Absolutely central to Anthony Giddens’ view of the world is that There Is No Alternative, and in this he expresses the dominant view in the post-1989 world.
Do we agree? If there is no alternative to capitalism, then shouldn’t we stop criticising Giddens for saying so and either drop out of politics or join others trying to regulate capitalism or supporting other liberal projects of improving life under capitalism.
If we don’t agree, then what is the alternative (apart from a collapse of civilisation and regression to a pre-capitalist formation)?
TINA is dominant in this period because of the collapse of “state socialism”, or whatever you want to call it. If we believe that a better world can be brought about by a strong state, enjoying popular support and, either managing a “socialist market” ŕ la Gorbachev, or implementing a bureaucratically managed “planned economy”, then that is a valid enough position.
However, in my humble opinion, to counterpose to modern capitalism, a return to either model of state regulation can be justified only by acceptance of such a condition as a transitory and unstable condition through which we would want to pass as rapidly as possible, or by joining the ferals who aspire to the simplicity of village life, but with a rather eccentric predilection for the bureaucratic police-state.
Let us take these proposals seriously for a moment though.
Firstly, the vision of market socialism — the question needs to be asked: is it possible, today or in some future time, to maintain a world government, or system of nation-states, which could manage a market economy in such a way as to either suppress the accumulation of capital or, given continued capital accumulation, resist domination by big capital or a return to capitalism? And is such a project possible without thoroughgoing political repression? And is there any reason to suppose that life under such a regime would be better than what we have now? In my own view the answers to these questions is negative.
Secondly, the vision of state socialism — a world in which production is planned and regulated on a world scale by a state which outlaws the accumulation of capital, wage-labour, financial markets and so on: in what way would such a situation differ from that which pertained in the Eastern Europe and China and so on, except for the absence of imperialism beyond its borders? Is such a situation possible? Would it not be the height of utopianism to suppose that a world-wide soviet system could succeed today where it failed last century?
Now, both these perspectives are legitimate, and moreover they are perspectives which are still embraced by millions of people. Personally, I would rather drop out of politics and find fulfilment in some other vocation, than to lend my life to the construction of a new, bureaucratic state-form — unless it were as part of a deeper historical project that really could lead to a genuinely human world!
Probably the most significant variant of Utopian socialism, and the variant which was predominant in the capitalist world for much of the 20th century, was that of “really existing socialism”. I don’t doubt at all that the conviction that over there, in the Soviet Union, there was a workers’ paradise, and the belief in the actual existence of this workers’ paradise, contributed hugely to sustenance of the socialist ideal. The Utopia of really existing socialism supplanted the vision of socialism of classical social democracy and doctrinaire socialism.
I have a copy of Frank Hardy’s 1952 “Journey into the Future” describing his visit to the Soviet Union. The words of Lincoln Steffer “I have seen the future and it works” are printed after the title page, and Hardy goes on to report such gems as that workers never go on strike in the USSR because they have no need to, and so on.
One can understand the hysterical reaction of those who held this illusion to the Trotskyists who kept on trying to shatter it. In fact, the Trotskyists always harboured a variant of the same myth themselves. I believe that up till the War, there was a real possibility of a “political revolution” in the Soviet Union, and the post-War period in Europe offered a real possibility for workers’ revolution, but I think, in hindsight, by the late-1950s the prospect of a renewal of socialism from within the Stalinist bloc had ended.
Is it any wonder that the definitive collapse of really existing socialism has had a devastating impact on the socialist movement across the world?
Granted none of us will live to see Socialism, and like millions before us we will probably die without seeing that really better world we long and struggle for. I don’t really think that any genuine working class fighter fought only because she believed that she would see “Socialism in Our Time”. Something better, Yes, but if needs be we are all prepared to endure even worse privations if necessary. Why? I mean that seriously: why?
OK, we can understand why workers join and build unions — for the same reason that doctors join the AMA and capitalists take over other capitalists. Without for a moment diminishing the importance of workers’ economic struggle for the socialist project — socialism does not come about through collective self-interest, but rather through self-sacrifice! The workers who first built the trade unions in the 19th century, and emblazoned on their banners words like “Peace, Education, Solidarity” and so on, just like the workplace activists of today, did so out dedication to the workers’ cause, solidarity and vision of something better, not just to get themselves a wage rise.
