Socialism or Barbarism
The following posting is not new. It is a collection of thoughts on the subject of Socialism that I have posted on various online fora edited for this blog.
Let’s be clear on what we are talking about here
1. Stalinism, despite what it called itself was as far from being Communism as a planned economy could be. As Leon Trotsky (One of the leaders of the 1917 Revolution) once wrote “the planned economy needs democracy like the human body need oxygen”.
2. Despite its grotesque bureaucratic class, the Russian planned economy did bring many benefits to the citizens of the USSR. In 1917 Russia was a poverty stricken country with an economy comparable to a third world country today. The revolution and the construction of a planned economy brought Russia from having a feudal economy to being the second biggest superpower on the planet in the space of twenty years. In the Soviet Union every last person had a roof over their heads, the right to an education, and the right to healthcare on demand. The life expectancy of a Soviet citizen was comparable to the life expectancy in the advanced capitalist countries that had taken centuries to reach the same level of development that the planned economy achieved in decades. On top of this, Russia was able to win the space race, fight the Germans for three years on their own when the rest of the world was licking its paws and produce some of the best sports people on the planet.
3. I mentioned the planned economy needing democracy earlier. The fact that it didn’t have this was what caused its collapse. Trotsky accurately predicted that this would happen in his masterwork The Revolution Betrayed. He said that if there was not a political revolution the bureaucracy would strangle the planned economy and capitalism would be restored, with catastrophic results for the people of Russia.
4. The restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union has been an unmitigated disaster. Life expectancy has fallen to an average of 54 years. There is widespread unemployment. Women who previously were guaranteed good jobs have had to turn to prostitution to make ends meet (please excuse the awful pun). Crime in Russia was virtually unheard of under the planned economy. The country is now a den of Mafioso style crime lords. Have you noticed the numbers of eastern European people coming to Ireland for work?
5. The first people in the Gulags were Socialists, Bolsheviks in fact. These people who made the 1917 revolution that brought the USSR into existence. Stalinism was counter-revolutionary, a retreat from Socialism. That Stalin and his henchmen went to such lengths to murder Leon Trotsky, to falsify history, to re-write the legacy of Lenin and 1917 speaks volumes about the nature of the regime.
So what is real Communism?
Communism is the highest form of Socialism. It is a stage that can only be arrived at when there are no classes so no need for the repressive apparatus of the state as we know it. It can also only occur on an international basis. The lower stage of Socialism stems from the democratic Workers’ state that would be established when workers take power. There would still be classes at this stage so the state would still exist as an instrument of class rule, only this time it would be workers’ democracy instead of capitalist democracy and the ruling class would be the majority – workers. For a more thorough going over of the subject have a look at Chapter 5 of Lenin’s The State and Revolution.
Why do we need Socialism?
At the moment workers produce value, be it in goods or services. The capitalist provides ‘capital’ However capital is the accumulated theft from the workers over the generations capitalism has been in place. If ‘Capital’ was taken out of the equation, everything else needed to provide goods and services would still exist – land, labour, raw materials, machinery. As for enterprise, at the moment most people don’t have time to think never mind think of great new ways to improve everybody’s lives. But there are people out of work or in jobs where their productive powers are neglected. By organising – sharing out the work (and remember if more people are working more is produced) everybody has to do less work but does not suffer less “wages” as no profit is taken out by the capitalist, just tax which would go towards a social fund for further improving the means of production and social necessities like health education and transport. The result more people have time to participate in the running of society, and as the ‘dividend’ is an improved quality of life, everyone has an incentive. As for wages, well the more work you do the more you get paid, simple eh? But no capitalist means more can be spent on wages and still have more for the social fund. Any Keynesian model or attempt at making Capitalism fairer will result in the capitalist absconding to another country with more favourable taxation regulations, that is why capitalism as a system must be ended, not just reformed.
