Material World: Right, left and fake communism (2026)

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

Modern politics is often presented as a battlefield between two irreconcilable forces: the right and the left. However, this opposition is more apparent than real.

Both currents are internal factions of the capitalist mode of production. The right defends the market, private initiative and competition as the engine of the economy; the left, for its part, advocates nationalisation, a regulated economy and state control. Two different paths, yes, but both leading to the same destination: the perpetuation of capitalist relations of production.

Many people, out of ignorance or historical unawareness, believe that nationalisation is equivalent to socialism. They confuse the presence of the state in the economy with the abolition of class struggle. But authentic socialism is not reduced to the state administering companies or nationalising strategic sectors. Socialism implies that workers directly control the means of production, that exploitation disappears and that society is organised consciously and collectively.

In countries that proclaimed themselves socialist — the USSR, China, Cuba, Venezuela — what was actually established was state capitalism. There was no disappearance of property or wage labour. Individual private property was replaced by collective ownership by the state bureaucracy, not by direct management by the workers.

The worker continued to sell his labour power in exchange for a wage, while the surplus value was appropriated by the state. The fundamental difference is that, in private capitalism, exploitation is exercised by one individual over another; in state capitalism, exploitation is exercised by the state over the individual.

Lenin himself acknowledged in his pamphlet The State and Revolution that the USSR had not achieved communism, but was in a phase of state capitalism. What was established there was a system where the state absorbed the economy, centralised production and organised exploitation more efficiently, but without abolishing fundamental capitalist relations.

China repeated the same pattern. Under the slogan of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics,’ it merged private and state capital. Today it is a capitalist power that competes in the world market with the same rules of value, competition, and exploitation as any other country.

In Cuba, massive nationalisations created the appearance of a society without a bourgeoisie, but state bureaucrats enjoyed privileges far superior to those of any worker. Centralised planning did not eliminate exploitation, it simply reorganised it under an omnipresent state apparatus.

Venezuela, for its part, used socialist rhetoric as a political banner, while keeping capitalist relations of production intact. Oil, the engine of its economy, was administered by the state as national capital, not as the collective heritage of the workers. Inequality, corruption and dependence on the world market are proof that communism was not built there, but rather a variant of state capitalism.

Authentic communism, understood as the abolition of social classes and the direct management of production by workers, has never existed in these countries. What has reigned is a hypertrophied, cold and bureaucratic state that devours civil society and presents itself as a saviour while perpetuating exploitation. State intervention is not a rationalisation of capitalism, but a manifestation of its decadence. It is a desperate attempt to sustain a system that can no longer spontaneously organise human relations and needs violence and bureaucracy to stay afloat.

In conclusion, the right and the left are two sides of the same coin: one defends the market, the other defends nationalisation. Both reproduce the same exploitative relationships. Countries that proclaimed themselves socialist have never been so; they are examples of how state capitalism can disguise itself as revolution, appropriate symbols and words, and construct one of the greatest mystifications in history. True socialism remains a pending task, yet to be realised in any corner of the planet.

(Translation of an article by Juan Morel Perez published in El Neuvo Diario in the Dominican Republic.)

50 Years Ago: The Quintessence of Socialism. (1957)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are quite a number of people in this country who call themselves Socialists because they believe in the municipalisation or nationalisation of various things. And these good people appear to be oblivious of the fact that the very essence of Socialism is the control of wealth production and distribution by the wealth producers. It is obvious that it a number of thieves are banded together they are not likely to seek less booty, or seek it less effectively, than when isolated ; so, therefore, the capitalist class, who control the national and local administrative bodies, are not likely to seek less profit, or to seek it less effectively, when their businesses come under their collective control than when they control them individually. The end and aim of a Capitalist is profit, whether it comes as interest on Metropolitan Water Board bonds or as dividend on shares in the A.B.C.; and the ruling class will not, indeed, undertake municipal or national services at all unless their interests are thereby served and their general profits increased. An industry taken over by the Capitalist State, though it may be also of advantage, in other respects, means that more wealth is thereby to be wrung from the workers. The sweating in government factories, the low wages in the Post Office that enable over £4,000,000 to go in relief of Capitalist taxation, are an earnest of what State Capitalism means. Nationalised industries can only become Socialistic, and can only be of real benefit to the workers, when the working class has obtained control of the administrative machinery. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the political movement of the workers place itself firmly on the basis of the class struggle. Indeed, all who do not recognise this fact, whatever they may call themselves, are emphatically not Socialists, for mere nationalisation, we repeat, is not Socialism at all.

[From the editorial, London County Council, Ltd., Socialist Standard, February 1907.]

Carnegisms. (1909)

From the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have had to differ from the Daily Express on other occasions, so it will come as no surprise that its remarks on the articles by Messrs. Carnegie and Rockefeller in the Christmas number of The World’s Work should also meet with our disapproval. Its introductory sentence is ominous. “The fallacy of the State ownership of capital, one of the leading Socialist doctrines, is vigorously exposed by the world’s greatest millionaires.” The “leading Socialist doctrine” is, to quote the Declaration of Principles of the Socialist Party, “the conversion into the common property of society of the means of production and distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people.” That conversion involves, not the “State ownership of capital,” but the abolition of capital. Capital being the means of production used as the agent of exploitation, its conversion into the common property of society will remove its exploiting character, and stop its functioning as the means of robbing the workers of their produce, so that it ceases to be capital at all, and becomes simply the means of production.

Mr. Carnegie is quoted as saying “the State as sole owner of wealth, would use it just as the owners now use all but a fraction of it; that is, invest it in some of the multiform ways leading to the reward of labour.” Certainly, even under Socialism, a proportion of the wealth produced will need be used reproductively, i.e., as means of production, but the resulting wealth being the property of the owners of the means of producing it, the “reward of labour” will not then be wages, the smallest proportion the workers can be driven by competition and the fear of unemployment to accept, but the whole product of wealth-creating activity, which will go to the workers in its entirety.

“Imagine,” says Mr. Carnegie, “every man, woman and child in Britain receiving £70, which is one’s proportion of the national wealth if equally divided.” While it is perfectly in order to imagine any such distribution of wealth, it is absurd to suggest that it would embody “the leading Socialist doctrine.” The fallacy of the equal distribution of wealth is too hoary-headed for us to specifically deal with now, beyond again pointing out that, given the ownership and control by the wealth producers of the means of production, the enjoyment and consumption of that wealth rests in their own hands because the wealth is collectively theirs. Social ownership is something different from individual ownership, although, apparently, neither Mr. Carnegie nor the Daily Express can realise that difference. Social ownership does not mean £70 for each person, but it means that the material resources of society are open to each person, and, as Mr. Carnegie has pointed out that “all that the millionaires can get out of life is superior food, raiment and shelter,” so we may reply that the best of these primary necessaries will be at the disposal of those who produce them when the means of their production are owned by those who use them.

It is interesting, too, to learn that Mr. Carnegie’s view of co-partnership is that “it tends to bring a realising sense of the truth to both labour and capital that their interests, broadly considered,are mutual.” Also that “Mr. Rockefeller’s views coincide with Mr. Carnegie’s.” This should be sufficient to damn Sir Christopher Furness’ scheme.

