Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Fair Warning
This course is an experiment. There are no social conventions to define the content of the course. Unavoidably, in many cases, you are going to get my ideas, for whatever they are worth. Im not sure how much confidence I have in some of them! I am not qualified as a philosopher, political theorist or historian, but will have to digress on all these fields.
In any experiment, things can go wrong.
Democracy 1
As a minimum Democratic Socialist would demand a political system that incorporates the democratic liberties:
Freedom of speech, advocacy, assembly and petition Openly contested elections Freedom of organization, including the freedom to organize political parties to contest elections.
Democracy 2
In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Schumpeter considers two interpretations of democracy: Popular sovereignty, that is, that the government should enact the will of the people Competitive leadership, that is, the leader is determined by competition for the free vote of the population. Schumpeter rejects the first of these. He makes several criticisms. The one that bites is: the general will, if it exists at all, might be best enacted by an autocrat. The formation of government by political competition does at least explain the importance and function of democratic liberty.
Democracy 3
Under the influence of anarchism (specifically Wolff, R. P, 1970, In Defense of Anarchism, New York: Harper) I would prefer a higher standard and would define democracy as follows: In a democratic system, any person who holds a position of authority is responsible to those over whom the authority is exercised. (Wolff goes much further). By this standard capitalism can never be democratic. Neither could centralized state-socialism. But I wont insist on doing things my way.
Democracy 4
Marx-Leninists reject democratic liberty as bourgeois liberty on the following reasoning:
Marx says that all political organization serves class interest. If the capitalist class has been done away with, the government is the instrument of working-class interest, regardless of liberties. If some vestiges of the bourgeoisie remain, then the government needs all the power it can obtain to advance working-class interests and repress the bourgeoisie.
Socialist Roots
W. A Lewis was a Nobel laureate economist (1979) and a Fabian socialist. In 1949 he wrote that British socialism had two aims: democracy and a classless society. He added that government ownership is a means to those ends, and not in itself socialist. He traced these ideas to Robert Owen, among others.
Class Societies
In ancient societies, the major classes are the payers and recipients of tribute. The early Islamic Caliphate provides a very refined instance of this. The Arab conquerors built new cities (Basra, Kufa, e.g.) where Arab soldiers lived on salaries derived from tribute. Other classes -- merchants and rural landowners -existed but were minor. In Feudalism, the main classes were landlords and peasants.
Other Classes
1. Those who own wealth enough to operate a business, so that they have to work but not for wages or a salary, are not part of the working class. They are what a Marxist would call petit bourgeois. Some may be no better off than workers, and there can be a lot of mobility from this class in both directions. 2. Those who inherit wealth enough to live without working, the trust fund class, approximate Veblens leisure class. 3. Those with wealth enough to control corporations (and buy congressmen) are the grand bourgeoisie -what I call the billionaire class.
Strata
The three groups have interests that are somewhat aligned, and may be thought of as different strata of the same capitalist class. However, differences among them can be important, and their interests are not wholly aligned. Interests of the grand bourgeoisie tend to be national and international, while those of the petit bourgeoisie tend to be local. These conflicts are the major differences between the two parties in the USA. In that sense, the capitalist class as a whole can be thought of as the ruling class.
Classless Societies
Can we even conceive of a classless society? Jeffersonian democracy -- a society of freehold farmers -- would be classless. But that is inconsistent with modern production. In state socialism, everybody would (in principle) be a public employee. Thus, no class divisions. In a system of worker cooperatives, as envisioned by Mill, everybody earns their income as a member of a worker cooperative. Thus, again, no classes.
State Socialism
While state socialism is in principle classless, it is unstable because it is hierarchical. The technostructure of planners and managers becomes a group distinct from the workers, living off their surplus. Whether or not this is a new class, it sets the stage (as in the Soviet Union) for the return to capitalism, since they can extract the surplus more effectively as capitalist oligarchs.
Nationalization
Many mid-twentieth century democratic socialists saw selective nationalization as a path to state-socialism. As Busky points out, this, too, proved unstable - and was reversed by privatization, decisions taken by democratic governments with labor parties in the parliament. Have the workers any stake in nationalization or state-socialism? No direct stake, anyway -although perhaps the technostructure do.
