Socialism & the State. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist propagandist is often confronted with the assertion that the establishment of a system of Socialism would involve the subjection of the individual to a hide-bound State, that would eventually result in the enslavement of the people. 

The Socialist, on the contrary, asserts that the working class are enslaved to-day, and that only the establishment of Socialism can effect their emancipation.

The individualist attacks Socialism from the standpoint that the proposed change simply means the continuation of the present wage-system of production, in which the whole of the wealth of society shall be owned by a number of persons incorporated into a State or bureaucracy, instead of being, as at present, owned by private individuals. He maintains that the right of the individual is supreme, and condemns any action on the part of a State or collection of individuals, that interferes with his desires.

Since correct understanding implies correct interpretation of terms used, and the point revolves upon the meaning of the term “slave”, I will preface my remarks with such a definition. 

A slave is one who is owned by or controlled by another; one who is compelled to labour to satisfy the wants of another. 

The chattel-slave originally was a prisoner of war, whose life was at the disposal of his owner. He was allowed to live in order that he might produce more wealth, or greater satisfaction, for his owner, than could be obtained from his death, his owner, of course, providing him with the food, clothing and shelter necessary to keep him in a fit condition.

Later on in the development of society we find the serf, who was compelled to labour for a certain period for his lord, the remainder of his time being at his own disposal for the purpose of providing himself and his family with the necessaries of life.

To-day the worker, in order to live, is compelled to labour for a certain period. He receives, however, but a portion of the wealth created. Out of the wealth he has produced he receives (according to Mr. Chiozza Money [who estimates the wealth produced at £4. 5s. per week per family of five, while the average amount received by a working class family of five is shown to be 25s . per week] and other capitalist statisticians) about one-third. That is to say that if he produces goods to the value of £3, he receives as a wage £1, his master taking the remainder.

While there may be a difference in degree in those different forms of exploitation, the principle still remains. The under-dog is compelled to labour for the purpose of producing something to satisfy the wants of others who, holding the things necessary for his life, thereby control him. He is, therefore, still a slave.

The principle would remain if the working class was compelled to work for a State instead of for individual employers. If the whole of the wealth and the means of production are owned by a State and the worker receives a wage, then slavery is not abolished, but is intensified.

The worker to-day, while compelled to work for a master, still has some sort of a choice among those masters, but with the State as the only employer he is compelled to work for that employer and under that employer’s conditions, or take the only alternative and starve. State Capitalism would intensify slavery, but State Capitalism is not Socialism.

Our individualist opponent, if a toiler, is subject to others. Others have the power to say when he shall work and when he shall starve, how he shall work and under what conditions. His life and action are determined largely by his spending capacity; by the extent of his wage. He cannot do as he would wish because he is bound to the bench or to the counter. The greater part of his life is occupied by laborious toil or petty business – toil and worry and anxiety in the interest of others. He is robbed by the capitalist employer and oppressed by the capitalist State.

And what is this State? Merely representative of the dominant class; the class in power, whose interest lies in an opposite direction to the interest of the workers. 

The State is merely the force that enables the working class to subject the working class.

Large  bodies of drilled and armed men are only necessary where the greater number of the people are subject to the few, and those civil and military forces necessary to control the oppressed and exploited class are the “State”.

The State grew up at a certain stage of economic development with the growth of classes, and when the classes are abolished the State will go too. Socialism means no State.

The propertyless have no “rights” under capitalism — not even the right to live. Far from being in any way free they are the property, to all intents and purposes, of the propertied class. Our opponents have been misled by the so-called friends of the worker — the municipal-cum-nationaliser — by the pet theory of the Fabian, who holds that the “government of the future must be by experts”, with the Fabians, of course, as the experts.

Those who read of the conditions of the people of Peru, prior to its conquest by the Spaniards, will find therein many points of resemblance to the proposed bureaucracy of the Fabians.

The Peruvian State was not capitalism: goods being produced, not for sale, but for consumption by the people. Take the following from Prescott (p. 56):

“The Peruvian Government watched with unwearied solicitude over its subjects, provided for their physical necessities, was mindful of their morals, and showed throughout the affectionate concern of a parent for his children, who were never to act or think for themselves, but whose whole duty was comprehended in the obligation of implicit obedience”.

And on page 26 we are told “Industry was publicly commended and stimulated by rewards”.

Compare this with the following from Fabian Essays (1908 edition) under the heading of “Socialism and the State” (p. 163).

