politics is about.

Adam Buick

Nobody Governs? (2016)

Book Review from the April 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Who Governs Britain?' By Anthony King. Penguin £8.99.

It’s a good question, and King surveys twelve possible answers, from voters and party members to MPs and the media. One theme of the book is that the ‘classic’ form of post-war government, which lasted till the 1970s, no longer holds. The political power of special advisers has increased; fewer politicians now have extensive experience of working outside politics; ministers are expected to be more pro-active, and civil servants no longer provide them with knowledgeable critiques of government policy; parliamentary select committees are more independent-minded than previously, and the judiciary plays a larger role than it used to. But one wonders what effect all this has on the majority of the population.

King makes the important point that the UK is not remotely a sovereign state, one possessing supreme power over its own affairs. It is subject to many international organisations, most obviously the EU, but also the UN, NATO, G7, IMF, World Health Organisation and so on. Multinational companies are extremely powerful too. More generally, the UK is affected by impersonal market forces (i.e. the ups and downs of world capitalism). Quite apart from the current recession, there was the massive loan from the IMF in 1976, forced on the government after foreign-exchange reserves drained away. Back in 1931, during the Great Depression, a ‘National’ government was formed after overseas investors lost confidence in the minority Labour government.

An interesting chapter deals with the media, who report on nearly everything except their own relations with ministers and party leaders. Radio and TV are legally required to be impartial (!), but no such restrictions apply to the press. Rupert Murdoch exercised enormous influence over Tony Blair, and was described as sometimes more powerful than the Prime Minister. Many politicians are cowed by fear of having the media ridicule them or delve into their private life.

One chapter covers ‘interests’, people or groups with some cause in common. Thatcher greatly disliked vested interests (well, some of them, anyway), and trade unions are no longer anywhere near as influential as they once were. Some interests are not officially organised as such, and there is a brief reference to ‘the well off’, described as ‘the dominant interest’, with no real competitors. But there is absolutely no recognition of the power of the one percent, and how government policies defend them. Murdoch’s influence on politicians derives from his media power, but his reason for exerting it the way he does is due to his position as a capitalist.

King’s final answer to his question is that ‘no one institution and certainly no one individual’ governs Britain. He sets out a rather feeble proposal for a ‘Nordic style’ system, where parties try to accommodate their disagreements. But this will make no substantial difference, for it is capitalism and the capitalist class that rule, something most academic observers of politics fail to spot.   

Paul Bennett

Power in society (1983)

From the February 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The concept of power is a confused one. Whether we're thinking about political and social institutions, or individual relationships, power means to have some dominance or control. Capitalism, a system based on production for profit, works in the interests of a minority — those who own and control the means of life. Workers vote into parliamentary power, political parties pledged to the continuation of capitalism — parties which operate against their interests. As long as the workers allow this situation to persist, a conflict will exist between “us and them”, the majority and the minority, the producers and those who own, the powerless and the powerful. To resolve this conflict we have to understand what power really means and what it could mean. We have to challenge the whole ideology of present social arrangements.

There are two essentially different uses of the word power. The first is the typical way in which we experience power in capitalism; the power which other people exert over us. Because workers believe that the present system is the only way of organising society — that it has always existed and must therefore continue to exist — they go on allowing others to control our lives. Small wonder. From childhood to old age, we see and fit into the social arrangements of the society we are born into. We experience the authority structure of capitalism, at first through the family, with its extended period of “childhood" and legal powerlessness. Later through schooling, through churches, through employment, the newspapers, television and so on, we come to accept the view that some people are “better" than others, that we need "leaders", that hierarchies are inevitable and that left to our own devices, the workers would create chaos.

This indoctrination imbues us with a belief in our own weakness, in our inability to decide for ourselves. We learn to aspire only to a “normal” lifestyle and a mentality fragmented by the crippling contradictions between what we feel ourselves to be and how capitalism compels us to behave. As we grow up in this society, our hopes and expectations are progressively impoverished. Children, for example, are constantly learning, constantly active in response to the world they find around them. Contrast this with what we all learn in school. Education exists to train us for our function in the larger world, beyond the school and family, for an adulthood where our behaviour fits the requirements of capitalism.

In classrooms children learn to sit still, to “do as they’re told — or else” (and the punishment system of the school mirrors in miniature the punishment system of the wider society, with its “detention” and centres for the “maladjusted”). Ultimately, children learn that if what they want to do conflicts with how the teacher — the person with power over them — expects them to behave, they cannot beat the system. There are only two choices: either to respect and conform to the superiority of those who control them, or to channel their nonconformity and disrespect into a negative form — rebellion and disruption. Whatever else children learn at school, they are forced into the habits of passivity and powerlessness, to external regulation and imposed definitions of their capacities and aptitudes. They learn to be one of the crowd or risk the cruelly isolating behaviour of other children. From schooling and elsewhere we are all then coerced into an evaluative, limited and impoverished sense or view of ourselves and our needs. The opportunity does not exist for young people to continue the way they started out, with a “natural" and integrated active approach to their environment.