Cooperative Socialism
In a cooperative socialist system, some of the cooperatives will be very large indeed -unavoidably -- and managers will be specialists. However, as they are responsible to the people they manage, it is at least possible that the hierarchy will be much more limited. Thus cooperative socialism remains a hope for a classless society.
Back to Lewis
Writing in the 1940s, Lewis criticized selective nationalization of industries as essentially a new form of exploitation of labor. He agreed with many economists at that time that corporations dont maximize profits anyway. His program was for the government to run an annual surplus, retire the national debt, and begin to buy up shares in the corporations. Thus, eventually, the corporations would become public property, although they would continue to be under decentralized and (more or less) interested management.
But few socialists of 2007, if any, would regard corporations as progressive organizations. Indeed, the crisis of 2009 was, to a considerable extent, a crisis of corporations.
Robert Owen
1771-1858 Born in Newtown, North Wales, the son of a saddler. An entrepreneur at 19 and one of the all-time great business managers! Known as a utopian socialist.
New Lanark
Owen managed innovative spinning mills for Peter Drinkwater and David Dale, whose daughter he married. In 1813, he purchased the Dale mill at New Lanark, and reorganized it as a utopian community. He was an environmentalist, and hoped to provide an ideal environment to form good character among the workers of New Lanark, and their children. Among his first steps were to eliminate child labor and start a school.
Owens Evolution
Owen had evolved from a paternalistic utopian to a labor leader and reformer, if not quite revolutionary. He did, however, support one later attempt to form a colony in Britain. Owens freethinking religious views were often violently opposed, and some of his socialist followers were prosecuted for blasphemy. Last year, the 150th anniversary of his death was celebrated at his birthplace in North Wales. For more information, contact the cooperative there.
Francis-Marie-Charles Fourier, 1772-1837 Advocated planned communities with common ownership and production.
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, 1760-1825 Really more technocratic than socialist.
A Utopian Communist
Etienne Cabet, 1788-1856 Political activist, 1830-39 (exiled in Britain) Wrote Voyage en Icarie, 1840 An environmentalist, he thought that a communist dictatorship would be necessary to establish a noncompetitive society and transform human nature. Influenced the insurrectionist August Blanqui, and through him, Lenin.
Colonies
Followers of Fourier and Cabet formed colonies after their principles, mostly (only?) in the United States. Fourierist Phalangeries were founded in New Jersey, Texas, and several middle western states. An Icarian colony, planned for Texas, took root in Iowa. Cabet was the first president, but defeated for reelection. Founded 1848-1852, it lasted in Iowa until August, 1886. (New York Times Archives).
Cooperative Movement 1
A cooperative is an enterprise operated by a membership organization. Control is based on membership, and profits are distributed among members. Membership is open to those who are part of the enterprise, not as owners, but
Employees, in a worker cooperative Customers, in a consumer cooperative or mutual financial organization Raw material supplier, in e.g. a farmer cooperative.
Cooperative Movement 2
Under the influence of Owen among others, cooperatives (especially worker cooperatives) were widely advocated in the 1820s. Among very influential figures was Dr. William King, 1786-1865, who was also active in education of working class children and adults. In 1844 28 working men gathered together to set up the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society and opened a co-op shop on Toad Lane in Rochdale. (Coop online). This consumers coop is considered the beginning of the international cooperative movement.
France
In France, cooperatives were organized and advocated as The Republic in the Workshop. Important figures were Philippe Buchez and Louis Blanc, who advocated government aid to the formation of (more or less)
cooperative workshops. Louis Blanc
Cooperative Movement 3
Over the subsequent 170 years, thousands of cooperatives, including worker cooperatives, have been formed, and the record of success is excellent. The international cooperative movement is affiliated with the United Nations and headquartered in Geneva. http://www.ica.coop/al-ica/ The slogan of the 150th anniversary celebration in 1990 was tried and proven.
Mills Socialism 1
The form of association, however, which if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief, and work-people without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.