“Out of the value of the communal produce must come, rent of land payable to the local authority, rent of plant needed for working the industries, wages advanced and fixed in the usual way, taxes, reserve fund, accumulation fund, and the other charges necessary for the carrying on of the communal business. All these deducted, the remaining value should be divided among the communal workers as a bonus . . . 

"If there is one vice more than another that will be unpopular under Socialism it is laziness.”

In Peru, we are told (Prescott, p. 26) “Occupation was found for all, from the child of five to the aged matron not too infirm to hold a distaff, no one was allowed to eat the bread of idleness in Peru”.

Well may working-men who have studied the conditions of present-day capitalism resent the proposals of the “State Socialist” with his grandmotherly legislative enactments. Such a change as is proposed by him would indeed mean slavery, and would throw the propertyless class still deeper in the mire of social degradation.

The Government of the Incas was in spirit truly patriarchal since “the task imposed upon him was always proportioned to his strength, he had seasons of rest and refreshment and was well protected against the inclemency of the weather”, and “every care was shown for his personal safety”. Yet the greater number of people in Peru were slaves, and slaves of such a type that the conditions of to-day are preferable to those who, recognising the evils of wage-slavery under which they exist, are trying to find a way out. True the people were kept in subjection by the superstition that the Inca was a supreme being, a descendant of the sun, and they blindly worshipped him as omnipotent. They were prepared to toil for his benefit and for the benefit of his nobles.

But is the superstition of the Fabian worshipper in any way preferable? To blindly worship the State and toil to support the supposed experts in control (for we are told [Fabian Essays, p. 164] that it is probable that the “captains of Industry will be more highly paid than the rank and file of the industrial army”) is as great an error, as foolish a superstition, as to worship the sun and its supposed descendants.

The worker must be forced to realise that to effect his emancipation he must discard  all superstition and must refuse to be led and bossed by self-styled “superior persons”. He must understand that in order to obtain the best of things necessary for life, with the least expenditure of energy he must organise with his fellows.

Individual production is played out. Without doubt the best results are to be obtained by social production. All the evil is caused by that co-operation ending with production, and the wealth, socially produced, being owned by a small section of the community. We cannot go back to individual production, nor is it desirable. What must ultimately come is a system wherein wealth shall be socially produced and collectively owned by the producers, who shall say in what way and in what quantity it shall be produced.

In brief, the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth must be owned and controlled by the whole working community.

Twel.

Unsocialist (2024)

Book Review from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

State Socialism in Eastern Europe: History, Theory, Anti-capitalist Alternatives. Edited by Eszter Bartha, Tamás Krausz and Bálint Mezei. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. 356pp.

The term ‘State Socialism’ in the title of this book is used to refer to the system that existed in the Soviet Union and the regimes of the Soviet bloc from the late 1940s until the whole edifice crumbled from 1989 onwards. Though it is clear that this system was not socialism as we would understand it but rather repressive state capitalism masquerading as socialism, this has not prevented many academics who study the history of that era from continuing to refer to it as socialism and indeed as ‘really existing socialism’. And this is precisely what we find in this collection of 14 essays, which focus predominantly on aspects of how those regimes, especially Hungary, were organised in the period when they were part of the Soviet bloc. The way the editors describe it is as an attempt ‘to address the long theoretical, conceptual and political debate on the interpretation of “actually existing socialism” in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe’.

But while such debate may give academics something to occupy their minds with, in reality the single most important thing to know is that the regimes in question were not in any sense socialist but simply represented a different – and invariably more repressive – way of managing the buying and selling system known as capitalism. That system, wherever it exists or has existed, is one of money and wages, economic inequality, and a small class of employers ruling the roost over a large class of employees, even if this consideration seems far from the minds of most of those contributing to this volume. The chapter by Susan Zimmerman on work and gender politics in ‘State-Socialist Hungary’, for example, while clearly the product of comprehensive and painstaking research, confines itself to description and analysis of how those particular aspects of capitalism manifested themselves in post-war Hungary and in no way challenges the idea of whether ‘socialism’ can exist within the framework of an economic system of buying and selling and production for the market. In his essay on Hungary between 1963 and 1985 (sometimes referred to as the period of ‘goulash Communism’), Bálint Mezei discusses what he calls ‘Hungary’s third road experiment of socialism’. Another chapter, jointly written by the editors as an introduction to the anthology and entitled ‘From Socialism to Neo-Liberalism: Lessons from Eastern Europe and Hungary’, states the book’s intention ‘to draw a historical lesson from the state socialist experiment in Eastern Europe and Hungary, which can be instructive in the search for an alternative to the global neoliberal capitalism’. Yet this too, despite its title, shows few signs of appreciating that the main lesson to be learned from the topic under discussion is that the passage from one system to another in Eastern Europe with the fall of the Soviet bloc was in fact a passage from one kind of capitalism (state capitalism) to another (private capitalism) and that the only viable alternative to either cannot be some form of ‘socialist state’, since socialism is by definition a worldwide, stateless society as well as one without classes, markets and contractual relations.