The same is true of any social struggle of historic dimensions. A woman who joined the feminist movement in the 1970s could probably look back now and say that it was all worthwhile, that the improvements in her own life have justified the anger, the struggle, the agitation, the broken relationships, victimisation and humiliation that she may have endured. But I don’t believe she could say that she could have done it without a vision of a world in which women were free from sexist discrimination and violence. Even if it was more a case of her simply finding sexist abuse no longer tolerable, the question still arises as to why age-old oppression becomes at a certain point intolerable. The balance sheet of her life, if it were to have positive bottom-line, would have to include a considerable “spiritual” element — the impossibility of bowing to male domination and the joy of witnessing gains made in the struggle.
Is it possible to understand why masses struggle just on the basis of urgent material need? Could any long strike be sustained solely on the calculation that the prospective wage-rise would more than compensate for the sacrifices made? Is it not essential that those who struggle believe that they are on the side of right, or at the very least that their opponent deserves defeat?
Isn’t it undeniable that every truly significant social struggle is sustained by a spiritual component which is every bit as essential as cold calculation of what is to be gained and what can be lost?
This is just as true, of course, of Augustus’ conquest of Rome, the Conquistador’s pillaging of South America, the Nazi coup d'état and Pol Pot’s killing fields, as it is of the Russian Revolution and the Civil Rights Movement.
The vision of a socialist Utopia was around long before Marx and continues to this day, although today it exists only by a thread. We all know that Marx founded “scientific socialism” in order to replace “Utopian socialism”, but as a matter of fact, he had some pretty complimentary things to say about Owen, Fourier and Co. in the process.
We all know that for Marx the foundation of socialism was not the counterposing to the real of an imaginary Utopia, but rather a critique of existing social conditions. This is the great contribution that Marx made to the world and we would abandon it at our peril.
But let us not forget that the socialist ideal was not sucked out of someone’s thumb, but has a history as old as capitalism and is a fire which has burned in the hearts of workers since the Diggers of seventeenth century England.
If I could use the word “Messianism” to indicate that kind of consciousness and social movement which simply and directly counterposes a revealed truth to the actually existing social conditions, and seeks by force to make society conform to this vision, then we must agree that this kind of movement is extremely dangerous. Such visions include Hitler’s vision of a racially pure German Reich, Pol Pot’s vision of a one-class peasant state, the Muslim fundamentalists’ vision of a world governed by the Holy Koran, and so on. “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions” as the saying goes.
But we can estimate such Messianic movements and the ideals which motive them only by the historical role of the movement in its given social context, not by the reality or non-reality of the ideal as such. “Last night I had a dream! ...” said Martin Luther King.
It was the enduring contribution of Hegel to show how ideals grow out of the activity of people as it develops in a given society. In his Science of Logic, Hegel traced the “logic” of the pre-conscious gestation, contradictory genesis and eventual concretisation of social principles, in an idealised form which made it look like history was the work of an extramundane Absolute Idea, rather than the idea being a product of human activity. Nevertheless, his work is of enduring value and social theory and philosophy has ever since lived in his shadow.
Can I just draw out some observations which I believe retain their significance.
Any idea that does not have any basis in the day-to-day relations and activity of people must remain an abstraction. This is the fate of “Utopia”.
Nevertheless, world-changing principles do not come on to the scene ready-made, but invariably go through a long and complex genesis (described in detail in Hegel’s Doctrine of Essence), in which ideals frequently travel under assumed names, engage in continual conflict and interchange of form and conflict and go through 180 degree changes in the course of their development.
The significance of this for revolutionaries is that it is absolutely essential to be extremely sensitive to changes in the social process, new social movements and their impact on the Zeitgeist, and above all to be willing to reformulate ideas in dramatically new ways. If we are motivated by the socialist ideal, then we have to be prepared to trace its genesis through ever so complex an evolution, to abandon long-held prejudices, beliefs and forms of organisation as new forms present themselves. It is by the method of critique of existing social conditions that we are able to find our way through this process.
At a certain point, a new principle comes on to the scene, it gets a name which is spoken publicly and understood, everything else begins to redefine itself in the light of the new principle and a process of concretisation begins which is the real business of overthrowing existing social conditions. We are not there yet, so far as the socialist ideal is concerned. We are living through that period when many different principles exist side-by-side in mutual contradiction, mutually penetrating one another and turning inside out.
To hang on to a fixed conception of the socialist ideal in such a period would be the height of folly — “Utopianism” — to abandon the search for such an ideal however would be just as foolhardy.
Interestingly, the Left sects of today are the first to explain to you why genuine socialism is a fantasy. Hardly surprising since their own activity and relations are so remote from socialist principles. We do not live in a period where socialist utopianism is a genuine danger. I should think that the majority of young anti-capitalist activists are blissfully ignorant of the socialist ideal in fact.