“Up to the present time no scheme has yet presented itself which seems to afford a better method of handling capital than that of individual ownership.” This is Mr. Rockefeller’s. He seems to be gloriously oblivious of the economic evolution that has made the ownership of capital to be spread over the whole capitalist class by the formation and perfection of such factors as Joint Stock Cos., Syndicates, and Combines, which, while they help to draw the line between the capitalist class and the working class, are, nevertheless, a breaking down of individual ownership of capital and the building up of a collectivist form of capitalism, by consolidating the capitalists as a class, spreading the ownership over the whole class while centering the control in the hands of those magnates who manipulate the corporations.

The one refreshing point which strikes us is the recognition of the fact by Mr. Rockefeller, that State Capitalism is something different from Socialism, because we are told that in neither the one nor the other “do we find any promise . . . that wealth would be administered for the general good more effectively than under the present methods.”

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.

Cooking the Books: Has Trump gone state-capitalist? (2025)

The Cooking the Books column from the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Trump embraces state capitalism’ declared the US news site Foreign Policy in July: ‘the level of U.S. government economic intervention under Trump 2.0 is off the charts’. In August the Wall Street Journal took up the theme in an article by its chief economics commentator, Greg Ig: ‘The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism With American Characteristics’, he wrote, ‘President Trump is imitating Chinese Communist Party by extending political control ever deeper into economy’.

Ig instanced ‘Trump’s demand that Intel’s chief executive resign; the 15% of certain chip sales to China that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices will share with Washington; the “golden share” Washington will get in U.S. Steel as a condition of Nippon Steel’s takeover; and the $1.5 trillion of promised investment from trading partners Trump plans to personally direct’. He commented:

‘This isn’t socialism, in which the state owns the means of production. It is more like state capitalism, a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises. China calls its hybrid “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The U.S. hasn’t gone as far as China or even milder practitioners of state capitalism such as Russia, Brazil and, at times, France. So call this variant “state capitalism with American characteristics.”’

This is one definition of state capitalism, but state ownership is not socialism; nor can there be any hybrid between socialism and capitalism. Capitalism exists whenever there is minority ownership of the means of production, wage-labour and production for sale and profit, irrespective of whether that ownership is via individual ownership, a limited company or a nationalised industry.

The term ‘state capitalism’ first came into use towards the end of the 19th century, to describe instances where the government performs the role of capitalist by employing wage-labour and selling the product or service to realise a profit, such as state-owned and run mines and railways. After the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, Lenin extended the term to include the development of private capitalism under the direction and control of the state. Others later extended the meaning further to include a nationalised economy without private capitalists but still with wage-labour, production for the market and a privileged ruling class such as eventually developed in Russia.

It was a term used more by critics than by supporters of capitalism. Latterly, however, it has come to be used routinely in the media to describe the economic system in China where political control is firmly in the hands of a single party but where profit-seeking private enterprises are allowed to operate, where their shares are traded and where state-owned enterprises compete on the world market with the same aim and methods as private capitalist enterprises.

Politically motivated government intervention in the economy is not new — governments have always done this to one degree or another via taxes, subsidies, tariffs, and monetary policy — but calling this ‘state capitalism’ is new, at least in openly pro-capitalist circles. This could even be seen as a step forward in that, previously, they called it ‘socialism’, ‘communism’, ‘Marxism’, a travesty of these words. The more backward of them still do, as this from Fortune (12 August) magazine:

‘Many free-market economists and business leaders who have long worshipped the free-market ideals of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Milton Friedman should be aware that their idols would be rolling in their graves right now, as rather than pursue standard laissez-faire conservative economic policies, MAGA has gone Marxist and even, increasingly, Maoist’).

Even though it is quite ludicrous to say that Trump has ‘gone Marxist’, there is a delicious irony in him being accused of undermining capitalism. Not that he is of course. He is using state power in what he considers to be the general interest of the US capitalist class.

Loving fathers of industry. (1914)

From the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

An interesting advertisement booklet recently published by Messrs. Joseph Crosfield & Sons, the Warrington soapworkers’ exploiters, shows how “model employers” dominate even the “private life” of their wage slaves, dictating as to how they should spend their scanty leisure.

After giving the names of the directors and other parasites who “run” the business, the pamphlet shows us how increased efficiency in the worker only benefits the capitalist class. For it states: “It is compulsory upon all boys and girls (employees) between the age of 14 and 17 to attend an evening school at least three nights a week. The course of instruction for boys is naturally concerned with questions relating to their line of work.” (Italics mine.)

Not a bad wheeze, teaching the poor kiddies their trade at night schools in their all too meagre spare time, after they have put in 8½ hours hard graft at the works for their lords and masters ! It is obvious, of course, that no time will be lost at work in teaching these youngsters soap making ! For the workers’ time is money to the capitalist.

We are then told that in the day-work departments, the 9½ hour day has been reduced to an 8½ hour day, “and events have proved that as much work as previously is done in the shorter hours.” Will the “B.S.P.” please note, that if the 8 hour day for all workers came into vogue, the capitalists would see to it, as they have done in this case, that the workers’ output was not lessened, but that they would be “speeded up,” so that the same or even an in­creased output was maintained in the shorter working day, with less expense to the masters in running machinery, lighting and heating the factories, etc.

With an eye to business the firm tells us: “The physical aspect of education is not over­ looked, for all work-girls up to the age of 17 undergo a course of gymnastics during the winter months.” Because strong, healthy, well-developed workers can obviously turn out more and better work than weak, unhealthy, and ill-nourished workers. So that from a purely busi­ness point of view—the point of view the master class always take—this little incidental expense well repays the employers.

Under the ironical heading “Social Recreation during Leisure Hours,” we are informed that the firm provide a company of the 4th Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment (Territorials), also a company of boy-scouts.

Note the masters’ determination to inocculate their workers with that brain-disease, patriotism. One can imagine how useful would these same workers be in defending their masters’ property against foreign invaders, or more probably, strike rioters.

Verily, the capitalist moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform !

This, we are told, is how the firm take a keen interest in the social life of the work-people ! Not much time for these workers to study their slave position in society. The firm see to it that their workers’ minds are diverted into less revolutionary and dangerous channels.

“Garden Village” employers go one better even, by providing their workers with libraries filled with capitalist works, libraries from which working class books and papers are vi­gorously excluded. Gardening, too, is taught, and thus the workers keep the “garden village” well cultivated in their spare time, without expense to the employers. Free fire brigade staff, ambulance staff, and gardening staff ! And so on, ad nauseam.

After giving a description of the soapmaking the pamphlet concludes with photos, several showing the work-people cheering and flag-wagging, on the occasion of a recent visit to the works of our royal parasites.

The enormous profits made out of the unpaid labour of the workers by soap kings was demonstrated by the “Daily Chronicle,” (24.4.14). According to that rag, Messrs. Joseph Watson & Sons, the Leeds soapmakers, made a profit of £103,999 last year, as compared with £84,215 in the year previous.

How much more of this devilish game will you workers submit to ? Aren’t you tired of being referred to in contemptuous terms as the working asses? or are you going to quietly wait for that last phase of this rapidly decaying system, State Capitalism, with its universal “model employers,” “garden villages,” “ideal conditions of labour,” “co-partnership,” “profit-sharing,” etc.; which is really more intensified slavery still—to a hide-bound State, instead of private employers—than that which exists at present ?

