Alternatives (2014)

Book Review from the May 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

'S.O.S. Alternatives to Capitalism’. By Richard Swift. New Internationalist. 2014. £9.99

Swift surveys the various movements and schools of thought which, over the years, have seen themselves as being anti-capitalist: reformist Social Democracy (which he recognises has come to accept capitalism), Russian, Chinese, etc  state capitalism (which he calls ‘state socialism’), anarchism (whose anti-election dogma he criticises), Green parties (which he sees as going the way of Social Democracy), ‘ecosocialism’ (with which he identifies), the ‘commons’ movement, and the Italian ‘autonomists’.

His treatment is readable and perceptive, even if open to challenge on some points. He would probably classify us as old-fashioned Marxist ‘technological optimists’ and ‘economic determinists’. He himself is the opposite, seeing capitalism’s built-in drive to ‘growth’ as leading to ecological disaster in the fairly near future.

He opposes not only ‘growth’ in the capitalist sense of capital accumulation but also any increase in overall productive activity; in fact he wants a decrease in this – ‘degrowth’ – in order to save the planet. This may or may not be necessary in the long run but in the short run, to eliminate world hunger, ill-health and shanty towns, the production of useful things will surely need to be increased.

In any event, society won’t be able to control the amount and kind of production as long as productive resources are owned and controlled by a minority. Replacing this by the common ownership of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources under various forms of democratic control is an essential first step before anything lasting and constructive can be done.

Swift makes the valid point that it is not enough to criticise capitalism but that its critics must put forward a realistic alternative. But it is disappointing to find him advocating, in the concluding chapter,  a form of that contradiction in terms ‘market socialism’ and ‘putting financial capital at the service of people, and providing a universal basic income’.  Both are impossible reforms to capitalism and would be meaningless in a world where the Earth’s resources had become the common heritage of all.

Adam Buick

No Alternative (2017)

Book Review from the March 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

'S.O.S. Alternatives to Capitalism'. By Richard Swift. (New Internationalist Publications. 2016)

In this revised, second edition one-time editor of the New Internationalist Richard Swift surveys various attempts to counter capitalism over the years. He begins with USSR-style state capitalism (which he misleadingly calls state socialism) and Social Democrat parliamentary reformism. Of the former he makes the point that:

‘In retrospect it could easily be claimed that orthodox state communism was not really an alternative to capitalism at all but merely a transitional form of it that allowed certain large ‘backward’ societies, hitherto blocked in their development path, to move towards their own peculiar model of autocratic capitalism.’

As to the Social Democrats and Labourites, they evolved as mere alternative managers of traditional-style capitalism.

He goes on to dismiss Marxists for still talking about the class struggle, anarchists for living in the past, and Italian autonomists for being too vague (he could have added for being incomprehensible). What he likes are movements in the South (Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil) and indigenous communities resisting the impact of capitalism.

Despite the title, most of the book is taken up with describing opposition rather than alternatives to capitalism, and not so much to capitalism as such but to ‘untrammelled’, ‘rapacious’ and ‘unregulated’ capitalism. It is not until page 156 out this 184-page book that he makes the point that ‘people need to know what you are for rather than just what you are against.’

A valid point but, as in so many books like this, what is proposed is disappointing. In Swift’s case, ‘degrowth’ (reducing production and consumption), ‘bringing finance under control’, and a universal guaranteed minimum money income. There is no understanding that, to be able to control ‘growth’, whether to stop, increase, or re-orient it towards meeting needs – and to end what he had earlier called experiencing ‘the economy as a kind of external force disconnected from human will’ – ownership of the means of production will have to pass to society as a whole, with the consequent disappearance of the market and market forces.

All Swift comes up with about ownership of means of production is vague talk about co-operatives operating within a system where there is still finance and money incomes – which wouldn't really be an alternative to capitalism.

Adam Buick