Material World : Reformism in the USA: Bernstein rides again (2026)

The Material World column from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an article in Counterpunch in June on ‘What’s Wrong with the American Left’ David Schultz says he is writing in the tradition of ‘the democratic socialism of Eduard Bernstein, who tied the classless society to the ballot rather than the barricade, and of Michael Harrington whose The Other America forced a prosperous country to look at its own poor’.

Bernstein, he says, was ‘betting that universal suffrage could be turned into economic democracy’. Bernstein, Harrington and others he mentions ‘believed, as I do, that the point of the left is to assert that capitalism does not get to dictate how democracy operates, but the reverse’. The reverse is of course that democracy gets to dictate how capitalism operates. Which is what Bernstein’s reformism set out to try and do. Whatever else might be said about US self-confessed reformists, they are more theoretically minded than their counterparts this side of the ocean. Ask a reformist here who Bernstein was and they wouldn’t know (unless they had been in some Trotskyist sect when they were a student).

Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932) was a member of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) who, in exile in London, had worked closely with Engels. He had even written a book in 1895, applying the materialist conception of history to the English revolution, published in English in 1930 as Cromwell and Communism which introduced its readers to the Levellers and the Diggers. At the turn of the 20th century, however, he sparked off a controversy in the German and international Social Democratic movement by suggesting that Marx and Engels had been wrong on certain key points and criticising those who argued that socialism would result from a violent revolution following a catastrophic collapse of capitalism. Instead, it would come about, and was in fact already coming about, as a result of democracy gradually spreading to all aspects of society, including the organisation of the production and distribution of wealth. The book in which he expounded this ‘Revisionist’ position was given the English title of Evolutionary Socialism. Rosa Luxembourg’s pamphlet Reform or Revolution is a polemic directed against Bernstein. We joined in the ‘Revisionist controversy’ with an article in the October 1909 Socialist Standard entitled ‘Bungling Bernstein’.

An article in the January 1956 Socialist Standard on ‘The Fabians, Bernstein and Revisionism’ summarised Bernstein’s views as:

‘That the numbers and wealth of large and small Capitalists tended to increase and society to become more democratic. That class antagonisms were being modified by ethical and patriotic considerations. That crises were decreasing in size and frequency through a process of adaptation largely influenced by trusts, cartels and the like. That the Materialist Conception of History overestimated the economic factor; the influence of the economic factor was diminishing whilst the influence of ideological factors, including the ethical, was increasing. That Capitalism had undergone fundamental changes since the middle of the 19th century when Marx made his analyses, but, though true for the time of which he was writing, they no longer applied. That the theory of surplus value was incomplete and needed the addition of the theory of final utility. That the workers have now become citizens of the country and therefore have a fatherland to defend. That as Germany is becoming more and more dependent upon products from the colonies, these colonies should be developed and protected. Savages have only a conditional right to the land occupied by them; the higher civilization of advanced countries can claim a higher right. That Socialism is a long way ahead and will only come by a process that is gradual and almost imperceptible; consequently we should not worry about the future but concentrate on the present, on the extension of the political and economic rights of the working classes and “In all Advanced countries we see the privileges of the Capitalist bourgeoisie yielding step by step to democratic organisations” (Preface, page XI). That the Social Democratic Party should form alliances with the Capitalist parties nearest to them.’

It is easy to see from this why Bernstein is regarded by Social Democrat reformists as their mentor. He anticipated what after WW1 became the practice of all European Social Democratic parties, including the SPD, despite some of them still being committed on paper to Marxism. It was also the practice of the Labour Party even though they never made a theory of it.

Bernstein’s gradualism has been tried for over a hundred years now. But the result has not been any progress towards socialism. Production is in still the hands of profit-seeking companies and oligarchs. The economy is still driven by the pursuit of profits. There may be a ‘welfare state’ of sorts but that’s being eroded not extended. There is no democracy in workplaces. Rather than the Social Democratic reformists gradually changing capitalism it has been the other way round. Experience of governing under capitalism has changed them into mere managers of the capitalist economic system, accepting and applying its logic that priority must be given to profit-making.

Although Bernstein was not all bad — he did oppose WW1 and he was right about capitalism not collapsing of its own accord — his gradualist reformism must be pronounced a failure. Political democracy has not got to dictate how capitalism operates and never will. It is rather that capitalism dictates how governments act by giving them only the choice of putting profits first. He bet that ‘universal suffrage could be turned into economic democracy’ and lost.

Adam Buick

Organization and Socialism (1976)

From the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the nineteenth century the capitalist world has been swamped with organizations. Political parties, trade unions, religious sects and nationalist groups have gained mass membership or support. All these organizations have been expressions of conflict, dissatisfaction or grievances among sections of the population. Trade unions were formed to try to safeguard the interests of groups of workers against pressure on wages by the employers. As capitalism brought under its sway more and more of the population, so did the belief spread among these workers that organizations like trade unions were necessary to protect their interests. Consequently these organizations grew, both in number and support.

But the workers were wrong in believing that these organizations could solve their problems. Because the organizations were based on attempts to solve economic problems only within the existing capitalist system, they took on the character of that social system. They lost democratic intentions which existed at their origin and became bureaucratic. Leaders arose to control them. Workers found that they had to accept organizational structures which reflected the class society they lived in.

In Germany, the Social Democratic Party gradually dropped the pretensions which a small number of members had for changing society. It adopted the objectives of the German trade unions, which were to gain immediate benefits for their working-class supporters within the capitalist system. The consequence of this was that the class nature of capitalism with its division of society into capital and wage-labour, owners and producers, leaders and led, was reflected in the structure of the Social Democratic Party. A large bureaucracy arose to control the organization.

Some theorists, like Michels in his work Political Parties have seen this development as an inevitable result of organization. But in arriving at this view he neglected the type of society in which the organizations have arisen. He saw their structure as reflecting the nature of man rather than the nature of the particular society. In looking at them without accounting for either the capitalist basis of society or the reformist objectives which the organizations had, he neglected those factors which determine their fundamental structure.

Many organizations have complained of apathy among the working class. Attendance at meetings of trade unions, political parties and other organizations has declined; “Leftists” and other reformists have declared that the lack of interest displays a lack of political consciousness among people. But all it shows is the absence of understanding. “Leftists” look to the odd clauses in the manifestos of reformist parties, like the Labour Party, to try and show that these parties are not reformist but have socialist origins. They fail to see that the original role of the organizations, and one they maintain, was as an expression of the wish for reforms of capitalism. They fail to see that the leadership nature of organizations was and is a reflection of these reformist aims.

What a decline in active involvement in these organizations shows is that numbers of the working class no longer believe that devoting their time to participation in reformism is worth while. Socialists agree with them. We have always advised the working class that involvement with these organizations can never solve the basic problems of society. At most, trade unions make gains which can quickly be eroded by developments like inflation. The reforms which political parties implement are introduced largely to facilitate the further development of capitalism. Even the National Health Service, that “sacred cow” of the Labour Party, has primarily served to ensure that the illnesses which workers have do not result in an excessive loss of labour-power from productive employment.

Socialists say that in the light of the failure of these organizations to solve the fundamental problems facing the working class, people should now take a further step and put an end to the capitalist system, which has been the cause of their problems throughout the period of mass organization. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has continuously and consistently put forward that those problems can only be solved by the establishment of Socialism. Throughout the SPGB’s existence it has opposed all other political organizations because it recognizes that the aims of these organizations were limited to obtaining reforms within capitalism. But unlike other organizations, the members of the SPGB do not see the political party and its structure as being maintained within a Socialist society. It exists solely to work for Socialism among the working class in order that they themselves can abolish capitalism. Consequently the organizational structures which reflect the class basis of capitalism will not be transferred to Socialism. Because it means that everybody will own and control the means of production, instead of a minority as in capitalism, the democratic structure of Socialism will reflect the very different purpose of the society. This is the aim of fulfilling human needs, as opposed to the aim of capitalism, which is to produce profits for a minority of the population.