Capitalism has long since outstayed its wel­come ; why not organise with us and overthrow it at once ? “Now is the accepted time ”

A. C. Kelly

Lenin’s admission (1974)

 From the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 70th anniversary issue of the Socialist Standard carried throughout its pages a series of snippets from old Socialist Standard articles highlighting the SPGB's unique position on issues of the day. Where possible, I've provided a link to the full article.

Before proceeding with our investigation it will be, perhaps, as well to point out that neither Socialism nor an approximation thereto exists in Russia yet. No less an authority than Lenin has made this clear. For example, in a pamphlet entitled ‘The Chief Task of our Times’, published by the Workers’ Socialist Federation, he points out:

“Reality says that State Capitalism would be a step forward for us ; if we were able to bring about in Russia in a short time State Capitalism it would be a victory for us.”

[From “Where Russia Stands – Our attitude supported by the latest literature”, Socialist Standard, May 1921]

Marx: a critical view by Brian Crozier (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

                    Marx: a critical view by Brian Crozier

Although Karl Marx lived and died in the nineteenth century, he probably ranks as the most influential political thinker of the twentieth. To me his influence has been almost entirely evil, and I find it hard to think of any redeeming features. I regard him, with Sigmund Freud (whose work does not concern us here) as a philosophical scourge of the twentieth century.

As a prophet, Marx was false, and his predictions have gone unfulfilled. This would not matter very much if the failure of life and history to fulfil his predictions had deprived him of his actual or potential following; but it is one of the curious features of Marxism that its most abysmal prophetic record tends to be blamed upon the failings of individuals or the vagaries of circumstances instead of being attributed to the author of the prophecies.

Above all, however, the fact that Marxism lies at the root of some of the worst totalist tyrannies of our times — from the Soviet autocracy to the genocidal Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea — strengthens the indictment. It is not a defence to assert that Marx himself would not have approved of such horrors, if only because the assertion is by its nature unprovable. The point is that the seeds of totalism are inherent in the Marxian philosophy. with its millenarian assumptions and its confident assertion of absolute truth.

Determinism and Praxis

As with all absolutist philosophies. Marxism abounds in contradictions. There is, for instance, an inherent contradiction between Marx's determinist view of history as the product of contending economic relationships in which men are involved in a manner "independent of their will" (Critique of Political Economy, 1859), on the one hand; and on the other hand, the notion of "Praxis", which calls upon the philosophers to cease contenting themselves with merely interpreting the world, the point being "to change it" (eleventh of theTheses on Feuerbach, 1845).

The contradiction emerges with still greater clarity in respect of Marx's uncompromising forecast that capitalism will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, to be succeeded by socialism. For if socialism is inevitable, because determined by scientific laws independent of men's will, then there is no need for the expectant to do anything but await its coming. Marx, however, expected his followers to do everything they could to make the prophecies come true, to hasten the breakdown of capitalism and the advent of revolution.

This expectation, in line with the idea of "Praxis", has been responsible for more revolutionary violence and avoidable suffering than any other idea of Karl Marx's. In fact, capitalism has nowhere collapsed spontaneously, even when subjected to great strains and stresses. Even in Russia, it was not "capitalism" (which had been flourishing under the Tsars) that collapsed, but the Tsarist system. Lenin abolished capitalism by decree after his little gang of followers had ousted the liberal/democratic Provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.

Since 1917, the story has been repeated dozens of times: never a spontaneous collapse, always the outcome of force. This is as true of Stalin's East European empire, as of Mao Tse-tung's victory in China, or the conquest of South Vietnam in 1975, or the imposition of communism in South Yemen. Ethiopia and Afghanistan. It was Lenin who developed effective techniques for violent revolution: but the violence, and all that ensued, was inherent in Marx's Praxis.

False Prophecies

One of the most demonstrably untrue of Marx's predictions was the coming "absolute pauperisation of the workers". I shall not attempt here to refute Karl Marx's strictly economic theories, which others better qualified than I have done repeatedly. However. Marx fell into the trap of extrapolating from the present and drawing conclusions which later events proved to have been quite unfounded. He argued in Capital that competition would drive capitalists to accumulate capital, which would become concentrated in monopolistic cartels and trusts. Labour-saving devices and machines would create unemployment by reducing the need for hired hands. But this also would reduce capitalist profits, obliging the capitalists to intensify their exploitation of the workers, whom unemployment forced to work on progressively more disadvantageous terms. Faced with "pauperisation", the masses, in their misery, would be forced to unite and overthrow the system.

The best short answer to this prophecy of workers' doom is the visual one made available to Khrushchev on his visit to the United States in 1959, when he was shown the parked cars of the car workers in Detroit, which, it is said, came as a shock to him.

By whatever measuring rod, it is a fact that not only has there been no inexorable pauperisation of the workers under capitalism, but on the contrary that their living standards have risen consistently. Moreover, the living standards of the workers in the United States and in any West European country are far higher than they are in the Soviet Union after 65 years of Marxist-based socialism. Something has gone wrong somewhere.

Another expectation — an expectation, perhaps, rather than a prophecy — that went awry was the belief that the revolution would start in an advanced capitalist State. Marx had Britain in mind. In fact, it took place in Russia, one of the more backward countries in Europe, in industrial terms.

The Class Struggle

Perhaps the most pernicious of Marx's doctrines is the class struggle. Starkly expressed in The Communist Manifesto of 1848, of which Friedrich Engels was the co-author, it trades upon envy and is a permanent incitement to violence and conflict.

Ultimately the doctrine sanctifies the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat", in other words the autocracy of the single ruling party in the name of the working class. Translated into international terms, it becomes "the international class struggle"; in other words, what the Soviet rulers call "peaceful co-existence" and those at the receiving end term "the cold war". As the final Resolution of the Conference of 81 Communist Parties of November 1960 put it, peaceful co-existence "implies the intensification of the international class struggle".

The duty to support "national liberation movements", as sanctified by the doctrine of the class struggle is enshrined in the current (1977) Constitution of the USSR.

The Dialectic

In theory, Marxism is a materialistic set of doctrines and dogmas, denying the existence of a God and seeking materialist solutions to the world's problems by the correct application of the "scientific" laws of history, as discovered by Karl Marx. Yet, the Hegelian dialectic of "thesis, antithesis and synthesis", upon which the Marxist hypothesis rests is pure mysticism.

Borrowing from Hegel (who in turn had borrowed from Plato) Marx arbitrarily decided that feudalism was the thesis, changing by degrees until it was replaced by capitalism, its antithesis. Capitalism was in turn destined to develop increasing contradictions until in the end it yielded to the "synthesis" of socialism. Once socialism has been reached, contradictions are eliminated, this being the Marxian version of Hegel's Absolute.

This, however, is a totally unscientific approach to the study of history. Why, for instance, start with feudalism? Why not with imperial Rome, or Chinese despotism, or the Egyptian theocratic State? Capitalism, moreover, did not spring whole into the world as the "antithesis" or "negation" of feudalism, but as the outcome of a complex process that included the violent disproof of the divine right of kings, the decadence of Rome and the emergence of the Puritan ethic, new inventions, the spirit of inquiry of the Renaissance, and so forth.