Competition and incentive
Competition under capitalism is a race to the bottom. Who can produce the cheapest? i.e. who can drive down pay and conditions best? Who can produce a product using the cheapest shoddiest raw materials they can get away with? Who can force their workforce to botch this job by making them do it in half the time it should take? Who can drive all the small businesses to bankruptcy thus obtaining a monopoly and charging what they want for a sub standard product? Where monopolies don’t appear as a result of competition it is only because a small number of large corporations call a truce and operate a virtual cartel by fixing prices between them. If you work for a multinational corporation and you come up with a new way of making computers faster your innovation belongs to the corporation not you. Where is the motivation there? The end product will be that the principal shareholders of the company make massive profits while you at best will get a miniscule (in terms of the real value of your work) rise. If you innovate under Socialism and this innovation benefits society, you will see a real raise in your living standards and you will have the satisfaction of getting the praise of your peers for raising their living standards too.
After the revolution in Russia when there was still elements of Workers’ Democracy, the Soviets (workers’ councils) organised Communist Saturdays. People were asked to voluntarily give up a few hours to help rebuild the country’s infrastructure that had been destroyed during the war. Guess what, people did it because they had a sense of ownership of their republic.
Competition between capitalists of two or more nations for the cheapest raw materials they can get their hands on and for the domination of this or that market leads of course to war. Competition under Socialism is the opposite. People with a genuine talent for invention will strive to create the very best product possible because only the very best will be chosen by the democratic will of the people. As I said before, the incentive for the majority under Capitalism is to starve or not to starve, to be destitute or not to be destitute. People are pitted against each other in a bitter struggle to survive. Who can work for the least wages, who can put one over on his brother or sister? Under Socialism the incentive is for the community to work together to better themselves collectively. It is a genuine opportunity to better yourself. Under capitalism bettering yourself can be as crass as having one more car than your neighbour. Under Socialism bettering yourself means unbending your back and joining the human race, appreciating and enjoying the finer aspects of civilisation and having the time to do so. In the present only the minority, the oligarchy can do this, yet their pitting of man against man somehow makes them inhuman still. As for the crap work, well there is no need for anyone to work full time at those jobs. Their are many alternatives to the current system where this is necessary. For example, under Socialism it may be only necessary for people to do three or four hours of productive labour. Everyone then be a janitor for an hour and a bureaucrat for an hour. Or perhaps at the age of 18 people could spend one year doing the cr@p work. Even so, it is possible with the technology available in society to automate a great deal of this. I’ve worked as a cleaner and as a kitchen porter, its sh1tty work, but it wouldn’t kill anyone to have to do it for a couple of hours a day for one year. The main effect of Workers’ Democracy will be that the aims of the economy will be to provide for the wants and needs of everyone rather than a profit for a tiny minority. Technology will be used to raise the productivity of labour. The boom bust cycle that is endemic of Capitalism will be ended. Because the workers can never afford to buy back the full product of their labour under capitalism, there will always be crisis of overproduction. That we have huge surpluses of goods and at the same time people starving and homeless in the world shows what a sick and illogical system we live under.
Would people choose Socialism?
If there is any one word to describe human nature then that word is change. If human nature wasn’t adaptable to new situations then evolution as a theory would be kaput. Plus its not as if when revolutionary situations arise people are sitting down with a piece of paper with one saying Capitalism and one saying Socialism and you have to tick one or the other. Revolutionary situations arise when class antagonisms are at their highest I.E. when the interests of the main contending classes are so starkly shown to be incompatible that people revolt. This sounds like science fiction to someone who is only used to looking at the world around them and assuming things are always the same but if you take the long view of history you will see that this is the norm. Each society was a product of the class that was dominant in it and was made in its likeness. When a new class came on the scene and became economically dominant it would co-exist for a while under the leadership of the old ruling class until such a time as that class was an impediment on its further development. This is what happened in Europe with the rise of Capitalism. The Bourgeoisie for a time supported feudal and semi-feudal monarchy’s because they were granted certain concessions and were able to live reasonably comfortable lives. However when the feudal structure impeded the development of Capitalism, the new mode of production needed to break free of its political fetters. For