M. D.

Revisionism of the German Socialist Party. (1905)

From the November 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the issue of “Vorwaerts,” the Central Organ of the German. Socialist Party, of October the 21st last, appeared an announcement that six members of the Editorial Staff of the “Vorwaerts” had tendered their resignation to the Executive Council of the Party. The issue of the same paper of October the 24th contained the following notice :—

“To the Members of the Party.

“To-day a meeting was held in which took part the Executive Council of the Party, the Press Committee of the “Vorwaerts,” the Confidential Men of Berlin and suburbs, the Chairmen and Treasurers of the 8 Socialist Election Associations, the Local Committee, the Propaganda Committee for the Province of Brundenburg and the Members of and Candidates for Parliament for the Constituencies in Berlin and suburbs. Those present resolved—only 8 dissenting : ‘That this meeting accepts the resignation of Comrades Buttner, Eisner, Gradnauer, Kaliski, Schroder and Wetzker as Editors of the “Vorwaerts,” as such resignation will make it possible to change the conditions in the Editorial Department of the paper in accordance with the wishes and views of this meeting. The Executive Council and Press Committee are hereby instructed to take the necessary steps for replacing some of the Editorial Staff accordingly. Public information as to the incidents leading to the resignation of the said 6 comrades will be given to the members of the Party as soon as matters have been put straight in the Editorial Department.’

“(Signed) The Executive Council.”

For the information of those who are unable to follow up the progress of the movement in other countries it may here be explained that at the last annual Congress of the German Socialist Party the Editorial Staff of the “Vorwaerts” was requested to refrain from supporting Revisionism. The aforementioned six members of the Staff, among whom is Buttner the Editor-in-Chief, took no notice of the warning by the Congress or subsequently by the Executive Council. This body was consequently compelled to hold several meetings relating to this matter and to refuse the Staff of the “Vorwaerts” admittance thereto. This want of confidence was too much for the six above mentioned, hence their resignation. For the present there is no further news to hand.

The full Editorial Staff of the “Vorwaerts” at present consists of 10 members, viz., Buttner (Chief and responsible Editor), Eisner and Gradnauer (Politics), Schroder and Kaliski (Local), Wetzker (Social), Strobel (Foreign), Cunow (Economics), John (Trade Unions), and Leid (Party News),

Hans Neumann

The Fabians, Bernstein and Revisionism — Part 3 (1956)

From the April 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2

The controversy between Askew and Bax over Bernstein's membership of the German Social Democratic Party, was concluded in the July and August numbers of the Social Democrat.

Askew’s contribution to the July number contended that Bax had not shown that Bernstein had defended “almost every abuse of Capitalism,” and, to offset this charge, he pointed out that Bernstein was actually at that time advocating “the use of that extremely conservative weapon known as the general strike” in opposition to the great bulk of the German party. He then goes on:

 “Of course, I may point out, what Kautsky has already pointed out in his book against Bernstein, what was the distinguishing feature of Bernstein’s standpoint was the absence of any definite standpoint. You had criticism of the party programme, etc., but what Bernstein’s own standpoint was it was impossible to say. Now. we may think what we may of Bernstein for having published his ideas in this way; we may think he was inconsistent in staying in the party; but owing to the very indefiniteness of his ideas, we cannot condemn them without at the same time condemning criticism itself.”

This is a strange argument of Askew’s. The German Party claimed to be Marxist and organised for the establishment of Socialism. Bernstein was opposed to the basic Marxian outlook and supported anti-Socialist proposals, some of which we have already referred to. Yet because his views were “indefinite” (they were certainly definitely anti-Socialist) Askew holds that he should not be excluded from the German party. However, there is this much to be said for Askew’s views. The German Party supported such a hotch-potch of reformism that they had difficulty in making a case against Bernstein that would not react against the bulk of their own members.

Askew then argues that as nobody took the trouble to go through Bernstein’s articles and draw attention to the nature of his actions, it was no use “talking at random in the English party Press when what was required was an explanation in the German party Press.” Then Askew twits Bax with himself being guilty of the mendacity with which he charges Bernstein. In support of this he charges Bax with having misquoted Bebel’s statements in his book on the Woman question. Bax had quoted Bebel in support of his own view that Feminism, as such is not and never has been, a necessary part of Socialism. Askew makes a long quotation from p. 7 of the 30th edition of Bebel’s “Woman.” In the extract Bebel states that the Democratic Parties agree that women should have equal treatment, and their emancipation from all dependence and oppression, on account of Socialist principles. But this agreement cannot be said for the manner in which the aim is to be achieved. As soon as one “enters on the description of the institutions of the future, a wide field is opened out for speculation.” He then goes on that what is laid down in this book are the personal views of the author for which he alone is responsible.

There is then an attack on Bax’s attitude to the M.C of H. and Askew says that Bax’s views on the subject are difficult to distinguish from Bernstein’s, and, in fact, he was told by a member of the Swiss party that: 

 “Large numbers of the comrades were firmly convinced that Bax was a Bernsteinianer . . . now, as Kautsky explained, no one has dreamed of making acceptance of the materialist conception of history a condition of party membership; then, neither, so far as 1 know, has anyone hitherto seriously proposed to make a limitation of the right of free criticism in the sense proposed by Bax, but, if we are to accept Bax’s test that criticism of fundamentals is to be forbidden, the case is altered. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”

Askew takes up Bax’s contention that criticism of the party programme was permissible but criticism of the ultimate foundation on which the party rests, its basal object, was not permissible. Askew then argued that “ultimate foundation” and “basal object ” were not the same thing; that the “Socialisation of the means of production’’ was the basal object, and the ultimate foundation consisted of the theory of surplus value and the materialist conception of history. He then quotes Kautsky as writing that of the two the materialist conception of history “is become the more fundamental. With it stands or falls Marxism, i.e.. the highest point at which the Socialist theory has yet arrived.” Askew adds that, while this is a personal opinion, a very large majority of the members of the party would agree with it. and if a rule is made that fundamentals must not be criticised it would have unfortunate results.

There is a footnote to one of the pages of Askew’s contribution in which he twits Bax with his membership of a Liberal Club, remarking that he “finds it inconsistent with his (Bax’s) hatred of Liberalism to remain a member of a Club which makes it a condition of membership that a member should recognise the principles of the Liberal Party—a Club recognised, almost more than the Reform, as the headquarters of the party.”

We will give Askew’s concluding paragraph in full as it summarises his outlook, and what he expects.

"Finally, the German party has better things to do than to consider if, when members declare their agreement with the main principles of the party programme, they do so with their tongue in their cheek or not. As long as any individual member proves loyal in the practice, the German party are not prepared to limit the right of free criticism, which they consider is the very breath of life to the party, because they do not agree to all that he says. ‘Idealist' Marxists or synthetic historians may attach great importance to rigidity of doctrine; we materialists know that the facts of life decide. Thus we do not get into a fuss every time the class war is called in question; we know that the class war, being inherent in the present order of society, will soon assert itself again, even where it seems to be temporarily eclipsed. And the same applies to the ‘final aim' of Socialism. The proletariat as a whole must, in its own interests, demand the socialisation of the means of production, etc. Of course you get backwaters in this as in all progress, and you find the English trade unions, having got to a certain pitch, stopping there. But even this seems to me to confirm the materialist conception of history. As long as the Continental workers were in the eyes of the British workmen in a much inferior position to themselves, the latter could hardly believe in the possibility of their own emancipation. They would, no doubt, say to themselves, ‘Beyond a certain extent we cannot at present improve our position.’ That may be right or wrong, but I cannot help feeling, and this feeling was strengthened by the arguments of the British delegation at the recent Textile Workers’ Congress, that it had its influence on the English trade unionists. Taken with the fact that English employers, owing to their position in the world, were able, and not unnaturally willing, to make concessions in the interests of peace from time to time, that the ‘suffrage' was practically a gift at a time when no urgent demand had arisen for it, I think we have ground to assume that the peculiar historical conditions of the British trade unionist explains the weakness of his class consciousness. But the loss of a favoured position, or what he imagines is a favoured position, compared with his Continental brothers, will do more than all the preaching in the world to make the British working man Socialist. When that comes, we need not fear the heresy of a Bernstein any more than that of a Bax. We can be tolerant of them just as we should be tolerant of those who deny the theory of gravity."