Close to 40 years ago (and so before the collapse of the Soviet-backed regimes of Eastern Europe), a book entitled State Capitalism: the Wages System Under New Management was published by Palgrave Macmillan, the same publisher as for the volume currently under review (State Capitalism – libcom.org). It stated the unerring truth that ‘private capitalism and state capitalism are equally suitable institutional arrangements for allowing capital to exploit wage-workers’, a truth vindicated by history since that time yet still not fully grasped by many academics. In addition, as an alternative to either form of capitalism, the book’s authors, Adam Buick and John Crump, also stated the need for a society that abolishes both the wages system and the production of goods and services for the market, replacing it with a system of voluntary cooperative work and production for use. The collection of essays currently under review also claims to ‘contribute to the discussion about anti-capitalist alternatives’, but its overwhelming focus is on the organisational variants of capitalism and, looking forward, with a nod to perhaps minor changes to the ‘neoliberal’ regimes that have now taken over that may allow a few more crumbs to fall from the table. A look back at Buick and Crump’s analysis would surely help the contributors to this volume to see the wood for the trees.

Howard Moss

In Defence of Property. (1907)

Book Review from the March 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Socialism: Its Fallacies and Dangers.” A collection of papers edited by Frederick Millar. Published by Watts & Co. for the “Liberty and Property Defence League.”

“Let us jealously watch the encroachments of the State, and never suffer it to become more than a watchdog.” Such appears to be the political doctrine of the band of belated individualists who are responsible for this book, for they include and condemn under the name of Socialism practically all State activity other than that of the mere policeman. Since, however, the propertied class has in its own interests been compelled to add to the State many other functions than that of the “watch-dog,” it is hardly necessary to consider the question at issue as being individualism versus collectivism at all, but rather as being—the class which lives by labour versus the class which lives by ownership, and whether those who produce should not own and control the product.

To those who seek a clear and useful criticism of Socialist principles the book under review will be disappointing. The facts of industrial evolution are not appreciated. The significance of the huge company and combine, where great and complicated branches of industry are run by hireling workers for absentee shareholders, is not taken into account. Nor is it recognised that industry is developing to the point at which the workers’ choice lies only between the oppressive collectivism of the trust or capitalist State for the profit of a few, and the collectivism of democracy for the benefit of all united in producing. The writers place themselves athwart the economic trend, and though as modern Mrs. Partingtons they may be excellent at a slop or a puddle, yet, trundle their mops as they will, they can hardly succeed in checking the rising Atlantic of economic development.

That there are misrepresentations is to be expected from such a source. Thus on page 17 we meet our old and hoary friend, “Sharing Out,” Socialism being referred to as the “confiscation and division of the national income.” It is also stated that Socialists “maintain that if a man lives in the house of another man, it is an extortion to ask him to pay a rent.” But the scientific Socialist knows that, apart from what is called economic rent, house rent is but the price of a commodity that, like every other commodity, tends to exchange at its value, which already includes its proportion of unpaid labour. The Socialist, therefore, holds that the robbery of the worker really takes place in the factory, not on the market.

Those who go into the highways and byways facing the opposition and abuse of the ignorant and the interested, and who, in their championship of the workers against oppression and robbery, brave the malice and persecution of the defenders of property, are told on page 24 that “The root of Socialism is cowardice. Here is the real source of the whole movement. It is the whine and the dream of the weaklings’ base fear of rivalry, of competition. It is the duty of real men to circumvent and defeat, by war if necessary, by invasion if necessary, by conquest if necessary, by extermination if necessary, the despicable effeminacy of creatures unworthy of the name of men, because they fear to carry on the competitive struggle in which the true life of manhood consists. The Socialist movement is popular because it appeals to these numerous creatures ; panders to their baseness ; promises them what they would be ashamed to desire or seek if they were men.”

Socialism and the Family.