the last century the Working class has been economically the most powerful class in society. When it withdraws its labour Society stops and there is nothing the capitalists can do about it. At times enough concessions were given from above to the workers’ movement to allow the development of reformism, workers’ parties who based themselves on making sure the working class were well looked after under Capitalism. In doing this they supported the system. In the period between the end of WW2 and the oil crisis of the early 70’s this seemed natural – economically and culturally this period resembled a working class version of the bourgeois renaissance that happened in the 15th Century. However since the 1970’s living standards on a world scale have been in decline as growth has slowed. Yes, booms still happen but they are miniscule compared to the long boom between 1948 and 1973 (Possible because of the impetuous given to the economy by the need to rebuild Europe after the war and the late arrival of the US as a major power able to extend credit to old powers in Europe. The fall of the Soviet Union gave world Capitalism some respite from the class confrontations that were growing in the 70’s and 80’s but now relations are normalising. The downside for the working class is that all their old political and industrial organisations have either collapsed or sold out in the period where it seemed to many (not Marxists though) that the end of the cold war meant game over for the class struggle. There is therefore a desperate need for the class which is only slowly groping in the dark to regain its consciousness of itself as a class. The next step is to reclaim the unions from the bureaucratic clique who control them and to build new mass workers’ parties. Paris in 1871, Russia in 1905 and 1917, Germany and Hungary and Limerick!!! in 1918 and 1919, Britain in 1926, Barcelona 1936, Hungary in 1956, France in 1968, Chile in 1973, Argentina in 2000, Bolivia in 2003 and 2005 and Venezuela on an ongoing basis are example of when workers’ spontaneously moved to set up a parallel government to run society in the form of democratic workers’ committees. In 1917 in Russia they had a revolutionary party at their head with the correct perspectives which was why the October Revolution succeeded where others failed. Anyone interested in the subject should read John Reed’s 10 days that shook the world or Victor Serge’s account of the Russian Revolution. There’s also France 1968: Month of Revolution by Clare Doyle. As a modern European example the May Revolution in France in 1968 is especially relevant to us here in Ireland. Unfortunately the Russian Revolution was isolated in a very backward country. If the German revolution succeeded things could have been very different. As long as Capitalism exists the boom and bust cycle will rule people’s lives and class confrontation will inevitably happen. Opportunities for workers’ democracy will arise again and it is essential that the class has a Party with the right perspectives at its head.
Yo.
So if the benefits of socialism are so self evident why don’t we have quality turning to quantity right now?
I think the reasons why people should socialism are alot more complex than described in this article.
In Russia, there weren’t very many other mediums of human contact other than the paper and work, these days society is alot more fractured and people don’t like to think of themselves in class terms. In fact, they’ll do anything but that, so where or rather how are you going to engender that spirit of comradeship amongst people who pride themselves on believing they are individual and oh so special. It’s a hard sell to tell them that their lives are essentially determined when they feel they can reach for the stars.
Also, I think the reference to large migration from Eastern Europe to Ireland in the context of this article is a bit spurious.
Poles who are in Ireland are sending money by the coachload back to the homeland, did you see Future Shock: Irish Property Crash last Monday night, the interviews with the Polish builders were quite revealing. They’ve come here for earning power and are absconding with the funds much like the capitalist overlords back to a country where they can make more hay with the funds. It’s not because of mafioso overlords, that they’re here!
Maybe I wasn’t very clear on the reason Eastern European’s are coming over here. I understand why you would take the meaning you did but I actually meant it was because of economic factors.
Obviously the article is not all encompassing, as I said its a collection of stuff I posted elsewhere and as such its an answer to specific questions that I usually come up against. An FAQ if you will.
“these days society is alot more fractured and people don’t like to think of themselves in class terms. In fact, they’ll do anything but that, so where or rather how are you going to engender that spirit of comradeship amongst people who pride themselves on believing they are individual and oh so special”
You make a crucial mistake here in imagining that people before always thought of themselves in class terms. The fractured society arguement has been around for a long time. In France in the 60’s, workers were supposed to have been “bourgeoisfied” by the benefits of the post war economic upswing ie. better living standards, extra wealth to spend on consumer goods etc. Yet that didn’t stop the revolution in that country in 1968 taking place – the closest workers in Western Europe came to taking power ince the revolutionary wave that swepth the continent at the end of the first world war.
