by Len Wallace
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The poet, painter, textile manufacturer, writer, leader of the Arts and Crafts movement and English socialist William Morris once stated that “the business of Socialists is to make Socialists”. Morris made a relevant point. I think that the Socialist Project can (and must) fulfil that function. In some ways we are “starting over”. Hopefully we will not repeat things as either tragedy or farce. The statement below is to that end.

SOCIALISM: CHALLENGING THE RIGHT BEYOND THE LEFT

It’s time to reset the parameters of political debate in Canada. For far too long discussion has been monopolised by the politics of the mundane – how and who will deliver either more or less of the same. It’s time for an explicitly Socialist politics in Canada that reveals the limits of capitalism  (the system of capital) and the political, social and economic boundaries that system imposes, and challenges its apologists of the Right as it goes beyond the politics of the Left.

A few years back I recall performing onstage at Windsor’s Labour Day parade and rally, singing labour songs as the marchers entered the park, banners flying high.  I sang that old anthem of working class liberation, The Internationale. After I had finished and began putting away my instrument I was approached by an audience member – “Your dream is dead! Socialism is dead!”, he taunted me. I asked him, “What Socialism are you talking about?”

Socialism has meant many things to many people. How one defines Socialism determines the politics of the matter. Ask someone what Socialism means and you get various responses – it means government control, state ownership, regulations, deficit spending, economic intervention by government, redistribution of income, progressive taxation. It’s the welfare state, the mixed economy, or totalitarianism. It’s title has been used to describe the so-called “real existing socialism” of stalinism1 or the  “We all believe in the free market now”  semi-demi-socialism of Ed Broadbent and “The Labour Party is the party of modern business” dishrag social democracy of Tony Blair.2

Some have concluded that the very meaning of Socialism has been lost and amongst certain Left circles it is quite unfashionable to even utter the dreaded ‘S’ word at all.  Oftimes, when someone does proclaim that he or she is “a Socialist”, they have difficulty defining what that actually means other than they are for good jobs, full employment, national health care, etc.  To say that Socialists are simply for “all the good things in life” is to say nothing. Socialism, in the end, is relegated to electing the right Members of Parliament and perhaps getting a good public auto insurance policy. The problem with such “Socialisms” is that they all leave capitalism in place.

In the past number of years there has been a great public and worldwide outcry against the direction of capitalism as a worldwide system (globalization) and has taken the form of active protest by millions. The nature of much of this protest has been termed “anti-capitalist”, but being anti-capitalist or anti-capital does not make an individual or movement consciously Socialist.

The present movement against the World Trade Organisation, International Monetary Fund, etc., while critical of capitalism’s bad effects, does not yet attack the very premises upon which capitalism is based. While the problems of capitalism are attacked, the root cause of the problem (capitalism itself) is left untouched.

UNDERSTANDING THE SYSTEM OF CAPITAL

Perhaps the best way to begin defining Socialism anew is to define what Capitalism is. Despite the opinion promoted by economists and political apologists (who Karl Marx called the “hired prize fighters of capitalism”), capitalism is not an eternal principle of humankind’s relations most in tune with human nature. It is an historical stage of human society, a specific mode of production.

Marx described capitalism as a society with the immense production of ‘commodities’ that are put on the market for exchange through selling and buying with a view to the realization of profit. Commodities are not ‘goods’ simply produced to meet human needs and social wants. They are only produced when the outcome is the creation of profit.

Capitalism is a system of capital creation and accumulation. Capital must not only be created, it must be necessarily accumulated and expanded (and unless accumulated to a great extent the system breaks down resulting in recession and economic crises).

The existence of capital presupposes two things – first, a working class which is divorced from, does not own the means of production. The only thing that workers really possess is their labour power, their ability to labour which they must sell for a wage or salary. Secondly, the existence of a class which owns or controls capital, which buys the labour power of the workers and uses it for the creation of surplus value, profit. Thus, capitalism is a class divided society. On the one hand those who own only their labour power, on the other hand those who own capital. On the one hand those who survive by selling their labour power, on the other hand those who gain their existence by living off the profit (surplus value) created by the other class.

The working class was essentially created. Peasants, serfs, farmers were driven off their lands, dispossessed of everything they owned, forced into the cities, forced to sell the only thing they had left – themselves, their ability to work. It was either that or starve. In essence, it was enforced wage slavery in which capitalists made use of the powers of the State (laws in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries were made to that end; the enclosures throughout England and Europe; the destruction of Scotland’s Highland clan system and the forced clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries; the forced dispossession and removal of the Irish peasantry; the imposition of an oppressive colonialist rule in what became known as the ‘Third World’; apartheid; the brutal industrialisation and collectivisation in the Soviet Union and China. The process continues to this day with the destruction of lands of indigenous peoples around the world). Marx was correct. Capitalism came into existence dripping with blood. It was a process of subordinating labour to the domination of capital at every level of life.3

The distinguishing feature of capitalism is not that capital/property is privately owned or that production is anarchic, that there is no planning. It is that labour is alienated, exploited. If the State, government intervenes into the system, it does not affect the fact that workers remain exploited. If the State nationalizes property and eliminates private capitalists the State itself becomes the single capitalist, its bureaucracy the de facto owners of capital. Capitalism as the ‘system of capital’ remains unchanged.