Next comes the war-cry of the pro-property hypocrite,—”Socialism means the abolition of family life.” On this subject the defenders of that class whose heroes fill the divorce courts and whose morals are said to be “of the poultry yard,” have only vague innuendo and misrepresentation to offer. But what are the simple facts ? The family life of the workers is being destroyed by capitalism through the man, wife and child being forced into the factory to earn the daily bread; and where the home life remains it too often spells brutalising drudgery and ill-temper, owing to the poverty of the wage earner and the great waste of labour entailed by the individual household. The tremendous saving in drudgery that the co-operative household under Socialism will allow, the improvement in comfort, health, and happiness that it will bring, leave no room for doubt regarding the future of the home, while should any prefer the greater labour and discomfort of the old style, they would certainly be allowed to please themselves.

But what of the relations of men and women ? The Socialist knows that the methods of obtaining the material living, and the social order essential thereto, form the foundations of the moral and intellectual life of the time; and that with the changing economic foundation, not only must the relations of individuals to each other change, but their ideas also. The history of family life affords a striking example of this. As Prof. Jenks points out, permanent marriage had its origin in patriarchal society, and was due to no improvement in morality, but to the necessities of the pastoral pursuits of the man, and to his desire to secure for himself exclusively the labour of the woman and her offspring. The wife was bought or captured, and the children were valuable articles of merchandise. The very word “family” is derived from an old Italian word, famel, meaning a slave.

From its origin in the institution of property the marriage relationship has reflected the changing needs of property. Children are no longer chattels or assets in the old sense ; they are “encumbrances,” and paterfamilias’ former power of life and death over his household is now restricted to very meagre dimensions. The present marriage contract expresses the needs of the economic dependence of women and children on the man, and becomes an instrument for the control and transmission of property. Mutual affection is quite subordinated to questions of property and income, with the consequent outcrop of hypocrisy, adultery, and unhappiness. While on the one hand the number of men who do not marry is made greater by the insecurity of their lot, on the other hand the number of women who sell themselves on the streets is increased by the inability of many to obtain otherwise even the bare necessaries of life.

But when socialisation ends the reign of capitalist property and insecurity, when woman has economic equality with man, and the fear for the children’s future is ended by communal life, then the relationship between the sexes ceases to be a property one and becomes human ; and who can doubt that modern forms must alter with such change of circumstances, and that the matrimonial market and property contract, with the buying and selling of cohabitation for title and income, must, together with the corollaries of prostitution and domestic misery, become mere memories of a dark past. Who can doubt that the relations between man and woman, when freed of the demoralising influence of economic inequality and vicious social surroundings, will be healthier and purer than ever before being based no longer on a property transaction or economic compulsion, but upon mutual affection. Yet we are told, among much other nonsense on page 29 of the book under review, that under Socialism “the union of men and women would be an affair of the State, not of mutual regard” !

The Intellectual Few.

On page 54 the reader is told, “the more the origin of wealth is enquired into, the more clearly will the truth appear that wealth is caused by the intelligence of the few, as distinguished from the labour of the many.” Now even if this were so it would not bear the inference that the propertied class are the intellectual few reaping the reward of their intellectual labour, for the wealth of the few is accumulated from the purchase and exploitation of both “manual” and “intellectual” workers. But what is the truth regarding the wonderful inventions and improvements which have occurred in industrial processes ? Have a series of supermen arisen to produce at each stroke a great wage-saving improvement ? Herbert Spencer himself has exploded the “great man” theory, and has shown that the great man is the product of his age, whilst the history of industry shows that nearly all improvements have been the result of an accumulation of small inventions which up to a certain point were ignored or despised, in spite of their possibilities, because they were not immediately cheaper to work than the older methods. But a last slight improvement, based upon and supplementing the labour of those who had gone before, rendered the new process more profitable than the former methods, and rapidly the features of that industry became transformed. In 1857, Hodge, before a Commission said : “Present spinning machinery is supposed to be a compound of about 800 inventions. The present carding machinery is a compound of about 60 patents.”

And those who wrought these improvements, were they rewarded ? And were they members of our amazingly intellectual ruling class ? They were, indeed, rawly rewarded, while it is almost entirely from men of the working class that the leading inventions have come. J. Burnley, in “The Story of British Trade and Industry,” says, “It is a notable fact that the leading inventors of the latter half of the eighteenth century were of the artizan class—humble workers who, in their cottages and little improvised workshops, quietly worked out the mechanical problems which achieved so much for the world, if not for themselves.”