It will be noticed that there are no doubts here about whether "Final Truth” has been attained. Askew makes positive statements about the accuracy of the materialist conception of history, the class war and class-consciousness, as well as his satisfaction with the eventual outcome of trade union agitation, in spite of set-backs. He also takes for granted that Bernstein and his like will be proved wrong. But he skates over the confusion that would come to a party honeycombed with people like Bernstein.

Gilmac.

(To be continued)

Blogger's Note:

"To be continued?"  'fraid not. I can't find any further articles in the series. And, trust me, I looked.

The Fabians, Bernstein and Revisionism — Part 2 (1956)

From the February 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

The action of the German Social Democratic Party in deciding to overlook the theoretical and practical delinquencies of Bernstein raised a heated controversy in the columns of the English social democratic journal, the Social Democrat.

The controversy opened with a somewhat vitriolic article by Belfort Bax entitled Factitious Unity, which appeared in the Social Democrat of February, 1902. The article opens with some general remarks about unity. He claimed that there was a strong tendency in advanced parties to make a fetish of party unity and that “The integrity of principles is quite a secondary consideration provided that the unity of the party be maintained. Anything to avoid a split—that is the motto of the practical politician in the dawning 20th century.” He then suggests that it would be well for the advocates of unity at any price to ask themselves for what their party exists. If it for money, office, or power for its own sake, then unity may be justified in its day and generation. But, “If, on the contrary, party organisation itself is subservient to certain definite ideals, and has no object or significance apart from such, then equally clearly, whenever those ideals are threatened by the unity of the party, that unity must go by the board.”

Coming indirectly to the question of Bernstein, Bax examines the claim for unity by those who argue that it is better to patch up differences of opinion that may exist and “unite on a basis of some vague and general formula on which all can agree,” and who claim “that a party cannot afford to lose an able man of men merely because they happen to be shaky on some vital point of principle.” 

To the first point Bax replies “the realisation of the ideals of a party is less likely to be effectuated by the attenuation of those ideals for the sake of mere numerical strength than by the surrender of a certain amount of such strength on behalf of the vigorous maintenance intact of the principles for the sake of which the party avowedly exists.” Against the second point he contends that “the ability of doubtful members cuts both ways. It may be of more danger to party principles when inside the party organisation than it is of advantage to the enemy when working against it outside. A party having any regard for its principles should surely look to it that its able men . . . should be straight even more than the rank and file—and, hence, if they go wrong, should be the more inexorably expelled. A party that is worth its salt can always afford to lose a man or two without collapsing, but if cannot always afford to have a powerful leader inside incessantly pulling the wrong way.”

After some references to the Liberal and Radical parties of the time Bax then comes to the attitude of the German Social Democratic Party towards Bernstein, at which his article was really aimed. We will have to quote nearly the whole of his final paragraph in order that what follows will be understandable.

After stating that the glorification of unity is not confined to Liberalism he continues:

“We see much the same thing at the present time among our comrades of the German Social Democratic Party. It has been of late crucially manifested in the Bernstein controversy. Mr. Bernstein repudiated almost every principle hitherto regarded as ’of faith’ in Social Democracy. He champions every form and well-nigh every abuse of capitalism. . . . He has systematically attacked every Social Democratic doctrine in turn, to the delight of reactionary readers and hearers. In a word, Mr. Bernstein is incomparably less friendly to Socialism, if any meaning is to be attached to the word at all, than the mildest English Radical. To judge from his expressed opinions, in fact, Mr. Bernstein has no more sympathy with the recognised principles of Social Democracy, and perhaps rather less, than Count von Bulow himself. And yet, wonderful to relate, for fear of causing a split in the party, for fear of jeopardising party unity, the German Social Democrats could not muster up sufficient courage to exclude Mr. Bernstein from their ranks. In this case /the mere desire of preserving a formal unity must be alone in question, since it can hardly be alleged that there is any extraordinary ability at stake.”

In the March, 1902. number of the Social Democrat, J. B. Askew replied to Bax, defending the attitude of the German Social Democratic Party, contending that the German party had considered the whole circumstances of the case and not merely the points raised by Bax. He then gives a lengthy outline of the matters in dispute, largely in accordance with the summary we gave in our last month's contribution; but he omitted Bernstein’s support for war and his claim that the “higher” civilisation had a greater right to the territory of native people than the natives themselves.

After his statement of matters in dispute, he writes;

"Now it is fairly obvious that this theory or theories are open to dispute, and, indeed, I think that Kautzky has completely proved the worthlessness of most of Bernstein's speculations, but that is a very different thing from thinking with Bax that it was advisable to expel him from the party on the strength of them.”

He then argues that if Bernstein were expelled for his criticisms,

"We tie the party down to a formula, which nobody is allowed to criticise under penalty of expulsion, a proceeding which is consistent from those who consider that Final Truth has been achieved in this direction, but very stupid for those who do not. After all what is a political party, or, rather, what is the Social Democratic Party, and what are the conditions of membership? The answer is. surely, we are a body of men and women who have come together to work for the achievement of ideas which we have embodied in a common programme, the most important item of which is that of die socialisation of the means of production and exchange. Membership of the party is conditional on acceptance of this, programme and the agreement to work for the common end Bernstein accepts both these conditions. . . . There is a difference. I may remind Bax. between saying that Bernstein is inconsistent in remaining in the Party and thinking that the party would do well to turn him out.”

Finally, after having a dig at Bax’s criticism of the Materialist Conception, and suggesting that he is in the same position as Bernstein. Askew winds up as follows:

“I am against expulsion—as I believe the German Party is—in cases where the theory of the Party alone is concerned, and there is no question of Party discipline or character at stake, because I believe that if we are to progress as a Party, if we are to meet the difficulties, which will confront us, our members must enjoy a full, free, and unlimited right of criticism in respect of the Party programme. To deny this is to imply that we have attained Final Truth, and that new circumstances can never arise to alter it, or render a new tactic and programme necessary.” 

Before we go on to Bax's reply to Askew’s contribution we must interpolate a few remarks of our own on the above.

The argument about Final Truth in connection with the matters in dispute seems plausible until it is examined, then it becomes comical. For example. If a naked man stands upright in the path of a modern express train he will be killed; likewise, if a thousand tons of rock drops on a naked man he will also be killed. These are final truths within the conditions of the statements; there can be no doubts about them, either now or in a thousand years.

Now let us come to the question of Socialist principles.

Present society is based upon the ownership of the means of living by the Capitalist class; there is an antagonism of interests between the owning class and the producing class: this antagonism of interests must continue as long as there is buying and selling. Capitalist ownership and capital investment, and a class that lives by selling its physical and mental energies to an owning class. These conditions can only be removed by a social revolution accomplished by the subject, or producing class. These are statements of fact and final truths for the conditions specified as far as Socialists are concerned. Further, reforms cannot alter the conditions because they do not aim at abolishing the present basis of society. This is also a final truth for the conditions specified. Again, wars, insecurity, crime, and a host of other evils, will continue whilst the present social basis remains. This, again, is a final truth for the condition specified.

Askew’s Final Truth argument would therefore appear to have no bearing upon the matters in dispute. In fact, however, it has for the disputants. What hipped all of Bernstein's opponents in the dispute was the lengthy reform programmes and compromising of the Social Democratic Parties. Here there was no final truth, because no sooner was one reform adopted than another was required to meet the effects of the previous one. Many of the reforms advocated by the Social Democratic Parties during the eighties and nineties have been adopted, yet still the fundamental social position remains unchanged —Capitalists and workers, domination and class-struggle, wars, insecurity, crime, and the rest of the social evils. Yet still the reformers pursue their will-o-the-wisps. This reformism is what Askew means when he refers to “a common programme" in the above quotation. To him Socialism consists of two antagonistic parts—the accomplishment of common ownership and a policy of reformism. Reforms, however well intended, are designed to enable the exploiting machine to ran more smoothly; not to remove the machine, but to take some of the sand out of it. To bemuse the discontented and induce them to work harder and complain less.

Now to return to the controversy.