In the public meeting on “Couldn’t we live perfectly well without money?”, Albert Langer put it like this:
“I personally can’t imagine a future world that is organised on money. I mean even if you watch fairly mediocre science fiction programs like Star Trek, you can’t really imagine them going off to the commissariat to pay for their canteen supplies, or being paid for ‘going where no-one has gone before’. It just doesn’t make sense. How can you conceive of it?”
And Norman Geras quotes Terry Eagleton in much the same vein:
“Those with their heads truly in the sands or the clouds are the hard-nosed realists who behave as though chocolate chip cookies and the International Monetary Fund will be with us in another three thousand years time.”
History is going somewhere! Money is a relatively recent invention, and already the contradiction between the private ownership of the means of production and the socialised forces production which Marx points to is well advanced and unfolding rapidly.
The point is, how do we perceive the difference between the emancipatory dream of Martin Luther King which inspired millions and continues to be a significant social force, the revealed truth of the Socialist Equity Party which inspires absolutely no-one outside of their handful of brain-dead members, and the fundamentalist beliefs of the Algerian Islamic movement which is wreaking havoc in their country?
“Communism is the riddle of history solved” said Marx, and in this same passage of 1844, Marx sketches his first ideas about phases of development of communism. His conception of primitive communism has a resonance with experiences of the past century in state socialism, just as his program in the Manifesto, which speaks of state ownership and “despotic inroads into private property”, also seem to talk to the experiences of the 20th century.
Marx understood that communism is not a finished idea waiting for the time it can be put into practice, but rather a principle which develops through contradictory stages, only becoming a known and knowing thing at the conclusion of a long period of struggle.
The socialist ideal is simply the negation of private property, which is essential to critique of existing social conditions. We have to be able to imagine a world without money, if we are to criticise the bourgeois system, even if the immediate issue at hand is not the abolition of money.
“(1) ... This type of communism - since it negates the personality of man in every sphere - is but the logical expression of private property, which is this negation. ... The community is only a community of labour, and equality of wages paid out by communal capital - by the community as the universal capitalist. ... The first positive annulment of private property - crude communism - is thus merely a manifestation of the vileness of private property, which wants to set itself up as the positive community system.
“(2) Communism (a) still political in nature - democratic or despotic; (b) with the abolition of the state, yet still incomplete, and being still affected by private property, i.e., by the estrangement of man. In both forms communism already is aware of being reintegration or return of man to himself, the transcendence of human self-estrangement; but since it has not yet grasped the positive essence of private property, and just as little the human nature of need, it remains captive to it and infected by it. It has, indeed, grasped its concept, but not its essence.
“(3) Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being - a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man - the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.”
So the socialist ideal is the solving of a riddle, not a ready-made answer to existing problems. But this is not to relegate the socialist ideal to the status of an unknown quantity to be revealed at some future time; rather it is a continuous process, beginning from that vague vision of a better world known in the seventeenth century, through the various programs of reformist and revolutionary socialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The socialist ideal is the vision which sustains an ethic of resistance to oppression — everyone knows that a communist makes the best union delegate, even if they wouldn’t vote for a communist on election day in a pink fit! But the socialist ideal can only be a force against oppression if it finds sustenance in the struggle of the working class.
In his book Marx’s Ethic of Freedom, George Brenkert warns against an ethic which depends upon an ideal Utopia, which denies even what Norman Geras refers to as “some enduring human limitations such as could continue to blemish and unsettle even the best-placed social order”, which refuses to deal with pain, grief, animie, disease, sudden death and so on, because such things have no place in their utopia. I agree with him.
For example, to put forward in a political platform “open borders”, (and to place this alongside “self-determination for indigenous people”) because, after all, socialists are opposed to racism and nationalism and believe that we are all citizens of the world, and so on and so forth, is of course nothing but a pious abstention. Interestingly, the same people who put forward such Utopian slogans are among the first to belittle the socialist ideal and pontificate on “scientific socialism” and promote programs to strengthen the welfare state and the industrial judiciary, raise wages and shorten working hours and so on — slogans which make sense only within the context of defending the material interests of wage-slaves.
This kind of position is no better and no worse than that of certain Maoists and doctrinaire socialists that the trade unions and the economic struggle of workers generally is irrelevant to the struggle for socialism because, after all, under socialism wage-slavery will be abolished.
Thus, the socialist vision may function as means of escape from the complexities of the class struggle.