Nor has "socialism", in practice, proved in any sense a synthesis or an Absolute. While socialism was being imposed upon the Soviet peoples at the cost of millions of lives and total loss of liberty, capitalism was weathering the great crisis of the Depression, finding its self-correcting mechanisms and raising living standards in contradiction of all Marx's expectations.

Life itself, to borrow Khrushchev's favourite phrase, is the disproof of Karl Marx's philosophy.

Why then, do tens of thousands still flock to the banner of a discredited prophet? The answer, I believe, must lie in the continued need for religion, in the widest sense, in an age of scientific scepticism. Marx, to the uncritical, offers certainty. It matters little, to the millenarian mind, that his prophecies lie in ruins or that his doctrine has produced monstrous tyrannies wherever it has been applied. It is not the doctrine that is wrong: the fault lies with the character defects of the tyrants that have followed Lenin's example: with Stalin, with Mao. There is a search for other Gods: although Fidel Castro's failure is as complete as that of any other Marxist-Leninist, attempts are made to cling to the myth of his relative purity.

Just give us a chance, say the Marxist fundamentalists, and we shall succeed where others have failed. For the sake of humanity, it is devoutly to be hoped that they will be denied the opportunity to try.

Brian Crozier

Reply: Marxism Defended

The statement that Marx "probably ranks as the most influential political thinker of the twentieth century" and that this has been "almost entirely evil" is based on an alleged impact of Marxism on aspects of the present world which is asserted, but in no way substantiated. That "Marxism lies at the root of some of the worst totalist tyrannies of our time" is an oft-repeated attack on the ideas of Marx, but one which Brian Crozier makes not the slightest effort to prove. Indeed, there are many tyrannous regimes in the world; not all of them make any claim to be "Marxist", and it is notable that anti-Marxists are usually conspicuously silent about the tyrannous dictatorships in Chile, El Salvador, Paraguay. Pakistan, South Africa and Turkey. But what of the totalitarian dictatorships in Russia, Eastern Europe, China, Albania and Cuba? The dictators in these countries pay lip service to some perverse notion called Marxist-Leninism — just as other tyrants pay lip service to Christianity or Islam — but it is not because of this ideological lip service that "the Soviet autocracy and the genocidal Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea" behave tyrannously. These countries are state capitalist and the oppression which characterises them is not the result of Karl Marx's analysis of capitalism, but of their need to exploit their workers in accordance with the needs of the very capitalist system which Marxism opposes. Far from being examples of something other than capitalism, the state capitalist dictatorships are extra stains on the social system which its supporters, like Brian Crozier, aim to whitewash. Mr. Crozier is right that Marx would not have approved of the horrors of the regimes which pay lip service to him — but it would be with more than hindsight that Marx and Engels could now state that state capitalism is not socialism. As Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

The modern State, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. (Our emphasis.)

On the basis of that — and other similar statements by Marx and Engels — how can anyone claim that Marxism supports centralised, state ownership and control of capital? It would be true to accuse Leninism of such an aim, but Mr. Crozier mistakenly states that Marxism, as opposed to Leninism, "lies at the root" of the state capitalist regimes.

Marxism, unlike the Idealist philosophies which speak of absolute truths, is notable for its historical relativism. Marx was not a socialist because socialism is an absolutist Utopia to be striven for, but because the next stage in social history is a necessary solution to the contradictions of the present. Far from basing his thinking on absolute certainty, Marx's very wise motto was "Doubt Everything".

Determinism and Praxis

"Marxism", we are informed, "abounds in contradictions". Incorrect — Marxism explains social contradictions, between social existence and material, historical potentiality. To examine and solve contradictions is not be contradictory; in other words, contradiction is the object of the Marxist study. Brian Crozier's suggestion that there is an "inherent contradiction" between determinism and consciousness does not show that Marx was illogical, but that Marx's dialectical materialist understanding enabled him to see that history cannot be explained either entirely in terms of fixed determinism or entirely in terms of human will. Would Mr. Crozier not agree that certain social relations involve humans "independent of their will" (those imposed by the social environment into which we are born and conditioned) and others can be brought about by human beings consciously creating them? All that Marx was saying is that there is a massive contradiction between what is and what could be; only conscious human action can resolve that contradiction.

But let us get down to the crux of our critic's confused attack. Would it be fair of us to suggest that he has attacked the social analyses made by Marx without reading them? He tells us that he will not refute "Marx's strictly economic theories, which others better qualified than I have done repeatedly". We are entitled to expect Mr. Crozier to tell us who these great experts are who have refuted Marxist political economy — where are their detailed refutations of Capital to be found; in what way have they demonstrated that Marx was wrong about value and profits and wages and inflation and unemployment and trade cycles? If they have managed to "refute" the economic thinker whom Mr. Crozier regards as the most influential of this century, where are they hiding with their words of capitalist wisdom? According to Brian Crozier, Marx predicted that "capitalism will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, to be succeeded by socialism". We have searched the collected volumes of Marx for this alleged prediction, but like the critics who have refuted Marxist economics, it is nowhere to be found. Marx did not forecast the collapse of capitalism. A Socialist Party pamphlet published in February 1932 pointed out that

Workers who have accepted the wrong and lazy idea of collapse have neglected many activities that are absolutely essential. They have taken up the fatalistic attitude of waiting for the system to end itself. But the system is not so obliging!

The collapse theory, when advanced by people calling themselves Marxists, is based on the illusion that there are no counter-tendencies to the falling rate of profit. In dealing with the nature of crises Marx points out that these will not cause the collapse of capitalism. In his Theories of Surplus Value Marx categorically states that "Permanent crises do not exist" (p. 497). If. as Mr. Crozier mistakenly states, Marxists believed that capitalism will collapse and socialism is inevitable, "there would be no need for the expectant to do anything but await its coming". But unlike those who are waiting for the Messiah to come down to earth (and presumably be crucified by the Daily Telegraph readers who applaud Mr. Crozier's articles about the need to preserve the status quo) Marxists are not in the business of waiting for the revolution to make itself.

Brian Crozier talks about the "revolutionary violence and avoidable suffering" of recent history as if it somehow demonstrates that Marx was mistaken about something. But the violent changes to which Mr. Crozier refers were consequences of the rise of capitalism in backward countries. For 1917 in Russia read 1798 in France; Engels predicted that a Russian Revolution would be a repeat of 1798. The Bolshevik revolution did not see the destruction of capitalism in Russia, but the beginning of state capitalism.

False Prophecies

We are told that "one of the most demonstrably untrue of Marx's predictions was the coming 'absolute pauperisation' of the workers". Let us put Marx's theory into context; in Wage Labour and Capital he wrote that

A house may be large or small, as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all the demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilisation, if the neighbouring palace grows an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable. dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls.

In the same pamphlet Marx pointed out that improvement in the worker's material existence "does not remove the antagonism between his interests and . . . the interests of the capitalists". Higher wages do not alter this: "In proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse" (Capital Vol. I, Chap. XXV, p. 645). The fact is that, compared with the potential which now exists for meeting human needs, we are living in a society which faces not only the same social problems as existed fifty and a hundred years ago (starvation, bad housing, poor hospital facilities, unemployment, deprivation), but new, more awful ones: chemical pollution, racism, the nuclear threat, state secrecy using computers, numerous conventional wars using new weapons of mass killing, widespread street crime. The lot of the workers has grown worse. Similarly, Marx's prediction that capital would become increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands has come true.