Bax's reply to Askew appeared in the Social Democrat for June 1902. His answer to Askew's Final Truth argument was as follows:

"I answer, it is a party, at all events, possessing certain principles, political, economical, and ethical, based on the known facts of historic evolution. Any one who sets himself up by sophistry, or otherwise, to upset these principles, though he may be an excellent man, has no right within a party whose raison d'etre is the realisation of an ideal based on the assumed truth of these principles. The cackle of toleration, of ‘self-criticism,’ and what-not, is the veriest balderdash. We want no ‘self-criticism’ within the party in the matter of fundamentals. We have a right to assume that a man has done his 'criticism ’ of principles before joining the party, for no party can afford to have persons within its ranks who call in question its very bases. And hence I say the moment a member begins publicly to whittle away doctrines at the foundation of the very existence of the party, he should be expelled.”

Bax then goes on to distinguish between the party programme and fundamentals:

"When Askew asks me whether I think it advisable to allow members the right of free criticism of the party programme, I say Yes. But if by party programme he means the ultimate foundation on which the party rests the basal object for which the party is constituted, I say No.

No man has a right to expect to be allowed to remain a member of a party whose principles, whether rightly or wrongly, he has publicly called in question. On the other hand, no party has a right to use the State, the secular arm, to crush opposition to its views.

The utmost that has been suggested is that he [Bernstein] should be politely, but firmly, told to clear out of the German Social Democratic organisation, and take his criticism with him There is nothing to prevent him from demolishing Marx or anybody else outside the organisation. What more than this can he want?”

The rest of Bax's reply consists of some sarcastic references to Askew's contribution, some instances of Berntein's perfidious conduct, and a misunderstanding of Askew’s reference to views held by Bax which, he alleged put Bax in the position he claimed Bernstein was in. Bax took this to mean his attitude to feminism, whereas it really referred to his attitude to the Materialist Conception of History, Bax held views at variance with the Materialist Conception of History,  and had debated his view with Kautsky in the German party journal a few years earlier. He called his view “The Synthetic Doctrine of History." We will discuss his outlook at the end of the controversy over Bernstein’s membership of the German Social Democratic Party, 

Gilmac.

(To be continued.)

Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg (1939)

Pamphlet Review from the March 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg 53 pp; 25 cents. Three Arrows Press, New York.

So far as we know, this is the first English translation of Reform or Revolution. Originally, it appeared in German in 1899, its aim being to show the weakness of the case of Eduard Bernstein and Kondradt Schmidt, which stated that the German Social Democratic Party should abandon all idea of a revolutionary transformation of society and aim to improve the status of the working-class by means of the winning of reforms. Bernstein and Schmidt held the view that reforms themselves, if continuously enacted, would gradually make an inroad into capitalism, with the result that Socialism would slowly arrive.

Two groups formed themselves in the Social Democratic Party which hitherto had claimed to be Marxist; one group led by Rosa Luxemburg, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Karl Kautsky, which still called itself Marxist; the other which gathered around Bernstein and advocated gradualism or reformism.

The pamphlet under review, written in defence of scientific Socialism and to demonstrate the fallacies of gradualism, deserves to be widely read, and we recommend it especially to members of the Labour Party, trade unionists and Co-operators.

Before dealing with the pamphlet itself, there is one aspect of its history that is worthy of note. From it can be learned a lesson in party organisation.

The arguments of Reform or Revolution, though sound in the main, were not accepted by the majority of the German SDP. Bernstein’s reformism was preferred. The question arises, “Why did a party which claimed to be Marxist, reject Rosa Luxemburg’s teaching and adopt that of Bernstein?” The answer is that the SDP, while declaring Socialism to be its aim, entered the political arena from the first with a programme of demands for immediate reforms. Consequently, despite the wishes of many of the founders, adherents were gained who were interested in the reforms offered, rather than in the Socialist objective. Because of this unsound foundation, the party became overwhelmed with reformists. As Liebknecht said in his No Compromise, written in the same year as Reform or Revolution, “When once the thin end of the opportunist wedge has forced itself into the policy of the party, the thick end soon follow”. Readers of Liebknecht’s pamphlet will know that very soon the German capitalist class lost its terror of the SDP, many of them joined its ranks and the class basis of the party was gone. The unsound basis of the party was again revealed in 1914, when it supported its own national group of capitalists in the war, just as the British Labour Party supported the British capitalists. Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution had been powerless against the strong waves of reformism within the SDP.

The lesson to be learned from the above facts is obvious: when organising for Socialism, the offering of reforms on the party programme spells ruin. Thousands may flock into the party, but they are mostly interested in the reform of capitalism, not in its abolition, and these members swamp the Socialist element. Here is a definite answer to those who urge Socialists to join the Labour Party. History has proved, in the case of the German Social Democratic Party, that Socialists inside a reformist organisation cannot convert it and bring it on to the Socialist path. The only logical thing they can do is to break with the reformists and organise on the clear-cut programme of Socialism. Says Liebknect: “Once . . . we have started upon the inclined plane of compromise, there is no stopping”.

And now let us turn to the pamphlet itself.

The argument put forward—and shown to be true—is that the working-class cannot hope for Socialism from trade unions, Co-operatives or from reform movements.

Trade unions, Rosa Luxemburg, shows, are a part of capitalism itself. They are the workers’ weapons of defence against the capitalist class which aims at increasing its profits. They are useful in that they enable the workers to sell their labour-power under more favourable conditions than would otherwise be the case. However, they are not able to take the offensive against capitalism, to overthrow it, because they are badly handicapped. They are handicapped because the continued increase in the use of machinery makes for a greater productivity of labour, and therefore enables the capitalist class to employ fewer hands for the production of a given quantity of goods. Furthermore, trade unions cannot increase the share of wealth going to the working class. Owing to the development of capitalism and the greater productivity of labour, this share is continually being reduced. When the workers produce more, their wages do not rise in the same proportion (pp. 16-18 and p. 37).

Co-operative Societies are no more able than trade unions to end capitalism. As Rosa Luxemburg points out (pp. 35-6) they can survive within the present system only if they become pure capitalist enterprises. They have to compete with capitalist firms, and to do so successfully they must adopt capitalist methods of production.

  “Labour is intensified. The work day is lengthened or shortened, according to the situation of the market. And, depending on the requirements of the market, labour is either employed or thrown back into the street. In other words, use is made of all the methods that enable an enterprise to stand up against its competitors in the market. The workers forming a co-operative in the field of production . . . are obliged to take toward themselves the role of the capitalist entrepreneur—a contradiction that accounts for the usual failure of production co-operatives, which either become pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end by dissolving”.

How capitalist the co-operatives have become in England may be seen from the fact that their employees, like employees in any capitalist concern, have frequently had to strike against their conditions of work.

Those who hope to establish Socialism by means of a long series of reforms will find in this book an explanation of why they are doomed to disappointment.

A revolution and a legislative reform are two completely different factors in the development of society. “A social transformation and a legislative reform do not differ according to their duration but according to their content.” A revolution is the work of a class which has gained political power in order to transform society to suit its interests; a reform is carried out only within the framework of the social system created by the previous revolution. Hence reforms cannot end capitalism; they can modify it to some extent, but they leave its basis untouched. To establish socialism, a revolution—a complete transformation of private property into social property—is necessary.

  “That is why people who pronounce themselves in favour of the method of legislative reform in place of and in contradistinction to the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose a more tranquil, calmer and slower road to the same goal, but a different goal. Instead of taking a stand for the establishment of a new society they take a stand for surface modifications of the old society” (p; 43).

Furthermore, the State to-day is a class State, established by the capitalist class and carried on in its interests. It is the representative of capitalist society, wherein capitalist interests dominate. Any social reforms that are passed, therefore, will not be injurious to capitalism. Says Rosa Luxemburg (p. 21):

  “The present State is, first of all, an organisation of the ruling class. It assumes functions favouring social development specifically because, and in the measure that, these interests and social development coincide, in a general fashion, with the interests of the dominant class. Labour legislation is enacted as much in the immediate interest of the capitalist class as in the interest of society in general.”