The producers (workers) do not produce ‘goods’ for themselves. They do not use their mental and physical abilities as the essential, creative part of their own nature as human beings. They simply produce to the dictates of capital and the need for capital accumulation. They are told what to produce, how to produce it, how fast and under what conditions. While various management methods sometimes allow workers decision-making input into production, that, in the end, can only be within the limits imposed by the need to accumulate. Labour, under capitalism, is a way in which workers garner ‘earnings’ to live another day to produce again. Life is what happens when they don’t work.

Long ago the essentially conservative Thomas Carlyle noted, “We have profoundly forgotten everywhere that cash payment is not the sole relation of human beings”. So pervasive and intrusive is the role of capital in everyday life that all things are now measured and judged in terms of price, money, profit. Culture, education, sex, music, art, the environment, health, even human life itself is measured by the standard of money and whether or not it is profitable (“Those who die with the most toys wins”).

The actual existence of capitalism as a ‘system of capital’ imposes limits to what that system can do. In the end, the system cannot work in a way that is detrimental to capital and all action within this system of capital (reforms, taxation, public works, health care, issues of the environment and ecology, etc.) are determined and restricted by the inevitable fact that capital must accumulate.

To the consternation of many the inevitable fact remains that capitalism and capital cannot act uncapitalistically and has defined the politics of the Right and the Left – the Right which holds to a belief in the complete benevolence of a non-existent, mystical "invisible hand" and the totalitarianism of the so-called “free” market, the Left which believes in the benevolence of state interventions to greater or lesser degrees hoping for respite only to find that the logic of capital again reasserts itself.

The politics within capitalism is then a series of trade-offs for those who define themselves as part of the political Left. Environmentalists are limited to what industry must maintain as a healthy profit margin. Jobs versus environment becomes an issue. Health care workers see public funds frozen, diverted or cut back because the State “just doesn’t have the money”. The same said for education, child care, scientific research, artistic development, unemployment assistance, etc. Trade unionists end up as supporters of multinationals to maintain jobs against workers in other countries. Unemployed workers fight for jobs against hired workers. Activism reproduces itself as a non-ending activism (i.e., the endless fight for higher wages, better work conditions, societal reforms) in a system that simply cannot deliver.

Capital not only limits what one can do it also divides people against each other in an acknowledged ‘Rat Race’ that lays the foundation for the politics of despair, racism, sexism, ethnic division as people compete for the crumbs offered (from the television game shows of ‘Survivor’ to the latest war).

DEFINING SOCIALISM

By understanding capitalism and how it works, we come to a clearer understanding of what Socialism should mean. If Socialist politics means radical break from capitalism, then all the premises of capitalism (production for profit, buying and selling of commodities, etc.,) must be fundamentally challenged.

Production to the dictates and needs of capital must be replaced by a system of production controlled by society and based on the satisfaction of real human need. As the French Situationists of the sixties noted, capitalism is a society not geared to the satisfaction of needs but “directly geared to the fabrication of habits, and manipulates people by forcing them to repress their desires.” What is produced, how it is produced must be determined by society, not by capital.

Since the very existence of capital implies economic exploitation of a working class then capital itself has to be abolished. Property (the means of producing and distributing) is not to be statified or nationalized. It is to be taken over by the community, the collective, by democratic control of society as a whole. The very real and observable antagonistic relationship between capital and labour can only be overcome by the abolition of capital (and thus the abolition of waged labour).

SOCIALISM AS PRACTICAL POLITICS

One of the criticisms hurled at Socialists is that we are starry-eyed, utopian dreamers, not involved in the fine art of ‘practical politics’.  The answer to this is that those who defend and work through the system of capitalism and expect a society fit for human beings are the ones who are the utopians. Their ‘practicality’ cannot go beyond the limits of capital. Their proposed solutions to very real problems from joblessness to AIDS, from hunger to environmental destruction, are bound up with this inevitable limit. In the end, a society in which people’s needs are met and the possibility of a full, creative life is simply impractical under capitalism. The politics of its ‘shamocracy’ becomes a game of the absurd where corporate millionaires become Prime Ministers and Presidents.

The goal of a society where the individual as part of the collective is able to determine production and meet his or her needs – what we call Socialism – is desirable, necessary and achievable. It is in every way ‘practical’, not a utopia conjured from out of the sky and imposed upon society. The knowledge of what capitalism is, how it works and its movement already suggests the solution Socialism offers.

Notes

1 The term “real existing socialism” became the defensive catchword of Soviet ideologists in response to Marxist criticisms in the 1960s which saw in that system a real existing state capitalism.

2 A much forgotten part of Ed Broadbent’s speech made in Windsor at a dinner celebration given in honour of his retirement from federal NDP leadership and comments made by England’s Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair to the Labour women’s conference, April 1, 1995. I would add to this list the example of former Ontario NDP Premier Bob Rae whose nonsensical ‘supply side socialism’ which was supposedly based on ‘love’ found its practice in the imposed wage controls of the so-called ‘social contract’ legislation.

3 Istvan Meszaros’ brilliantly analyzes this in his major work, Beyond Capital, (Merlin Press, 1995).