Poverty has led to widespread working class discontent, but not yet to a working class which is conscious of the need for socialism. The tinny motor cars which Mr. Crozier cites as evidence of working class affluence, like the mortgages and mock-Tudor front doors which some workers acquire, may have shocked Khrushchev, but they do not hide the essential poverty of the class which produces all the wealth of society but who, in general, can only afford to consume the second-rate trash. Poverty is not the absence of a Ford Fiesta or a Sony Hi Fi, but is the social alienation of the wealth producing class from the means of wealth production and distribution. If Mr. Crozier is sure that such poverty is "demonstrably untrue" he could tell us how the 80 per cent of the British population who own between them less of the accumulated wealth than the richest 1 per cent are "demonstrably" affluent?

Incidentally, Brian Crozier is quite incorrect when he states that Marx has been proved wrong in his "belief that the revolution would start in an advanced capitalist state". There has yet to be a socialist revolution, so Marx can hardly have been proved right or wrong.

The Class Struggle

"Perhaps the most pernicious of Marx's doctrines", we are told, "is the class struggle." We are informed that the theory of the class struggle is based on envy and incites violence and conflict. Anyone would think that violence and conflict would be absent from capitalist society unless wicked Marxists invented class division! The opposite is the case: it is the existence of a society in which there are classes which produce social antagonism, often violent. It is impossible to have a society in which the privileged minority monoplises the means of living and the wealth producers are reduced to wage slavery without serious and ceaseless conflict. The Murder Squad do not commit the murders they investigate; Marxists do not invent the class struggle which we experience. Envy will be eradicated by abolishing poverty. If Brian Crozier is as opposed to class conflict as he claims — and as Marxists are — why does he oppose the only political movement in existence which aims to establish a classless society?

It is absurd to suggest that Marxism "sanctifies" the autocracy "of a single ruling party in the name of the working class". Marx's whole political outlook was a reflection of his view that "the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class themselves". The Socialist Party of Great Britain, which shares the view of Marx, has never once condoned or ceased to expose parties which rule in the name of the workers. Marxists stand for worldwide democracy — the ownership and control of the earth and everything in it and on it by its inhabitants. That has nothing to do with dictatorship, either of the party or the board room.

Brian Crozier's reference to Russian foreign policy has nothing to do with Marx or Marxism. The rivalry between NATO — representing western capitalism — and the Warsaw Pact — representing eastern capitalism — is a product of the market system which Marx opposed and Crozier accepts.

The Dialectic

Like most critics of Marxism, Brian Crozier is baffled by the theory of historical materialism. It is anything but a dogma. Materialists do deny the existence of god, just as we deny the existence of fairies, pink elephants and other invisible and supernatural creations of human fantasy.

Marx's philosophical writings, far from being based on Hegel's "pure mysticism", rejected Hegelian metaphysics. Again, it is utterly mistaken of Mr. Crozier to suggest that Marx's analysis of historical development started with feudalism. In his Preface to the Critique of Political Economy Marx refers to "Asiatic, Ancient, feudal and modern capitalist modes of production".

Engels' great work, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, can hardly be said to consider history to start with feudalism. "Capitalism . . . did not spring whole into the world" writes Brian Crozier. Of course not; neither did feudalism or the ideas of Marx or even Brian Crozier himself— all things evolve. Capitalism, as a network of social relationships, did replace feudalism as a social order; one does not have to take the word of Marx or the Socialist Party on this — virtually all reputable historians will verify it. In saying that socialism will replace capitalism Marxists are not predicting an absolute synthesis — whatever that would be — but a movement in social evolution. Socialism will not be a static, absolute society; it will develop in line with material needs and possibilities.

Conclusion

Why do workers become Marxists? Brian Crozier suggests that tens of thousands flock to the banner of Marxism because it is a new, secular religion offering dogmatic certainty about the world. Perhaps some workers do seek dogmatic certainty in Marxism, but in so doing they are not Marxists. Many workers claim to be flocking to Marxism, but are, in fact, rushing enthusiastically towards ideological platforms which, knowingly or otherwise, perpetuate the capitalist social order. Similarly, many so-called critics of Marx and modern Marxists are not criticising anything but a bogus caricature of the socialist case. The failure of millions of workers to become Marxists has much to do with the fact that it does not provide dogmatic certainty and god-like leadership. The strong conditioning towards working class passivity has made the politics of revolutionary conscious action seem unattractive and frightening for many workers. At the moment the majority of workers are willing to leave the historical driving seat to those, like Brian Crozier and his fellow apologists for capitalism, whom they foolishly think will know what is best for society. For the sake of the working class, let us hope that many workers will study Mr. Crozier's manifestation of his political wisdom and draw from it the obvious lesson that the case against Marxism is unproven — and probably unprovable.

Steve Coleman

State capitalism (2025)

Book Review from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Spectre of State Capitalism. By Ilias Alami and Adam D. Dixon. Oxford University Press. 2024.

At one time the concept of ‘state capitalism’ was used only by socialists, to describe the state acting as a capitalist by investing capital, employing wage labour, and producing for the market. As far back as April 1910 the Socialist Standard carried an article entitled ‘Evolution and State Capitalism’ which explained that nationalisation was not socialism. From the 1920s we applied the concept to the economic system in the USSR. Other articles followed in the 1930s and 40s. The concept was also applied to other countries where, in the absence of a strong enough capitalist class, the government set up state enterprises to introduce and develop capitalism.

Today China is routinely described by politicians and the media as ‘state capitalist’. There is even a branch of academia devoted to ‘state capitalist studies’ of which Alami and Dixon’s book is both a product and a description. A large part of their book is taken up with questions of methodology and definitions for specialists in the subject, which makes it rather heavy-going for the general public.

Their conclusion is that the term should be applied only to particular state bodies, such as state-owned enterprises (SOEs), sovereign welfare funds, and state-funded development banks where the state is an actual owner, and not simply to any state intervention in the capitalist economy. They distinguish between an old state capitalism of nationalised industries, often natural monopolies, and a new state capitalism of ‘state-capital hybrids’ which are consciously structured and behave exactly like private capitalist corporations or investment funds, seeking to maximise profits, paying dividends, engaging in financial wheeling and dealing, and even taking over other businesses.

The authors come up with some perhaps surprising facts:

‘Their [SOEs] share among the world’s 2,000 largest firms doubled to 20 per cent over the last two decades. Over the same period, the assets controlled by SOEs grew from about $13 trillion in 2000 to $45 trillion (equivalent to half of global GDP) (IMF). Many SOEs are in top rankings such as the Fortune Global 500. According to the OECD, half of the top ten non-financial firms as measured by revenue are SOEs. In 2021, they made up 132 of the world’s 500 largest companies—up from thirty-two just two decades ago. UNCTAD estimates that there are at least 1,500 state-owned multinational enterprises, which are SOEs that control assets or other entities in countries other than its home country. In other words, many SOEs now compete on the world market, and perform as efficiently as private capitalist firms in some sectors.’