Since the struggle for reforms cannot alter the slave position of the working class, it ends by bringing indifference and disillusionment to the workers who look to reforms for emancipation.

  “Since the social reforms can only offer an empty promise, the logical consequence of such a programme must necessarily be disillusionment” (p. 26).

If trade unions, Co-operatives and reform movements are unable to oust capitalism and usher in Socialism, what must we do to reach our goal? Rosa Luxemburg indicates the way.

“From the first appearance of class societies . . . the conquest of political power has been the aim of all rising classes” (p. 42). 

The workers, too, being an oppressed class, must aim at capturing political power. And they must make use of democracy for that end. Democracy is indispensable to the working-class “because it creates the political forms which will serve the proletariat as fulcrums in its task of transforming bourgeois society” (p. 45). Democracy the working-class needs, and this can be best preserved, not by compromise, but by struggling for Socialism. Lovers of democracy should ponder carefully the following:

  “Democracy does not acquire greater chances of life in the measure that the working-class renounces the struggle for its emancipation, but, on the contrary, democracy acquires greater chances of survival as the Socialist movement becomes sufficiently strong to struggle against the reactionary consequences of world politics, and the bourgeois desertion of democracy. He who would strengthen democracy should want to strengthen and not weaken the Socialist movement. He who renounces the struggle for Socialism renounces both the Labour movement and democracy” (p. 41).

Rosa Luxemburg puts forward certain points of view with which we do not agree. For example, we hold that she lays too much emphasis on the decline of capitalism and its collapse. Readers of Reform or Revolution would do well to study also our penny pamphlet Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse.

Clifford Allen

("Reform or Revolution" is obtainable from 42 Great Dover Street, S.E.1, at 1s, post free 1s. 1d.)

Reformist excuses and Labourite deceit (2001)

Pamphlet Review from the May 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was with some amusement that this socialist picked up a copy of the recent Fabian pamphlet The Case for Socialism. Published by an organisation that has never been committed to socialism, I wondered at what the contents might be. I didn’t expect too much as the Fabian Society as now constituted has been described as “Blair’s shock troops” and has been at the forefront of trying to “redefine” socialism. As I read I realised that what “redefinition” meant was the wholesale bastardisation of the term to justify a century of attempts by the Labour Party and its affiliates to tweak capitalism by use of the state.

To some extent socialists have to acknowledge that the “welfare” state, the NHS and so on, made living standards for some sections of the working class better than they had been under rampant capitalism and its early ideology of laissez faire, although these ends should never be confused with socialism. However, the pamphlet justifies the developments of the last twenty years whereby the Labour Party, and the labour movement generally, has abandoned even these limited aims. Socialists appreciate the honesty that this has brought about, with members of the Labour Party no longer claiming to be able to bring about a qualitatively new society through nationalisation and so on but seeking only to make capitalism’s worst aspects slightly less bad. What socialists don’t appreciate, however, is the century of deceit of the working class that Labourism has involved. Promising crumbs off the master’s table has diverted attention away from the attempts by definite socialists to secure the whole loaf.

The pamphlet’s author, Paul Richards, suggests that “socialism is about more than visions; it is about the practical steps to get there”. Given his later claim that “Revisionism is the political method whereby socialists ensure the policies they espouse reflect the times they live in”, or, to paraphrase, socialism is a great idea but will it get us elected, it is no surprise that he concludes that the “transition to socialism is like walking towards the horizon: no matter how long the journey, you never arrive”. That the Labour Party has nothing to do with socialism as a practical end is summed up in his view that in politics “It is the journey that matters, not the destination.”

The main thrust of the pamphlet is a weak theoretical justification for the Blairite “modernisers” who are asserting in the name of socialism a humanistic communitarian philosophy which has as its basis the new Labour Clause Four and Paul Richards states that this replaced the old one constructed by Sidney Webb in 1918 because the old one could mean “whatever you wanted”; but if the old one could mean anything, the new one means nothing at all to anyone apart from the new governors of “cool Britannia”. Pluralism is the order of the day, there apparently being “as many socialisms as there are socialists”.

In this pamphlet and in another by the Fabian Society Radicals and Reformers: A Century of Fabian Thought (ed. Mark Thomas and Guy Lodge) the new left in the Labour Party is trying to justify its actions in two ways. Firstly, by trying to establish itself in the tradition of socialist revisionism and, secondly, by suggesting that structural economic and social change has made new revision necessary. It is quite true that politicians seeking to be elected to run capitalism, albeit to try to reform it, must be concerned to appeal to the widest number of voters. What this has nothing to do with of course is socialism, which is the desire to establish a qualitatively different social and economic basis. “Socialist” revisionism has never been concerned with the establishment of socialism but merely with the operation of so-called socialist parties in the politics of the capitalist state.

Founded in 1884 it, with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and Bernard Shaw among its prominent members, was initially a body for socialist discussion and meetings. The influence of Sidney Webb in particular, however, quickly led to a view of socialism quite at odds with socialism. For the Fabians all progress must be by slow, gradual struggle, reform-by-reform, within the law and over a lengthy period of time. “The inevitability of gradualism” became its well-known phrase and was outlined in the Fabian Essays (1889). Thus for socialism to become a reality, for the Fabians, meant an evolutionary process and not revolution. Also, its vision of the society of the future was akin to some sort of efficient state bureaucracy rather than the world of free access and possibilities for human happiness depicted by William Morris’s News From Nowhere (1890).

It is instructive to read an analysis of the early Fabian Society by a contemporary party with definite socialist aims, that is the Socialist Party, the only party then as now committed to the establishment of socialism, and nothing but:

  “The Fabian Society also [as well as the SDF] poses as a Socialist organisation for we are told that this Society ‘consists of Socialists’. It is indeed composed of middle-class men who naturally deny the class struggle, profess to believe in permeating the capitalist class with Socialism, and hold that the tendency of society is towards government by the expert. Fabianism therefore tends towards the rule of the bureaucrats, or that section of the educated middle class. The Fabians are the cult of the civil service, and are Socialists neither in name nor fact . . . Fabianism, that peculiarly British product, is merely a manifestation of the intellectual bankruptcy of the capitalist-class” (Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, 1905, p.11).

The rejection of Marxist theory in all its aspects by the Fabian Society has resulted in an organisation committed to producing idea after idea concerned with reforming one aspect or another of capitalism. Noticeably, after over a century of reforms and not a few Labour governments, the Fabians, if they stopped to seriously reflect, would find that, like a dog chasing its tail, reform has been followed by a fresh attack by capital on a new front or the reverse of past reforms by the avowed representatives of capital.

As to claims that social and economic change in the late twentieth century has made past class experience and socialist thought irrelevant, one glance at world governments’ own current statistics will reveal the greatest concentration of the means of production amongst the smallest proportion of the population in the history of human relations and consequently the most iniquitous social and economic system in the history of humankind. Whether the bulk of that part of the population that works for a wage works in a factory or a call centre, with its hands or brains, works for the same firm or “flexibly”, rides the bus or owns their car, rents or owns their houses, buys from a shop or over the internet, thinks of itself broadly as a homogenous class or not, works for a “foreign” firm or not, makes no difference. The fact is that all those having no access to the means of living, the working class, must work for those who have, the owning or capitalist class, at a rate less than the value of labour contained in their work. Thus “globalisation”, incidentally no new development, is not a recent phenomenon for the working class, just an acceleration of an existing process.

The Fabian Society may have ridden the roundabout of reformism and, having enjoyed the ride, want to go round again, but socialists want no part in this fraud. Social happiness, common ownership, free access, democratic control; all can be achieved by the working class. The interests of the owners of the means of living dictates, on the other hand, that profits, obtained from the labour of those with no access to the means of living, are the end to which society shall be organised. And this class, having at its disposal the power of the state and the means of communication, succeed very well in presenting their own interests as those of us all, despite the fact of a fundamental clash of interests between capital and the vast bulk of the world’s population, the working class, which has no interest in the continuance of the minority ownership of the means of production. Humans can then begin their own history, free from the constraints of profit and class struggle, but must, as a precondition, firstly abolish the current decadent capitalist system and replace it with the new society, socialism.