Capitalism creates disintegrated individuals and a disintegrated society; one which lives out of harmony with its people's material needs. In this society constraints are invariably imposed on us — we are governed, not self-governing. Is it surprising then that power has become a word with wholly negative connotations? In capitalism, power means oppression.

In sharp contrast is the original derivation of the word — the French verb “pouvoir” meaning “to be able". So power means also an "inherent quality in something" — whatever that something can do. It means an active property — a physical strength, energy itself residing in the material nature of an organ or mechanism. In this sense power is simply the ability to “affect” — the power of a herb or a drug to affect a body, the power of the press to affect opinions, the power of a film to affect our emotions, or the power of an argument to affect our ideas.

If we look at power and society in this context, we can see how that society functions. Physically we need certain things to sustain life — we need food, warmth, shelter, we need to reproduce ourselves and we need to achieve some sort of integration with other parts of the natural world. People are part of the natural world; it is therefore inseparable from our existence that we should be active; our activities are the means by which we express our abilities, our capacities, our human powers. It is these powers and activities which create wealth. Workers produce the food, the energy, the building materials; we operate the transport networks that distribute them.

In other words it is our labour which sustains life on this planet. It is in us. the people who work and produce useful wealth, that the power in society actually resides. Paradoxically, the workers who produce all that is useful at present don’t engage in this activity for themselves: the owners live parasitically on our backs, we are giving them sustenance by our labour and the quality of that sustenance is far higher than we'll get in this system. “Human power” — the human ability to be active and to be effective — could be used by us, the majority of people who are producing wealth anyway, in our own interests. It is precisely this consciousness of our own nature and our own class interest and our own needs which capitalism attempts to drum out of us. The dominant ideas of any age are those produced by and in support of the status quo — the interest of the controlling powerful class. The development of an education system with the characteristics already outlined, is necessary to train us to accept a social system which is at odds with our perceptions of our own natures. We have to be taught to submit to control from beyond ourselves — it is necessary that we go on believing in our inabilities and weaknesses.

There is another contradiction in the belief that we who produce wealth cannot do it for ourselves. This theory has it that we’d be driven by insatiable urges to kill and maim and rob: that we’d create chaos in the world. There is an irrational belief that we need money and markets, prisons and property, to prevent this happening. The agonising irony of this belief lies in the fact that it is capitalism itself which creates such behaviour. Wars fought in the interests of the capitalist class cause workers to murder each other. Theft is a concept valid only through the existence of private property. As for chaos: what could be more chaotic and irrational than an economic system where people starve to death while glib politicians speak of “overproduction" and pay farmers not to produce food? It is impossible to imagine how a world community, conscious of its needs and producing directly in response to them, could fail to function better than that. Still, it seems their propaganda has usurped our rationality — we go on denying the evidence of our senses.

Under capitalism virtually our only experience of the use of our abilities is in the sense that our capacities are regulated by others. We have no experience of how to use our abilities and powers for ourselves in our working lives. This has repercussions in personal relationships, simply because we are alienated from our abilities: we sell them weekly-and monthly, they don’t seem to be ours. Much is talked about power in relationships — about gratuitous acts of cruelty and violence, about sadism and masochism. Most of this behaviour can be traced back to our attitudes towards two particular forms of learnt behaviour: dominance and submission.

Why is such behaviour typical under capitalism? The fundamental cause lies in the opposed class interests, which requires that one class dominates and the other submits. Associated with this are the values we have had bred into us: our belief in the need for leaders and authority, our acceptance of the evaluative definition of ourselves by others (so that status can be awarded accordingly), and the attitude we have acquired of constantly assessing ourselves in comparison with fellow workers to decide who is “better” and who “worse”. Attitudes like these ensure that domination and submission continue: they ensure we use our “powers” against ourselves. We do not recognise that our interests as a class coincide. We spend our energies fighting among ourselves, men against women, blacks against whites, salaried against waged employees, young against old. The competition for artificially scarce resources encourages this class divided, mutually hostile attitude.

Because of all this our daily existence is made up of frustrating experiences, of contradictions and tensions in our working and personal lives. A sense of frustration usually has one of two effects, both destructive: it may be expressed outwards in angry and aggressive exhibitions, or inwards, causing stress illness, withdrawal and depression. The only positive way of resolving this frustration is to recognise it for what it is. Frustration is a sense of powerlessness, an inability to express what we feel to be our energies and powers. Frustration is synonymous with a feeling of “lack".

Under capitalism we are controlled externally, we are not in control of our own lives, and we lack a material existence in line with our needs. This situation will only change once we become conscious, as a class, of our power. Our weakness is a myth. Human beings are active and thoughtful; already the working class runs society from top to bottom. What we urgently need to do is create a society in which these abilities can be used productively. Socialist democracy means that we express our own sense of what we need, that we control our lives directly, develop our powers and use them for ourselves. Socialists rehabilitate the idea of “power”, to act on that frustration to end it.

Chira Lovat