Alami and Dixon see the ‘new state capitalism’ of ‘state-capital hybrids’ as a new stage in the evolution of capitalism, after ‘neoliberalism’. This is certainly an increasing feature of contemporary capitalism but whether it represents a new era is another matter. In any event the advocates of ‘free market’ capitalism are back on the defensive. Even those who accept capitalism as we know it in the West are alarmed at Chinese-style state capitalism. Alami and Dixon quote the President of the European Commission complaining about ‘distortions created by China’s state capitalist system’ and Blinken, the late US Secretary of State, insisting on the need for protection ‘from the aggressive state capitalism of modern autocracies’.

Apologists for the West portray the conflict with China as one between ‘liberal capitalism’ and ‘state capitalism’. A case for this can be made out but it was that even under Mao when the apologists were calling China ‘communist’. At least they are now being honest.

In the final chapter Alami and Dixon come out as some sort of leftists, citing Marx. They see a potential ‘progressive’ side to their new state capitalism as, by further blurring the distinction between the economic and the political realms, it opens up the possibility of achieving ‘non-reformist reforms’. This, despite their conceding that (by ‘valorise’ they mean create surplus value):

‘State-owned capital is still subjected to the imperatives of self-valorization. The state can partially or temporarily suspend these imperatives (for instance, by accepting a lower-than-average rate of profit, or by institutionalizing other social and political goals alongside profit maximization), but if it does so over the long term, the risk is that the capital becomes devalued. State-owned capital must therefore continue to valorize not to be destroyed, and with it, the social wealth that it represents.’

Which is precisely why supposed non-reformist reforms can no more lastingly overcome the economic laws of capitalism than can common-or-garden reforms.

Adam Buick

King Coal makes a comeback (1995)

From the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

State capitalism, just as the Socialist Party predicted all
 those years ago, has been a pathetic failure as far as workers’
 interests are concerned. Now private capitalism has 
returned to the mining industry

At midnight on 30 December British Coal’s 15 remaining deep mines in England passed into the ownership of RJB Mining, a privately-owned company with shares traded on the Stock Exchange.

The government had prepared the way for this change-back to private ownership by crushing the NUM, closing down all unprofitable pits (and not a few not-profitable-enough ones too), and watering down the safety regulations in this notoriously dangerous industry. Now RJB Mining hopes to be able to make sufficient profits by exploiting the remaining 8,000 or so miners to be able to pay a dividend to its shareholders and pay off with interest those who loaned them money to buy what was left of the industry.

Considering that for years the nationalisation of the coal mines had been top of the list of the miners’ union's demands the actual moment of denationalisation passed off without any fuss. There were no strikes, no sit-ins and no demonstrations.

When the mines were nationalised — forty-eight years previously, on 1 January' 1947 — it was a different story. Then the miners did celebrate the ejection of the private owners, a particularly vicious and vindictive lot who had been responsible for grinding them into the dust after the failure of the 1926 General Strike. A notice was stuck up outside every pit in Britain proclaiming “This colliery' is now managed by the National Coal Board on behalf of the people”.

British capitalist class

This wasn’t true of course, as the miners were soon to find out. The Coal Board’s job was to manage the pits on behalf of the British capitalist class as a whole. At first this meant producing as much cheap coal as possible for the rest of British industry. Later this meant producing cheap coal for profit in competition with other fuels like oil. At no time did it mean production to meet people’s needs. Not one lump of coal was ever produced to be given to a pensioner to stop them dying of hypothermia. As many thousands did throughout the period of nationalisation.

Working conditions did improve somewhat, but wages remained a bone of contention. How could they not, since the more the miners obtained in wages the less of what they produced remained as profit? A profit that was needed to pay compensation with interest to the former owners as well as to invest in new machinery and equipment.

The whole period of nationalisation was marked by conflicts over wages — from the illegal strike at Grimethorpe in 1947, through countless local disputes, to the successful national strikes of 1972 and 1974, to the heroic but doomed year-long national strike which ended in failure ten years ago this month.

State capitalism

Ironically, it was the Coal Board and not the NUM that first recognised that nationalisation had nothing to do with socialism. In 1968 Lord Robens, a minister in the Labour government that had nationalised the mines who was appointed NCB chairmanin 1961, told a NUM weekend school:

"I do not believe that in 1945 those of us who were nationalising these industries would have done it with so much enthusiasm if someone had told us then that they were going to turn into state capitalism ” (Times, 1 April 1968).

Someone did tell them We did. This is what we wrote in our 1945 pamphlet Nationalisation or Socialism ?:

“Only when industry and transport, etc, are owned and democratically controlled by the whole community can service to the whole community be a reality. Nationalisation or State Capitalism is not the solution of the problem. ”

It took the leaders of the miners' union ten years longer than Robens to realise the truth. It was not until his retirement in 1976 that Dai Francis, the Secretary of the South Wales Area of the NUM. was prepared to admit that "there was no difference between the old . . . coal owners and the National Coal Board. They were now turning it into state capitalism ” (quoted in H. Francis and D. Smith The Fed). Former NUM General Secretary Will Paynter hit the nail even more squarely on the head when, surveying three decades of nationalisation, he noted that “progress from private enterprise capitalism to state capitalism does not change the fundamental status of workers in society ” (The Miner, November-December 1977).

No doubt this explains the lack of reaction by the remaining miners to the return of the coal industry' to private ownership. They had learned by bitter experience that state capitalism was no better, if no worse, than private capitalism, so that a change from the one to the other wasn't worth getting worked up over.

Profitable basis

Socialism does indeed involve the management of industries "on behalf of the people”. But this was not what nationalisation did do, nor, as we pointed out in 1945, what it was able to do. Nationalisation represented the purchase by the state of an industry from its previous owners and the appointment by the state of a board to run it on a profitable basis with the workers remaining excluded and exploited wage and salary' earners.

Privatisation, on the other hand, represents the resale of an industry to private capitalists for them to run for their own private profit instead of it being run by a state board for the benefit of the capitalist class as a whole. As far as the workers are concerned, it makes no fundamental difference.

For industries to be run as a public service in the interest of all, they must first all be taken into common ownership at the same time, and without any compensation being paid to the previous owners, and they must be made subject to the democratic control both of those working in them and of the community in general. Such genuine common ownership is something quite different from nationalisation, or state ownership.

Production for profit will come to an end and there will be no exploitation, no property incomes either in the form of dividends or of interest on compensation or other government bonds, and no wages system. Instead, people will be able to cooperate to produce what is needed on the basis of the principle “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs".

This is what socialism is and it hasn’t yet been tried. It is high time that it was.

Adam Buick

Letter: Russian steps (1985)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russian steps

Dear Editors

In the November Socialist Standard the nature of the Russian socio-economic system is discussed and "bureaucratic collectivism", as suggested by Bruno Rizzi. rejected in favour of "state capitalism".

It may therefore be of interest to note that Lenin, in a speech delivered to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets in 1918. had this to say about the situation:

Reality says that State Capitalism would be a step forward for us; if we were able to bring about in Russia in a short time State Capitalism it would be a victory for us. How could they [Lenin's critics] be so blind as not to see that our enemy is the small capitalist, the small owner? . . . What is State Capitalism in the hands of the Soviet Power? To bring about State Capitalism at the present time means to establish that control and order formerly achieved by the propertied classes. (Translated from the Official Version in Isvestia, 30 May 1918.)