The concept of class struggle and of revolution is alien to the rose-tinted reformists of the British left characterised by the Fabian Society and the Labour Party. This means they will be content to see every gain as the building of barriers against the tide of capitalism only to see them smashed down with the next tide. The Socialist Party, on the other hand, knows its task well; to carry on the political struggle against capitalism and its political representatives and, so doing, to bring about its rapid demise. Only by recognising the intrinsic struggle between capital and labour, and acting to bring about the victory of labour, of the working class and its interests, can classes once and for all be abolished, common ownership be established, and real human interests and relationships begin.

Colin Skelly

The International Socialist Congress (1904)

From the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Space will not permit a full report of the seven day’s proceedings of the Amsterdam Congress, but in later issues of our paper we shall, no doubt, be enabled to deal more fully with some of the points raised.

This was the sixth International Congress and was attended by 482 delegates – Great Britain with 101 and France with 98 sending the largest delegations. Congress had already opened when the majority of the Britishers reached Amsterdam on Sunday, with Van Kol (Dutch) as President and Plekhanoff (Russian) and Sen Katayama (an English-speaking Jap) as Vice-Presidents. Troelstra, in the name of the Dutch Socialists, welcomed the Delegates to Amsterdam, and at the conclusion of his speech the two vice-presidents rose and shook hands amidst great cheering. Katayama referred to the difficulties of Socialist propaganda in Japan, and declared that the Japanese workman had no quarrel with his fellow workman of Russia. Both were crushed by capitalism and militarism. Plekhanoff followed in similar strain. The Czar, who was making the war, was the greatest enemy the Russian people had. The Congress then adopted a motion sending fraternal greetings to the proletariat of Russia and Japan, after which the sitting terminated.

In the afternoon a great outdoor demonstration was held at which speeches were delivered by the prominent men and women of the movement. Here we were fortunate in meeting an English-speaking Dutch comrade. to whom we explained the situation in England and the reasons which led us to found The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We exchanged addresses for correspondence purposes.

On Monday morning the British section met. At this and the following meetings contests took place between the S.D.F. and the I.L.P. over matters which they considered important. In the main the I.L.P. scored. The Congress met in the morning. passed a resolution of sympathy with the Colorado miners, and after formal announcements had been made as to the constitution of the various commissions, adjourned until Tuesday afternoon, so that the commissions could prepare their reports. At that sitting Cipriani (France) presided, the vice-presidents being Hilquit (U.S.A.) and Iglesias (Spain). It was immediately proposed that the meeting be suspended until the following morning. as the Commission on International Policy and Tactics as well as others had not prepared their reports. Hyndman opposed this, for the reasons which he had put forward in the British Section, viz., that the discussion upon International Policy should be put off as long as possible. He preferred that disputed matters such as that should not be discussed at the Congress, and he therefore wished the Congress to proceed with the discussion of minor matters, to the exclusion, if possible of this, the one really important matter on the Agenda. We fail to recognise the necessity for holding an International Congress in order to pass resolutions upon matters concerning which we are already agreed. Surely matters of disagreement should be discussed with the object of arriving at an understanding which shall be a guide to the movement internationally. However, Hyndman was not successful, and the Congress adjourned.

When Congress was resumed on Wednesday morning the Tactics Commission report was not ready, so that other matters had to be proceeded with. The first was that of Industrial Insurance and Labour Protective Legislation. Molkenbuhr (Germany) presented the report which called attention to the low wages which the workers received, and which prevented them from making provision for illness, accident, inability, old age, glut, pregnancy or maternity. The workers should therefore demand state provided insurance to meet these contingencies. S. G. Hobson then moved a resolution which had been drafted with the special object of condemning Great Britain for her treatment of India. Its concluding words called “upon the workers of Great Britain to enforce upon their Government the abandonment of the present nefarious and dishonourable system and the establishment of self-government in the best form practicable by the Indians themselves (under British Paramountcy)”. Dadabhai Naoroji, at whose instance were added the last three words (which seem to us to take away from the Indians the right which it is desired to concede in the preceding phrases), seconded the resolution, which was adopted.

Van Kol again presided on Thursday, Pete Curran (Britain) and Knudsen (Denmark} being vice-chairmen. On the motion of Ferri, the Congress agreed to a resolution sympathising with the Italian Committee which is agitating for the release of those imprisoned for participation in the disturbances of 1898. Van Kol then submitted the report of the Commission on Colonial Policy, and a resolution was adopted declaring it to be the duty of national Socialist parties and of parliamentary groups to oppose without any compromise colonial expansion in the interests of financial gangs. In the afternoon Madame Roland Holst reported that the Commission on the General Strike had adopted the resolution formulated by the Dutch Party, and eventually this became the resolution of the Congress. It declared a general strike would defeat its own object and warned the workers not to be misled by the Anarchists, who were responsible for this proposal.

On Friday, Troelstra was President and Sigg (Geneva) and Rosa Luxembourg (Austria) the Vice Presidents. Vandervelde reported for the Commission on International Policy and Tactics. He stated that in the Commission the Swiss had proposed that the Congress proceed to the next business, which, however, was rejected. De Leon had offered an amendment to the following effect :

  “Whereas, the struggle between the working-class and the capitalist class is a continuous and irrepressible conflict, a conflict that tends every day rather to be intensified than to be softened ;
  “Whereas, the existing governments are committees of the ruling class, intended to safeguard the yoke of capitalist exploitation upon the neck of the working class;
  “Whereas, at the last International Congress, held in Paris, in 1900, a resolution generally known as the Kautsky Resolution, was adopted, the closing clauses of which contemplate the emergency of the working-class accepting office at the hand of such capitalist governments, and also, especially, presupposes the possibility of impartiality on the part of the ruling class governments in the conflicts between the working class and the capitalist class; and
  “Whereas, the said clauses – applicable, perhaps, in countries not yet wholly freed from feudal institutions – were adopted under conditions both in France and in the Paris Congress itself, that justify erroneous conclusions on the nature of the class struggle, the character of capitalist government, and the tactics that are imperative, upon the proletariat in the pursuit of its campaign to overthrow the capitalist system in countries, which, like the United States of America, have wholly wiped out feudal institutions; therefore, be it –
  “Resolved, (1) that the said Kautsky Resolution be and the same is hereby repealed as a principle of general Socialist tactics ;
  “(2) That, in fully developed capitalist countries like America, the working class cannot, without betrayal of the cause of the proletariat, fill any political office other than such they conquer for and by themselves.”

which was also rejected. A further amendment had been proposed by Vandervelde and Adler, which merely confirmed the Kautsky Resolution  of 1900. This also was rejected by 24 votes to 16, and the Dresden Resolution, adopted by the Socialist Party of France in order to be moved at this Congress, was adopted in the Commission by 27 votes to 3, with 10 abstentions. (It must be recollected that the above votes refer to Nationalities). It had therefore been agreed that the Dresden Resolution, with the amendment of Vandervelde and Adler, should be submitted to the Congress. After speeches by Jaures, Bebel, Adler, Ferri, Vaillant, and Anseele, the Dresden Resolution, with one alteration, was agreed to by 25 to 5 with 12 abstentions. The resolution as adopted read as follows :

 “The Congress repudiates to the fullest extent possible the efforts of the Revisionists, which have for their object the modification of our tried and victorious policy based on the class war, and the substitution, for the conquest of political power by an unceasing attack on the bourgeoisie, of a policy of concession to the established order of society;
 “The consequence of such Revisionist tactics would be to turn a party striving for the most speedy transformation possible of bourgeois society into Socialist society – a party therefore revolutionary in the best sense of the word – into a party satisfied with the reform of bourgeois society ;
 “For this reason the Congress, convinced. in opposition to Revisionist tendencies, that class antagonisms, far from diminishing, continually increase in bitterness, declares :
  “1. That the party rejects all responsibility of any sort under the political and economic conditions based on capitalist production, and therefore can in no wise countenance any measure tending to maintain in power the dominant class.
 “2. The Social-Democracy can accept no participation in the Government under bourgeois society, this decision being in accordance with the Kautsky Resolution passed at the International Congress of Paris in 1900.
 “The Congress further condemns every attempt to mask the ever-growing class antagonisms, in order to bring about an understanding with the bourgeois parties.
 “The Congress relies upon the Socialist Parliamentary Group to use its power, increased by the number of its members and by the great accession of electors who support it, to persevere in its propaganda towards the final object of Socialism, and. in conformity with our programme, to defend most resolutely the interests of the working class, the extension and consolidation of  political liberties, in order to obtain equal rights for all; to carry on more vigorously than ever the fight against militarism, against the imperialist and colonial policy, against injustice, domination and exploitation of every kind, and finally to exert itself to the utmost to perfect social legislation and to enable the working-class to fulfil its political and civilising mission.”