Mills Socialism 2
[C]ooperation tends ... to increase the productiveness of labour, consists in the vast stimulus given to productive energies, by placing the labourers, as a mass, in a relation to their work which would make it their principle and their interest -- at present it is neither -- to do the utmost, instead of the least possible, in exchange for their remuneration. I agree, then with the Socialist writers in their conception of the form which industrial operations tend to assume in the advance of improvement; and I entirely share their opinion that the time is ripe for commencing this transformation,
Mills Socialism 3
But while I agree and sympathize with Socialists in this practical portion of their aims, I utterly dissent from the most conspicuous and vehement part of their teaching, their declamations against competition. they have in general very confused and erroneous notions of [the] actual working [of society]; and one of their greatest errors, as I conceive, is to charge upon competition all the economical evils which at present exist. They forget that wherever competition is not, monopoly is; and that monopoly, in all its forms, is the taxation of the industrious for the support of indolence, if not of plunder.
Karl Marx
1818-1883 Born Trier, German Rhineland His father, originally Jewish, converted to Christianity PhD, 1841, Jena, on Greek materialist philosophy Not being able to find an academic job, he turned to journalism for a living.
Revolution
In Western Europe, from 1789 to 1871, there was no continuous, peaceful politics. The only political events that mattered were revolutions and coups detat. The French Revolution of 1789 was followed by a series of coups detat, culminating in Napoleons. 1830 was a year of revolution throughout western Europe. So was 1848. In France, this was followed by a coup detat by yet another Napoleon. This was the political milieu Marx had experienced and that seemed inevitable to him. The Communist Manifesto was written in the context of the 1848 revolutions.
Ideology
In the mid 1840s, Marx and Engels wrote The German Ideology, a critique of the young Hegelians. The Young-Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly world-shattering statements, are the staunchest conservatives. Point being that their critical philosophy, though very radical in its attack on older ideas, is in the interest of the dominant class -- thats what ideology does. That doesnt mean ideology is simply wrong. If it is to do its job, an ideology needs to have enough truth to be persuasive. This book is an early statement of Marx theory of history and argues that ideas arise from material conditions of production.
Manifesto Summary
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
Second International
The IWA, always divided, disbanded 1876. A new International was founded 1889, an association of (largely Marxist) workers socialist parties. There was a tendency away from revolutionary politics and toward evolutionary socialism (Eduard Bernstein)
Eduard Berstein
Bolsheviks
An exception was Russia, where any opposition continued to be repressed by a police state that presaged 20th century totalitarianism. Nicolai Lenin (Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov) advocated a small party of professional revolutionaries and led his followers out of the Second International. The Second International broke up during World War I.
Lenin
Russian Revolution 1
The success of the Bolsheviks in seizing power and establishing a dictatorship of the proletariate led to a permanent division among socialists. From this time, it is necessary to distinguish Democratic Socialists as socialists who reject the Dictatorship of the Proletariate.
Russian Revolution 2
Following the Russian Revolution, Communist Parties were formed in many countries, generally by former socialists. (Two were formed in the US, but soon merged.) Democratic Socialists were further divided as some (e.g. SPUSA) refused to work with Communists while others -- under pressure from Fascism, or seeking unity for working-class movements -- entered into popular front organizations. As Fascism advanced -- and democratic western governments would not assist those who opposed it in Europe -- these popular fronts were more and more dominated by the Soviet Union.
Intellectual Controversy
With socialism understood as centralized state control of the economy, Austrian economists argued that a rational socialist system would be impossible. Socialist economists responded by proposing that a socialist society could use markets in the allocation of resources-- combining public ownership with decentralized management instructed to maximize profits. This is the origin of market socialism.
Twentieth Century
During the twentieth century, especially after the defeat of fascism, social-democratic and labor parties often played parts in parliamentary governments, often as the leading party. Socialist measures -- such as selective nationalization of important industries and the creation of a social safety net -- were adopted. As Lewis notes, these did not transform capitalism to a classless society, and many were reversed by later conservative governments. Some -- including universal health care, social security, and codetermination in Germany and elsewhere -- do not seem likely to be reversed.
Twenty-First Century
Democratic Socialists have learned a great deal from the twentieth century, and done some good, but have not created a classless society. The way to this objective seems, if anything, less clear rather than more.