The "transition to complete Socialism" to which Lenin also refers has of course never taken place.

J E Moore,

Evenley, 

Northamptonshire

The Socialist Forum: Ourselves and the Russian Five-Year Plan. (1931)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ourselves and the Russian Five-Year Plan.

Mr. W. Langham (W. Ealing) writes as follows :—

“You often condemn the Russian Five-Year Plan as not being Socialism, and being apparently a wrong method of attaining Socialism, but according to the ideas of the S.P.G.B. Socialism must come through Capitalism, it could not come through any other economic system, and as Russia under the Czars had been kept industrially backward for many years, it follows that the Five Year Plan is a necessary step towards Socialism. At least State Capitalism will make the change over much easier than from the Individualistic Capitalism which exists in other European countries.

You also condemn the I.L.P. for advocating Nationalisation, but this if brought about would tend to put the whole control of industry into the hands of Parliament, and production and distribution would at last become subject to the direct will of the people. Surely the fact that such services as the Post Office being of no advantage to the workers at present, only proves the necessity for taking over all services of production and distribution, and not make one pay for the inefficiency of private enterprise. It seems to me that this must be the way Socialism will at last come.”

Reply:

Our correspondent is in error. We do not “condemn the Russian Five-Year Plan” ; what we do is to condemn the Communists here and in Russia for propagating the falsehood that it is Socialism.

The further question about the technical development of Russia is answered by the condition of things in Great Britain, Germany, the U.S.A. and elsewhere. It is true, as Marx pointed out, that a country cannot jump from a backward, pre-capitalist, stage of development straight into Socialism; and we condemned the Bolsheviks for attempting to do this. But it is also true that something more than mere industrial efficiency is required in order to establish Socialism. Otherwise we would have had Socialism in the advanced capitalist countries decades ago.

State capitalism may, in certain circumstances, bring about the development of industry more rapidly than if it were left to private capitalist enterprise. It is, however, useful to remember that State capitalism has been little resorted to in the U.S.A.—a country which the Bolsheviks are taking as their model for industrial efficiency. There are, too, many observers who doubt whether State capitalism in Russia has achieved this end more quickly or more efficiently than would have been the case if private capitalism had been given greater freedom.

The more important point is, however, the argument that State capitalism “will make the change-over much easier.” It is an old argument, but is there any foundation for it? Germany and Australia are two countries in which vast experiments in State capitalism have been tried out over a long period. Have they in consequence made greater strides towards Socialism? We know of no evidence whatever to that eflect. We challenge our correspondent to prove this assertion.

May we also point out that the question of nationalising industries is one which the capitalists themselves will continue to decide so long as they remain in power, and they will decide it in their interests, not in ours. During the past ten years the process all over Europe has been in the direction of handing over State capitalist concerns to private corporations. Almost the first action of the late “Labour” Government was to ratify the agreement transferring State cables and wireless services to Imperial and International Communications, Ltd.

We certainly do condemn the I.L.P. for pretending that nationalisation and public utility corporations are Socialism, or are steps to Socialism; and our correspondent admits that we are justified in so doing, when he confesses that State ownership as in the Post Office is “of no advantage to the workers at present.” Socialism can only come when the workers have become Socialists. The I.L.P. and the Labour Party have made the work of propagating Socialism infinitely harder by pointing to nationalised industries as instances of Socialism. The worker who believes the Post Office to be a Socialist institution and who observes, like our correspondent, that it is “of no advantage to the workers,” quite naturally looks without enthusiasm at Socialist propaganda. Before we can get the workers to listen to our propaganda for Socialism, we have to undo the harm wrought by the I.L.P. and Labour Party.

To talk about putting industry under the “direct will of the people” by nationalising it is absurd. Is the Post Office under the direct will of the people? It is one of the most bureaucratic and hidebound bodies in existence. The unfortunate postman is hedged about with ancient and stupid regulations which most private capitalists have abandoned long ago. He may not even unfasten his collar in a heat wave ! Is this the will of the people?

Parliament is the dominating factor in the situation for all industries, not only nationalised ones. When the workers determine to do so they can control Parliament and, consequently, control the whole situation. The need is to get the workers to have the will to establish Socialism, not to interest them in minor questions about the form of capitalist control. Converting the workers to Socialism is still in its infancy in Russia as in other countries.

Ed. Comm.

Letter: Poland is state capitalist (1982)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

In the article "Poland is state capitalist", a quotation from a Polish journal is given, indicating the distinction between "state ownership and social ownership of the means of production".

However, our agreement with the Marxian analysis contained in this and other articles published by Jednosc (see Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, winter-spring 1981) should not draw us into the mistaken and unrealistic assumption that such views are widely held in Poland. This was, and unfortunately still is, a minority point of view.

While the article we quoted was re-published in one other workers' journal, other, more forthright articles were not re-printed elsewhere.

C Skelton 

Woking, Surrey

What is socialism? (2024)

From the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the beginning of the election campaign Starmer was reported as saying that he considered himself a socialist. According to Chris Mason, the BBC’s Political Editor, ‘Starmer told me today he sees himself as a socialist. For those scared of that label, he said he saw it as putting “the country at the service of working people”’ (27 May 18.04).

Few can have believed that Starmer is in any sense a socialist, but it at least provoked the media into talking about ‘socialism’. In an ‘explainer’ article, the Guardian (28 May) even asked ‘What is Socialism?’ Their answer reflected dictionary definitions, which describe how a word is used rather than how it should be:

‘Like many political philosophies it means different things to different people. But broadly socialists believe all human beings are of equal worth and that society should be organised to reflect that. Fairness, equality, justice and the common good are the foundations of socialism. The wealth created by humans should be used to benefit everyone. Some socialists believe that key industries and sectors, such as utilities, transport and housing, should be owned by the state and run in the public interest rather than for private profit. Other socialists believe that all industries and sectors should be run this way’.

We have inherited a definition of socialism which we consider to be both logically and historically correct — a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of living by and in the interest of the whole community. But we can go along with some of the things the Guardian says. For instance, that ‘all human beings are of equal worth and that society should be organised to reflect that’ and ‘that wealth created by humans should be used to benefit everyone’.

On the other hand, describing the foundation of socialism as fairness, equality, justice and the common good doesn’t tell us anything as different people have different opinions as to what is fair, just or in the common interest. Supporters of capitalism could — and in fact do — claim this for capitalism.

The question is: on what basis would society have to be organised to ensure everybody is of equal worth and wealth used to benefit everyone? In our view it could only be on the basis of the means of living (land, industry, transport, communications, etc) being the common property of the whole community. In other words, belonging to everybody but this is the same as belonging to nobody. A socialist society is one where no individual or group of individuals has ownership or controlling rights, in law or in fact, over the resources to produce what society needs to survive as this puts them in a privileged position vis-à-vis the rest of society.

A classless society means that everybody stands in the same relationship to the means of living as everybody else, each having the same opportunity to have a say in how society is run, through democratic procedures of one kind or another. Without the means of living being commonly owned and democratically controlled, the wealth that humans create cannot be used to benefit everyone. Only once freed from the constraints of sectional ownership and the economic forces set in motion when there is production for the market, can society be in a position to do this.