John Kay, after inventing the fly shuttle, died a pauper at the end of a few years of ineffectual struggle. Wyatt, who after three years of close effort produced a machine which “spun the first thread of cotton ever produced without the intervention of human fingers,” was poor, and allied himself with Lewis Paul, of Birmingham, who promised to finance the invention. Wyatt, however, never benefited by it, for nothing came of the idea until Arkwright revised it at a later date. Another poor inventor, Crompton, set himself to combine the spinning jenny and the water frame. It took him five years of secret experiment, but he eventually succeeded and for a while quietly used his improvement in his own work. Crompton, however, was asked how he managed to spin such fine yarn ; he then let the manufacturers into the secret on their subscribing about £50. The firm of which Sir Robert Peel, the grandfather of the statesman, was principal, were the first to make big profits out of the invention, making their machines after Crompton’s model. Soon millions of the spindles were working, but Crompton died a few years later in extreme poverty. Such is, indeed, the usual answer of capitalist practice to capitalist theory. The brains of the workers are picked, and their bodily strength exhausted, in order to increase the wealth of those who own the means of living.

The whole argument that “wealth is due to the intelligence of the few” is, in reality, nonsensical. There is no intellectual labour without some degree of manual labour, and no manual labour, however mechanical, that does not imply intellectual labour also. The marketable wealth of the world is not produced otherwise than by labour, intellectual and manual; yet the fact remains that it is a non-producing class who, by their ownership of the means whereby wealth is created, and by their control of political power, are enabled to compel the people to carry on production for them, and to hand over to them all the enormous surplus that remains when the bare necessities of the producers have been grudgingly provided for.

And it is in defence of the title of this owning class to the wealth created by others, that the book under review is published. Well does the League that is responsible for the book deserve to be called, as it is by many working men, the Liberty to Rob Defence League.

F. C.Watts

Blogger's Note:

There isn't a lot of information about Frederick Millar on the net, but he does get a few mentions in Edward Bristow's 1975 article, 'The Liberty and Property Defence League and Individualism', which was published in The Historical Journal.

Fabian Notes. (1907)

From the February 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The government of the future will be by experts and we, naturally, want to be the experts.”

(H. Snell speaking for the Fabian Society.)

* * *

So now you know, if you did not before, what the Fabian Society are after. Their “Socialism” is government by bureau, and “naturally” (sweet word) they want to be the bureaucrats. “Naturally” they want the plums. “Naturally” they want to sit in the seats of authority and arrange things for the benefit (naturally for the benefit) of the other and somewhat lower orders who do the mere producing.

* * *

“Naturally” these producers will be unable of themselves to administer their own affairs. Because “naturally” such delicately intricate work as will “naturally” be involved in the manipulation of affairs of state, “naturally” demands a special type of mind, specially trained. And obviously, not to say “naturally” the working class qua working class,— the working class that is to say per se,—do not possess such necessary and entirely essential qualities. They must “naturally” look for their administrators, therefore, among the cultured class who, “naturally” endowed with imperial qualities have consecrated their lives to their development and with infinite pains have, rendered themselves fit to enter into the holy of holies from which will issue those inspired directions and words of good counsel without which the labourers in the vineyards (and other places) will be as sheep without a shepherd, as little children stumbling in the dark.

* * *

The members of the Fabian Society having quite clearly all the special equipment necessary, therefore quite “naturally” desire that the working class shall acclaim them the saviours of Society and signify implicit confidence in their capacity by unhesitatingly conceding them the right to govern.

* * *

But I think, I say I think, it will not work out quite like that. I think, mark, I think that there will be some little hesitancy before the working class admit the necessity for the creation of a bureaucratic staff, or a star chamber, or a holy of holies even to such fierce democrats as the Fabian Society. I think it not unlikely that the working class will look somewhat dubiously upon a method of government such as they have been somewhat painfully familiar with for several generations and may even conclude that, on the whole, they would prefer to try something else—a method, for example, by which they themselves would be the dictatorial authority expressing their requirements through administrators who would be mere delegates with their instructions in their pockets. The intellectual equipment of administrators in these circumstances need not necessarily be exceptional.