This concluded Friday’s sitting.

On Saturday morning Congress decided to refer to the Bureau the Report of the Commission on Emigration, and adopted resolutions with reference to Women’s Suffrage, the First of May, and Trusts. These will be published in full in The Socialist Standard at a future date. The President announced the formation of an International Parliamentary Bureau, composed of a Parliamentary Representative from each Nationality, which would endeavour to meet once a year and act in conjunction with the Bureau. It was decided that the next Congress should be held at Stuttgart in 1907.

Jack Kent, Alex Pearson, 

The Delegates of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

‘Contemporary Capitalism’ (1956)

From the December 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Contemporary Capitalism by John Strachey (Victor Gollancz Ltd).

Mr. Strachey has never lacked a cause or a pen to wield on its behalf. He has both a talent for remembering and reproducing what others have told him and later forgetting what it was really all about. In turn he has been a currency reformer, I.L.P.’er, a Left Book Club writer of fairy tales for political innocents about “the Socialist one-sixth of the world,” an alleged Marxist, a Keynes admirer, a Labourite, and Minister in two Labour Governments. Such has been the evolution from half-baked theorist to hard-boiled politician.

That such a varied diet of ill-digested theories has induced intellectual heartburn, explains the burping Marxism in his latest book, Contemporary Capitalism. Although Mr. Strachey has arrived at political respectability, he fashionably sowed his wild oats in Communist heresy, and he has skeletons in his cupboard. We find them grinning at us at times through his book, in the guise of Marxist revisionism. Like all revisionists, he comes not to revise Marxism, but to destroy it.

Mr. Strachey pays lip service to Socialism, but it has never meant for him anything else than the vague Labour notion of “the good society,” currently expressed in the utility utopia of “The Welfare State.” That Socialism is a working-class issue, embodying a different social and economic organisation with a different set of human values, is for Mr. Strachey the seventh veil of political mystery.

Actually his book on present day Capitalism is largely an echo of the past whose font was Edward Bernstein, one of the founding fathers of Reformism. His work, Evolutionary Socialism, is the watershed of Marxist Revisionism. Like Mr. Strachey, Bernstein “came to bury Marx, not to praise him.”

Briefly, Bernstein believed that the growth of the credit system and the rise of trusts and cartels would lead to the economic regulation and control of Capitalism. Not only would cut-throat rivalry and anarchy of production disappear, but alongside this the social democrats would seek to organise the working-class politically and transform the State in the direction of “true” democracy. Thus he maintained that democratic pressure and the exercise of ethical principles would gradually transform Capitalism into a humane and civilized society. The subsequent evolution of Capitalism shattered the facile and optimistic assumptions of Bernstein. Capitalism without tears was his version of Socialism. It is also Mr. Strachey’s.

Only on one issue do Mr. Strachey and Bernstein disagree. One of the main points of Bernstein’s revisionism was a denial of the validity of the “Law of the Concentration and Centralization of Capital.” Mr. Strachey not only accepts this “law,” but argues that it has effected what he terms “a social mutation.” The essence of this “mutation,” we are to understand, is that in an economy of large and few units a point is reached in the increased size and decreased number which allows the managers of the remaining units lo affect prices instead of being affected by them. (Page 26).

We are further told (Page 29) that “in any sphere of production where firms are large and few, they can by their power to affect prices, affect the level of their own profits.” Capitalism, argues Mr. Strachey, has lost its regulator, the impersonal force of the competitive market; it has been or is being replaced by the conscious decisions of groups of men who, by tacitly refraining from competitive pricing, may move prices within limits. We are not told what the ceiling of these limits is, but one gathers from Mr. Strachey that it can be pretty high.

Mr. Strachey’s conclusions seem to be then that throughout the large units of industry the margin between costs and selling price can by agreement among the various groups be so arranged as to realise a profit above the average or norm. It follows then that if the ability to affect prices so as to obtain an above the average profit, or what is known as maximum returns, characterises extant capitalist society, then maximum profit must constitute a profit norm.

But it is a Marxist axiom that the distribution of profits can of itself add nothing to the sum of values produced by the social labour force. Ruling out that the extra profit is a deduction from working-class wages, the extra profit of some concerns can only come out of the pockets of other concerns. There can be then no such thing as a prevailing law of maximum profit, for it is fairly evident that as the power to raise prices spread from point to point of the economy, what some capitalists gained on the “selling” swings they would lose on the “buying” roundabouts. The net result would tend towards an equalisation of profit, even though the price structure of the economy would be distorted.

It is true that firms do use monopolistic advantages to seek monopolistic gain. But if that be the measure of this “mutation,” then mercantilism was a greater mutation than present society. It is the nature of capitalists to seek maximum gain. Even in laissez-faire capitalism they sought maximum gain, through any device or resources which gave them superior competitive power. Because the accumulation of capital is the most compulsive feature of capitalist society at any time, capitalists will use all available means to produce and reproduce their capital. That monopolistic practises have become one of these means in their attempt to do so, is itself a normal and logical development in capitalist society.

There is a widespread belief among the uninformed, among whom Mr. Strachey must be counted, that the British Economy is in the iron grip of a relatively few powerful concerns. The belief does not tally with the facts. In the first place, big monopolies compete against each other. Also the power of these big monopolies acts as a restraint on any one of them seeking abnormal returns. And even if a monopoly does seek to obtain super-profit, it faces the danger of other giants entering the field. Even those concerns that are suppliers of particular products often meet with fierce competition from substitutes.

Again, powerful organisations of sellers bring into being powerful organisations of buyers, and strenuous price-haggling results. Not only do big buyers play one supplier off against another, but they are prepared to “roll their own” if the prices of supplies are too high.

It is true that big monopolies make big profits, but in relation to their huge capital turnover, their rate of profit may be no more, even less, than that of many smaller concerns.

Mr. Strachey, conscious perhaps of the weakness of his claims, drags his economic nets and brings in cartels to illustrate his social mutation. Indeed, they are the only attempt at evidence he offers. It is true that cartels flourished during the period between the wars, especially in certain important British industries. They were enabled to do so by the connivance of the Government of the time and by protection duties. These cartels did not exemplify Mr. Strachey’s “conscious regulating power of Capitalism,” but the desperate plight to which world conditions had reduced many sections of British industry.

Cartels, which Mr. Strachey makes his strong suit are the weakest form of monopolistic organization. Their chief function is to combat price-cutting in times of bad trade. Even so, there are always temptations for some firms to sell below the cartel price. Also price-cutting takes place in cartels by the granting of long-term credit facilities, quantity discounts, free delivery, etc.

Neither does it necessarily follow that restriction of output and price manipulation by cartels allow of extra profit because restriction of output can keep low-cost firms back and preserve high-cost ones. Thus the spread-over cost will be considerable and profit margins correspondingly reduced to approximately competitive levels. In times of good trade the rules of cartels will be much less stringent and in some cases ignored.

Mr. Strachey also includes in his mutation what is termed monopolistic competition. This is an alternative to price-cutting by the use of effective selling methods, although even then price-cutting takes place in the form of adding extras and variations to the product.

Monopolistic competition confers, however, no power on firms to affect their own profit levels. Huge staffs of salesmen, highly decorative labelling and packaging, the costly and constant advertising in press, radio and television, greatly enhance total costs and thus reduce profit margins. So far from monopolistic competition being some conscious form of regulating Capitalism, it only too clearly reveals what compulsions are attached to the realisation of surplus value and the vicious and antisocial channels they often take. To say that a variation of competition from the cut-throat to the monopolistic is a transformation of Capitalism is like saying; that if knuckle fighting is replaced by boxing gloves with horse shoes in them, fisticuffs will be mutated, although the participants will still be mutilated.