The Guardian (and dictionaries) attempt to grasp the idea of common ownership, which is indeed the basis of socialism, by equating this with ‘public/government ownership’ defined as ownership by the state. But the state is not the same as the community. The state is an institution standing above society controlled by and for a section only of the members of society. Under capitalism it is controlled by that section that owns and controls the means of living. The ‘public interest’ is their interest and ‘public ownership’ is ownership by them as a class. What government ownership amounts to is state capitalism.

Ever since our foundation in 1904 we have consistently argued that government ownership is not socialism. See, for instance, ‘Nationalisation not Socialism’, March 1908 and ‘Evolution and State Capitalism’, April 1910.

That state capitalism is the same as socialism is the most common misunderstanding as to what socialism means. It can even be described as the illusion of the epoch. It is only on the basis of this mistake that the Labour Party (at one time, a long time ago) and Russia when it was the USSR could be described as socialist.

What Starmer thought socialism is was not clear, but he did mention to Chris Mason that it meant ‘the country in the service of working people’. That’s not socialism either. In fact it’s how the Conservatives might describe conservatism and the Lib Dems liberalism. But at least it is something that a Starmer Labour government can be judged by.

The trouble for him is that a country with a capitalist economy simply cannot be made to serve the interest of ‘working people’, or the social class made up of people who, through being excluded from ownership and control of the means of living, are forced by economic necessity to sell their working skills to some employer. A society based on minority ownership and production for profit can never be made to work in their interest as making profits for capitalist enterprises ahead of satisfying people’s needs is built into it. Hence the problems that the working class face. As these arise from capitalism, they cannot be solved without getting rid of capitalism.

We confidently predict, therefore, that Starmer will fail in his endeavour to make capitalism serve the working class. Socialism, properly understood as the common ownership and democratic control of the means of living, is the only framework in which people can be social equals and production re-oriented to serve people’s needs.

Adam Buick

Editorial: London County Council, Ltd. (1907)

Editorial from the February 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Independent Labour Party, who have long supported the Liberals and Progressives on the L.C.C., have issued a manifesto on the coming elections, and have in consequence been repudiated by their friends. It is rather unkind, after the way in which the I.L.P. have worked for and supported the L.C.C. capitalist majority, for the latter, in fear of the prospective Progressive rout, to turn upon and rend their faithful allies. But so it is. The Progressive organ, The Daily Chronicle, in a leading article on the “I.L.P. Bogey,” insists in regard to their manifesto that “the document in question is issued by the I.L.P. on its own account. The Progressive Party have nothing to do with it whatever.” The Progressive organ dismisses the I.L.P. municipal milk proposal as “unnecessary, impracticable and undesirable.” It also says: “One of the Progressive leaders, Sir Edwin Cornwall, happens to be a large coal merchant, and he has very naturally been asked what he thinks of the proposal to municipalise the coal supply of London. He thinks it sheer nonsense, and so, we imagine, will all Progressives.” Moreover it adds that “the County Council has, for the most part, no power to do the things which the manifesto talks about. A whole series of Acts of Parliament would be required to make them possible, and there is no likelihood that the series will be forthcoming.” All of which, to say the least, is base ingratitude toward the I.L.P. For what do the proposals amount to ? Merely the extension of milk and water municipalisation—the substitution of municipal capitalism for private capitalism in certain industries—that is all. Until the working class controls, nationally and locally, the municipal services that are undertaken will only be used for the benefit of the master class, and the L.C.C. policy has been no exception to this rule. The interest of the workers has ever been sacrificed to the interest of the propertied class. Indeed, the L.C.C., far from being a model employer, is noticeably inferior to a vast number of private firms in the treatment of its workmen. The hypocrisy of the Liberal Progressives is as plain as is the futiliy of the policy of the Independent Labour Party, which mistakes municipal and state capitalism for Socialism.

The Quintessence of Socialism.

There are quite a number of people in this country who call themselves Socialists because they believe in the municipalisation or nationalisation of various things. And these good people appear to be oblivious of the fact that the very essence of Socialism is the control of wealth production and distribution by the wealth producers. It is obvious that it a number of thieves are banded together they are not likely to seek less booty, or seek it less effectively, than when isolated ; so, therefore, the capitalist class, who control the national and local administrative bodies, are not likely to seek less profit, or to seek it less effectively, when their businesses come under their collective control than when they control them individually. The end and aim of a capitalist is profit, whether it comes as interest on Metropolitan Water Board bonds or as dividend on shares in the A.B.C.; and the ruling class will not, indeed, undertake municipal or national services at all unless their interests are thereby served and their general profits increased. An industry taken over by the capitalist State, though it may be also of advantage, in other respects, means that more wealth is thereby to be wrung from the workers. The sweating in government factories, the low wages in the Post Office that enable over £4,000,000 to go in relief of capitalist taxation, are an earnest of what State capitalism means. Nationalised industries can only become Socialistic, and can only be of real benefit to the workers, when the working class has obtained control of the administrative machinery. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the political movement of the workers place itself firmly on the basis of the class struggle. Indeed, all who do not recognise this fact, whatever they may call themselves, are emphatically not Socialists, for mere nationalisation, we repeat, is not Socialism at all.

A Nation of Serfs.

Another aspect of the matter that is not often taken note of is the restriction of political liberty which often goes with the nationalisation of a branch of industry. Lord Selborne’s circular (which has been endorsed by Lord Elgin) is a case in point—the railway servants in the Transvaal being forbidden to take active part in the elections there. Railway men in this country who have clamoured for nationalisation, have profound misgivings when they see the Liberal Government cripple the political activity of government railway workers. Mr. Winston Churchill has been approached by them on the matter, but he is inexorable and has said : “It has long been held to be undesirable that regular government servants should conspicuously take sides in party politics, and in consequence the railway servants in both the neighbouring self-governing colonies of Natal and the Cape are expressly forbidden to do so.” Prominent members of the present government have in the past expressed themselves strongly against the exercise of the vote by municipal employees and civil servants. This is, indeed, no new policy. The postal servants have long been expressly forbidden to take active part in politics. Supporters of the existing regime can, indeed, be brutally frank on this matter when it suits them. In a letter to the Daily Chronicle recently, Mr. Arnold White said in praise of the Government, that it had shown that efficiency was not incompatible with economy by its naval policy in abandoning obsolete dockyards, etc., and in “discharging redundant workmen who use their votes to get higher pay.”

The italics are ours.

Though government servants are not, as yet, deprived of the vote, its value is seriously lessened by the restriction of political action. The significance of this matter may be judged from a consideration of its probable effect on the political movement of the working class if all were government servants and forbidden to take sides in political affairs. The political organisation of the workers would be rendered practically impossible, their emancipation would be retarded, and the movement driven underground. The mere nationalisation of an industry gives the ruling class greater power over the workers, and, to take the railways as an example, instead of nationalisation bringing the workers a step near to the control of industry, it is likely to find them with their political wings clipped, and even more at the mercy of capitalism than before. Instead of helping to strengthen the chains which bind them, the workers should at last realise the futility of anything short of working-class supremacy.