* * *

Of course the Fabian Society will unanimously agree that such a hypothesis is entirely grotesque. And as the Fabian Society are experts in the grotesque their view may quite properly be given the consideration it so well merits. But as this is my funeral, they need not distress themselves too severely even if I persist in pressing the probability of their super-excellent services being in small demand, and proceed to submit that their idea of government under Socialism is likely to be regarded as antiquated and fitting only to the conditions which obtained in the nightmare days of capitalism. However preposterous it may seem to them, I think it quite possible that as there will be no interests to administer except the interests of the working class, the present geographical unit of alleged representation, based as it is upon the private ownership of the means of life, will be superseded by representation of labour departments. The honourable member for East Loamshire will give way to Citizen Smith, the delegate of the Gasworkers and General Labourers’ Federation or some such labour organisation. As, so far as I have been able to observe, the Fabian Society’s idea of the government of the future rests upon the continuance of the present bureaucratic forms, such an alteration would tend to have the effect of knocking the Fabian Society’s heaven-sent powers somewhat acock.

* * *

Let me submit with becoming humility that the Labour organisations of the future being composed of moderately intelligent men (such intelligence being necessarily antecedent to the Socialist State) might understand almost, if not quite, as well as a Fabian expert—I am charitably assuming that the Fabian expert is not knocked acock as aforesaid—what they required for their own comfort and happiness and might (it’s a most outrageous proposition) even be in a better position than the inspired governmental Shavian to decide upon such changes in the machinery and methods of industry in their own department as would facilitate production and ensure them greater leisure and less arduous labour. And their conferences would instruct their delegate accordingly.

* * *

It’s an interesting subject and my vagrom speculations could, I am sure, be extended to cover several more columns at least. But the exigencies of space and pressure of many matters force me to an immediate closure. I will only add that in all my anticipations of the probable outworkings of the Socialist Society of tomorrow I can, without allowing my imagination to riot, easily conceive that there will be no overpowering necessity for any legislative holy of holies or for any administrative caste, or for any bureau of inspired experts. And however natural the longing of the “culchawed” Fabian may be for the seat of authority and the halo of beneficent superiority, it may well chance that he will not be appreciated at anything like his own estimated worth, and it may even happen in that event, that he will find himself in the unhappy position of being obliged to devote himself to the acquisition of some information likely to make of him a useful member of Society. I would therefore respectfully advise him to start trying to pick up the rudiments of a helpful calling—say woodchopping—lest the revolution overtake him while he is still endeavouring to articulate his vain regrets—his very vain regrets.

A. James

Socialists and the Left (2022)

From the December 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people don’t realise that not only does the Socialist Party deny being part of ‘the left-wing’, it actively opposes it.

During the last century capitalism saw many profound economic and political convulsions and these gave birth to countless political movements which claimed to either be able to ‘fix’ the system or to have transcended it in the name of socialism. For various ideological reasons many journalists, historians and other cultural commentators accepted this self-identification by such groups without considering the definition and history of socialism. The upshot was that any ‘radical’ movement, from the Labour Party to the Bolsheviks and from the Khmer Rouge to the Social Democrats, could call themselves socialist. The term socialist and/or communist had lost its meaning in a swamp of Orwellian double speak. Not that this was the only word to suffer such a fate, as the terms democratic, scientific, freedom, liberation, justice, equality and countless other progressive ideas were also gobbled up and spat out by capitalist culture and its ideologues.

What was left was a choice between so-called right-wing capitalism and left-wing capitalism or, in other words, no choice at all. Through all of this one organisation obstinately stayed outside of this ‘mainstream’ political consensus – the World Socialist Movement (WSM). It continues to be dismissed for being ‘sectarian’, impossibilist’, ‘elitist’, ‘purist’ and other even less flattering names. The fact remains, however, that despite the Left’s mass following and success in attaining power, both constitutionally and through violent coups, it has changed nothing and in many parts of the world has made things worse for the working class.

Back to 1789

Anyone who thinks our opposition to the term ‘left-wing’ is merely semantic should remember the origins of the battle between socialists and the Left. The political designations of left and right go back to the events of the French Revolution of 1789. The French National Assembly was composed of those who supported the king (who sat on the President’s right) and those who supported the revolution, who sat on the left. Ever since that time political analysts have tried to fit all ideologies into these binary categories of ‘reactionary’ (right) and ‘progressive’ (left).

From the beginning this was not a very helpful tool for understanding political perspectives and developments as the ferocious debate between the Marxists and anarchists of the First International illustrates, since they were both supposed to be members of the left-wing. It is only recently that mainstream political commentators have started to give up on this simplistic fiction, because of the development of ‘populism’ and ‘environmentalism’, both of which refuse to fit neatly within the old categories. The WSM have long since regarded both the left and right as being merely different ways of supporting capitalism and have always opposed both.