In the Transitional Program of 1938, we read:
“Classical Social Democracy, functioning in an epoch of progressive capitalism, divided its program into two parts independent of each other: the minimum program which limited itself to reforms within the framework of bourgeois society, and the maximum program which promised substitution of socialism for capitalism in the indefinite future. Between the minimum and the maximum program no bridge existed. And indeed Social Democracy has no need of such a bridge, since the word socialism is used only for holiday speechifying.”
It was Trotsky’s idea, an idea which has its basis in Lenin’s day, that revolutionaries have to introduce into the day-to-day struggle of workers ...
“a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.”
This is a great idea. It simply means that whenever conditions arise in the course of the spontaneous defensive struggles of the working class to formulate an aspect of socialism in such a way that it appears eminently reasonable and express the objectives of the struggle, then adoption of the demand brings to the forefront, both in practice and in the consciousness of the workers, the necessity of socialism and concretely what it means for their lives. Certainly, no opportunity to get a transitional demand on the road should be missed. Transitional demands amount to translation of the concept of socialism into terms which are immediately understandable in terms of the conditions and problems of the day.
However, it has always seemed to me that there is an irreducible element of deception in the idea of the transitional demand: politically conscious workers, including the Communists themselves, understand that the demand cannot be met other through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism — otherwise it wouldn’t be a transitional demand at all — and yet, what is desired is that the mass of workers shall embrace the demand as if it can be achieved without a revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the state, something for which the workers are not yet prepared — otherwise you wouldn’t need a transitional demand!
I believe this element of deception is incompatible with the socialist project. This means that revolutionaries who introduce an element of the socialist program into the day-to-day political and economic struggle must be absolutely open and clear about the incompatibility of capitalism with the complete achievement of the demand in question. Nevertheless, capitalism has shown a remarkable capacity to survive all sorts of in-roads into the sovereignty of private property and it would be a brave socialist indeed who would tell workers that this or that demand was unattainable under capitalism and should be abandoned!
I agree with Norman Geras when he says:
“We should be, without hesitation or embarrassment, utopians. At the end of the twentieth century it is the only acceptable political option, morally speaking. I shall not dwell on this. I will merely say that, irrespective of what may have seemed apt hitherto either inside or outside the Marxist tradition, nothing but a utopian goal will now suffice.”
There may be many different ways of understanding the significance of the Soviet experience and why it collapsed in 1989/91. Certainly it was the failure of the Revolution to conquer Europe and America rather than its success in Russia that is to blame for the horrors of Stalinism.
Nevertheless, it is actually unnecessary to consider the actual history of “state socialism”, let alone the non-history of “market socialism”, to see that such a vision (if it could be called a ‘vision') in no way answers the challenge of capital as it is developing in the US and Europe today.
Human life is in fact impossible without ideals. There is no such thing as a direct relation between person and person or of a person to Nature, that isn’t mediated by ideals. Ideals take the form of words and signs, objects and actions vested with meaning by social and historical experiences, and internalised in our social practice with them. Knowing and using these ideals is essential not only for political practice, but even for day-to-day existence.
Broadly speaking, we could categorise ideals into constitutive ideals and regulative ideals. Constitutive ideals help us orient towards the world as objects with meaning, and also allow us to constitute ourselves as part of social collectives, to know who we are. All the great social movements of the past two hundred years have created new constitutive ideals, definitions of us. Over the past century these definitions have simultaneously become more universal (equality now covers all human beings, not such property-owning males), and particular (race, gender, nationality, class, ...).
Regulative ideals tell us what we ought to do. Regulative ideals in form of a picture of the way the world could be, are important because they pass the test of generating moral norms and maxims which can be universalised: if everyone acted according to this ideal, then the world would look like this ....
However, one of the facts about the modern world is that not only have the constitutive ideals by means of which people organise their perception of the world and their relation to it, become more and more diverse, we all hold to different regulative ideals. In any political campaign, there is rarely any shared ideal defining what everyone is there for. The common objectives uniting participants in political campaigns are usually very limited and finite, in contrast to the great visions which animated the social and national liberation movements and great class struggles of the past.
The socialist ideal helps us know how we ought to behave, helps us distinguish right from wrong, and to understand the part we play in the larger historical narrative of which we are a part and motivate us. But different people are acting out different roles in different narratives. The challenge for socialists is, rather than relying just on a picture of a socialist ideal, to work this vision out in our relations with other people, irrespective of their ideals, and to work out, together with others fighting for emancipation, the norms and maxims of genuinely free, collaborative social action.