That Mr. Strachey should really think that changes in the realisation of profit constitute a transformation of Capitalism is enough to make the pages of Marx’s Capital curl up at their edges with laughter.

Capital is not, as Mr. Strachey seems to think, something which people are free to use as they choose. Capital is an historically conditioned form of wealth, expressed in the class ownership of society. And the motives and objectives of the owners of capital are prescribed for them by this form of control. That is why the basic law of Capitalism is the self-expansion of capital via the production and reproduction of surplus value. It is for that reason that the owners of capital today compete not only on a bigger scale, but with more ferocious intensity than did their 19th century counterparts. To preserve and reproduce capital to an ever greater degree has for its owners the same overriding compulsion it always had.

Mr. Strachey, like many Liberals, sees in State economic intervention stepping stones to Socialism. He is indifferent to the fact that the expansion of Capitalism necessitates State participation. He talks glibly of the State taking over key controls, but is careful not to suggest the old Labour nostrum of nationalisation as the universal remedy. Nor does he offer any evidence to show how State possession of key controls will alter or affect the primary objectives and aims of Capitalist society.

He is dazzled, or appears to be, by the attempts of social reformers to come to terms with the class conflicts engendered by Capitalism. He believes with Bernstein that State power can be shared between the classes with an ever greater degree of power going to the exploited class. It is this which gives him and others the illusion of great democratic victories. For Mr. Strachey the State is a means of class reconciliation and collusion where in reality its intervention—via social reforms—is an attempt to soften the tension of class conflict. That the dismal failure of Social Democracy to realise its own limited social ideals provides itself the key to the real nature of Capitalist society is a lesson not yet learned by Mr. Strachey.

For someone who once claimed to be a Marxist, even though a “Moscow one,” his efforts to see State activity and intervention as something socially new is laughable. In actual fact, State activity is socially old, and whatever class society one examines in the past, one will always discover the State functioning very actively and significantly to guarantee and further the interests of a particular set of property relations.

Mr. Strachey in his political adventures has certainly gone a long way but in the opposite direction to Socialism.

(Other aspects of Mr, Strachey’s book will be dealt with in a later article)

Ted Wilmott

Modern Socialism. (1910)

Book Review from the May 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Modern Socialism" 3rd edition, by R C K. Ensor. (Harper Brothers)

If a writer on modern biology were to begin by stating that the basis of that subject, in its modern aspect, was laid by Darwin and Wallace, and then devoted the larger portion of his space to the anti-Darwinians’ statements and writings as an exposition of modern biology, he would be denounced on all hands as one quite unfit for the task he had set himself to perform.

It is just such a position as this that Mr. Ensor occupies with regard to modern Socialism.

In the Introduction to the first edition (1907) he says of Marx, Engels and Lassalle :

 “Their ideas made an epoch, because with them two decisive qualities first come to the front in Socialism—the scientific and the political.” (Page XXXII.)

Without troubling to question the inclusion of Lassalle in the list, the above statement would be accepted as correct by all Socialists. Then it follows that a correct exposition of modern Socialism can be given by a survey of the statements of Marx and Engels, or their followers, and by no other method.

Yet in the volume under notice, apart from a couple of articles on the general view of Socialism and excluding the various programmes at the end of the book, over 190 pages are given to the views of the avowed anti-Marxians—S. and B. Webb, Millerand, Vollmar, David, Jaurès, Hervé, Sarraute, Vandervelde, Anseele, Keir Hardie, John Burns, and the Fabian Society— while only 55 are given to the views of Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, Bebel and Kautsky.

Lest any Fabian or ‘practical’ Labour Party advocate should find fault with Mr. Ensor for devoting so much space as given above to the so-called Marxian section, let us hasten to point out first that the only statement of Marx’s is taken from the Communist Manifesto, and consists of the list of reforms at the end of Section II! When it is remembered that as long ago as 1872 Marx and Engels declared in a new preface that this portion in particular had become obsolete, Mr Ensor’s object begins to peep through.

Secondly, on page XXXVI of the introduction to the first edition we are told :

  “It seemed desirable in this volume to give some excerpts from one of the many general discussions between revolutionaries and reformists, which have occurred in the great European parties. For this purpose the Millerand debate at the Bordeaux Congress of the French Socialist party has been chosen.”

And how is this purpose carried out? By devoting 21 pages to the discussion, of which 4 are given to Millerand, 13 to Jaurès, 3 to Sarraute and 1 to Hervé. All these are reformers and anti-Marxians, while no Marxian speech is given at all?

Evidently Mr. Ensor’s idea of excerpts from a discussion is to give one side and ignore the other.

Similarly with regard to agriculture and peasant proprietorship. On page XLI it is stated that “the nearest approach to a volte-face which Socialists have attempted since Marx has been in relation to Agrarianism . .  . Marx thought that the advantage of concentrating capital would be felt in agriculture as in other industries; but in spite of a temporary confirmation of this view by the mammoth farms which sprang up in Western America, it now appears very doubtful.”

Yet the very article chosen to defend this view by the “most brilliant, up to date and elastic exponent . . .  M Vandervelde,’’ proves up to the hilt the correctness of Marx’s view by showing how the number of peasant proprietors in Belgium had been reduced to “barely a few thousands, who can still painfully, by a hard toil, by a real exploitation of themselves and their families make the two ends meet. The rest have fallen into the proletariate, or cultivate for someone else's profit , and this diminution of cultivating ownership in consequence of insufficient capital, of partition due to the laws of inheritance, of the ever-growing aggravation of fiscal and military charges, is to be found indicated in the official statistics.” Page 206 (Italics ours )

Far from being a real description of modern Socialism, the book has been written to defend the job-hunting bargains of the I.L.P. and Labour Party under the guise of showing how the Continental “Socialists" do the same thing, and thereby to justify the actions of these who claim to be Socialists here. This is shown not only by the great preponderance of space given to the Reformists, but also by the fact that though two editions of the work have been published since a party based on Marxian principles was formed in this country in 1904—the Socialist Party of Great Britain—no reference to it is made anywhere in the book. The old I.L.P. absurdity that Socialism means the Socialisation of capital is again trotted out. Capital being the instrument of exploitation, to talk of ‘‘Socialising" it is a contradiction in terms. The statement in the preface to the third edition that "the second piece by M. Millerand and the piece by Mr. Burns might not have been chosen today after the final secession of their authors from the ranks of regular Socialism” (sic) merely expresses the chagrin felt by the Labour Party managers at the success of Burns in making an individual bargain with the Liberals.

At the head of Burns’ article is a note saying "after 1895 he drew closer to the Liberal Party." This is utterly incorrect. As shown in the Socialist Standard for January 1906, Burns openly avowed his full adhesion to the Liberal Party in 1893, when, in the House of Commons, he defended Asquith over the shooting of the miners at Featherstone. Yet when the Labour Group was first formed in Parliament after the establishment of the Labour Representation Committee, John Bums was made its first chairman. It was not going over to the Liberals that was s crime from the Labour Party's standpoint —that was the game they were playing themselves and in which they were successful in 1906 —but the individual bargaining was the sin.

As a collection of the views of various reformers, at home and abroad, the book has a certain value; as an exposition of modern Socialism it is entirely misleading, while the confusion existing in the mind of the author is shown by the following gem: "Socialism is essentially an appeal (!) on behalf of the interests of one class, the proletarians, against what the other, the capitalists, conceive to be theirs. Socialists can either emphasize this contrast, the Class War, and rely wholly on conscious proletarian support, or they can take the line rather of reconciling the opposition in a higher unity, the Solidarity of Classes, pleading with the capitalists that they have misconceived their interest and that the true interest of all the community is that of the workers.” (Page XXXV.)

It was probably due to this mental condition that Mr. Ensor, when running as Labour candidate for Poplar at the late L.C.C. elections, advised the workers, on bis programme, to vote for the other capitalist candidate—Sir John McDougall.

Jack Fitzgerald