Initially most groups calling themselves socialist shared an understanding that the concept referred to ‘the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.’ Eventually some groups, unwilling perhaps to abandon capitalist features like money, authoritarian institutions and national identity etc., began to talk of reforming the current system rather than a revolutionary abolition of it. Their elevation of the state as an institution that could serve the working class instead of oppressing it was at the root of the divergence between socialists and the Left. Such was the way that the ultimate political oxymoron was conceived: ‘state socialism’ .

Bismarck’s ‘welfare state’

The first champion of ‘state socialism’ was Ferdinand Lassalle, who was prominent in organising the first socialist party (Social Democratic Movement) in Germany but came to believe, in contrast to Marx, that the state was a politically neutral organisation that could continue to exist in socialism. Ironically it was Otto Von Bismarck (German Chancellor and bitter opponent of socialism) who, after meeting Lassalle, instituted some of his ideas by creating a welfare system in Germany in the 1880s. He did this to try to stall the growing popular support for the Social Democrats.

Ever since that time the capitalist state in various countries has organised welfare systems (pensions, health care, unemployment benefit, etc.) not because they are an expression of socialism but because they are beneficial to a modern capitalist economy. However, any benefit to the working class is undermined because of the capitalist’s hatred of taxation and the chronic underfunding this always causes. The same is true of the state ownership of various businesses mainly connected with infrastructure. To prevent the rise of monopolies within services and production vital to all the parts of the bourgeoisie, state ownership (nationalisation) was and still is a widespread economic necessity for many capitalist states.

The term ‘public ownership’ suggests that the state is politically neutral and can be associated with some form of socialism when, in fact, the very opposite is true. Those who work in the ‘public sector’ will be the first to tell you that their wages and conditions are always in the firing line when the frequent calls to curb public spending are heard. What further compounded the Left’s misunderstanding of the political role of the state were the events unfolding in Russia in 1917.

Lenin’s state capitalism

The Communist Manifesto proposed the state ownership of key industries in order to accelerate the levels of production to those required to establish socialism, but this was never understood by Marx to be socialism itself. When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917, this was their main economic strategy to transform the country into an industrial powerhouse. Lenin announced that state ownership was ‘socialist’ and argued that it represented a transitional stage to something else called ‘communism’. He went further in declaring that his party’s coup d’état represented a socialist revolution that had swept away capitalism. To add to the confusion he used Marx’s phrase ‘the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat’ to justify his autocratic regime. Lenin was being dishonest since he knew that the establishment of socialism in Russia was impossible at that time and that what he was creating was state capitalism.

All the crimes and suffering caused by the Bolsheviks continued to be ideologically justified in the name of socialism. Because of the rise of the reformist Left (which had backed the financing of the First World War in Germany) socialist consciousness had already been fatally eroded, so that many of Europe’s intelligentsia hailed the Russian Revolution as ‘socialist’.

To this day many still believe that socialism means the state ownership of the means of production. It remains a key ideological feature among the Left, who continue to insist that it will help bring about the reform of capitalism, which will benefit the majority (and even lead to socialism). But it’s a fantasy that’s detrimental to human happiness and even to the planet. Since 1914, when the Left betrayed the working class and supported the Great War which led inexorably to the Second World War and then the ‘Cold War’, we have witnessed the constant failure of leftist policies.

In the 21st century the working class are still producing the whole cake while having to beg the rich for a few crumbs. The state exists to prevent the working class from accessing the product of its own labour. This organised theft is legitimised by governments, both left and right, who go through the motions of democracy insofar as this is tolerated by their capitalist masters (as long as their interests are not threatened). The left put on their suits and support business and war to further their political careers whilst leading the world to catastrophe.

Socialists will continue to attack the delusional cul-de-sac of reformism which has failed so miserably, and state capitalism, which usually leads to the gulag.

Wez.

"Socialism" in Cuba (1960)

From the September 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Home and Abroad is a news review programme which the B.B.C. regularly stages after the 9 o'clock news. A recent edition of this programme chose as an item for airing the seizure of the oil refineries in Cuba by Dr. Fidel Castro's government.

On one side, Mr. Patrick O'Donovan, for the B.B.C. On the other, Mrs. Lee Hall, an American ready to stick up for her country. It was a very brief interview, with only three points to make up the gist of the discussion. Mr. O'Donovan led by asking Mrs. Hall, was not America too ready to answer back all the charges which Castro's government were making against it ? Mrs. Hall conceded that this may be true, but came back by saying that Americans had to be vociferous, at least, about having their property taken away from them. She followed up by thinking aloud that Cuba may be considering building up a Socialist state—like China, she said, and that the Cubans may find it difficult to operate the oil refineries without help. And things might get tough in Cuba if the U.S.A. were to stop buying all their sugar from them. (Which has, in fact, happened.)