What people like to think of themselves as or don’t is irrelivent in the long term. The birth of the Workers’ movement in Britain was a slow process because of that peculiar British obsession with loyalty to the aristocracy. Workers in general saw their place in society as “their station” (read Robert Tressels The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists for a dramatisation of what it was like being a Socialist in Britain at the turn of the 20th century) and in the main swore alliegance to either the tories or the liberals. The cold hand of history however has no time to pussyfoot around people’s delusions of grandeur and when it hits people in the face, they have no option but to face up to reality. I feel I dealt with this to an extent in the section “would people choose Socialism?”
Of course, fractured society is an age old argument and I’ll accept that but that doesn’t mean there are more concrete bases for it’s application today. I think there are, I think society is increasingly atomised and disenfranchised, there is no solidarity between neighbour or worker.
As for France, there was no revolution in 1968 as far as I’m aware.
There was a general strike but it didn’t translate into anything more than that because there was not enough to bind the divergent interests of the students, the workers and the Algerian anti-colonialists together.
The cold hand of history has destroyed something alright but maybe it’s not what you’d like to believe.
I thought with your Vendee background you would have a fair knowledge of what happened there in 1968. Events in the Vendee went beyond those in Paris. There was dual power and for a short time society was run by workers committees. Check out Clare Doyle’s pamphlet. It was as much of a revolution as the Paris Commune, more in fact. It was similar in its character to the German revolution of 1918.
“The cold hand of history has destroyed something alright but maybe it’s not what you’d like to believe.”
There have been ebbs and flows in class struggle for as long as it has existed. I’m not denying anywhere that class consciousness is at a low ebb right now but what I am saying is it won’t b long before Workers the world over will get kicked in the teeth by an economic downturn. In that scenario a rise in class consciousness, while not beeing inevitable, is more likely.
Well, my time in France is mainly spent in the Charente not the Vendee.
However, the time I’ve spent in Nantes, I’ve noticed and spoken to people more about seperatism for Brittany than the events of ‘68.
But that’s just my experience. My grandad was virulently anti-left and my grandmother is quote unquote anti-tout!
My granny’s an anarchist of sorts.
[...] It is time to stand up and be counted. Only through the majority of people becoming active in the struggle for a Socialist Society can we present solutions to the problems that hang over Europe at this time. It will be no cakewalk – Its the class struggle, not the class picninc – but it can be done. The working class has had power in the palm of its hands many times over the last hundred and fifty years, it will happen again. A Socialist Europe is Possible! [...]
Another Europe is Possible! « In the grip of hysteria said this on June 11, 2008 at 9:41 pm
I don’t get you people.
A person needs to provide for their family.
They figure out a good way to do it.
They start a business by themselves.
Then they need help
They arrange a payment schedule that people agree to and they have a team.
Everyone works hard and makes a living.
Sure. the owner can make a TON of money to provide for their family. but they didnt STEAL it. THey worked hard for it and all money was made through transactions that both sides agreed to.
Socialism and Communism say. SHUT UP. SIt DOwn and give me your money so WE can decide how to spend it.
SO fuck you
[...] Originally Posted by Red Boyneside Are we going around in circles here? Socialism is the opposite of statism. The problem is most people including most of the people on this thread don’t know what Socialism is. Try to keep up… Socialism is de facto statism, it is impossible for socialism to exist without the use of force by the state. Why should anyone work except under duration if the wealth the create is simply taken from them and given to another. I read your "collection" of thoughts and it’s short on details. You say when workers take power there will be a workers democracy instead of a capitalist democracy. What is a "workers democracy" and how does it differ from a "capitalist democracy"? Is democracy not majority rules? Is that not what we currently live under? You say capital is accumulated theft from workers over generations of capitalism but what of the savings of a worker who then starts a business? Did he rob the capital from himself over generations? And your argument for why people would choose socialism is that human nature would change. And one of the conditions for socialism to exist is that it must be worldwide i.e. everywhere must become socialist for it to exist. So essentially, for socialism to exist "real" socialism, not what has happened in ever other attempt(what you might call "practical" socialism), reality has to be suspended. Essentially your rebuttal is to point to your article full of generalities, miss-truths, misunderstandings, blatant contradictions, falsities and so on. For those who haven’t read it here, Socialism or Barbarism In the grip of hysteria [...]
Are we reverting to Socialism again? - Page 21 - Politics.ie said this on March 7, 2009 at 2:19 pm