Mr. O’Donovan’s counter was to remind Mrs. Hall that, when Nasser’s government seized the Suez Canal, quite a number of people were convinced that the Egyptians would not be able to work it without British or French help. As it happened, the Egyptians succeeded. Without a doubt, Mrs. Hall was sharp to pick up O'Donovan on his first question: and he was equally fast in clinching the last point. But what about the middle point, which went unchallenged, that Cuba may be building a Socialist state?

In fact, to talk of a Socialist state is to talk in contradictions. For the state is a machine designed to maintain the subjection and exploitation of the large mass of the people by a few. It developed when the production of wealth surplus to the needs of the producer became possible. Its function was to protect the system of the expropriation of that surplus wealth. Thus, it is a very old institution—and now that we live under capitalism, with its exploitation of the working class under modern industrial conditions, it still carries out the same function. Today, as ever, the state is there to preserve and protect the private ownership of the wealth, power and privilege of the relatively small dominant class in society.

Part of the state’s work is in the organisation of the military machine. This is a world in which wealth is produced with the object of a profitable sale. This means that nations are always in keen competition for markets and so forth. In continually seeking to outdo their foreign competitors, they land themselves into all manner of risky situations. These in turn cause the perpetual crises, diplomatic wrangles and international tensions which we all know so well. The armed forces, run by the State, are there to push each nation's interests in these disputes.

And that is the sort of situation which Cuba, Russia and the U.S.A. are in at the moment. Russia has surplus crude oil which she is willing to exchange for Cuba’s surplus sugar. Doubtless, the deal could go on as long as both found it profitable. But the U.S.A. had a lot of interest in Cuban oil refining for a long time and had been buying their sugar at more than the world price. So it seems that the deal between the two powers was done at the expense of a third. A typical capitalist set up, whatever the form of the competing governments—monarchies, republics, autocracies, democracies, dictatorships or any others.

Capitalism is a social set up which produces goods for sale. Socialism will be a society which makes things because people need them. Capitalism has competition, the wages system, the state. Socialism will have cooperation, open access to wealth, democratic freedom. Remember this, the next time somebody airily holds forth on the so-called Socialist state.

Joe McGuinness

Against the state (1992)

Book Review from the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Volume IV: Critique of Other Socialisms by Hal Draper, Monthly Review Press

Marx and Engels gave few details about what they thought socialism would be like. However, they both wrote an enormous amount about what they thought socialism would not be like. Or rather, they provided a critique of "other socialisms"—hence the subtitle of this volume of Draper's exhaustive analysis of Marxian politics.

The "other socialisms" were Utopian Socialism (Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen gave useful criticisms of existing society and interesting ideas for a future society, but were naive about how this was to come about); Sentimental Socialism (not a school of socialism but a tendency to be found in various schools, substituting the power of love, humanity or morality for the class struggle); the Anarchism of Stirner, Proudhon and Bakunin (criticised for the authoritarianism inherent in its anti-democratic nature); Reactionary Anticapitalisms (those who yearn for a pre-capitalist golden age, as in the writings of Thomas Carlyle); and Boulangism (after General Georges Boulanger in France, an arch-opportunist and a forerunner of "National Socialism").

Marx and Engels were also confronted with a "socialist" ideology which was patently anti-socialist—Bismarckian Socialism (or so-called "State Socialism"). In late nineteenth century Germany the Bismarck regime introduced nationalisation and social-welfare reforms; in part this was to undermine the growing support for the German SDP led by Lassalle, who proposed similar statist reforms (and criticised by Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Programme). It is this Bismarckian, statist conception of "socialism" which—via Lenin in to Bolshevism and the Fabians into Labourism—has become world famous. The irony, however, is that this conception of socialism is largely anti-socialist in its origin.

Draper accepts that in Socialism: Scientific and Utopian Engels gave a "definite repudiation" of "the view that statification equals socialism, or that statification was progressive", but that doesn't stop him peddling the Trotskyist (that is to say, Bolshevik) nonsense about the need for a "workers' state". Engels, in the same place, is quite clear:

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal collective capitalist. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more it actually becomes collective capitalist, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage-workers, proletarians. But the capitalist relation is not done away with; it is rather brought to a head.

Lew Higgins