Socialism and Struggle: Selected Works

History of socialism

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It must not be assumed that the new system can be completely consolidated the moment it is established, for that is impossible. It has to be consolidated step by step. To achieve its ultimate consolidation, it is necessary not only to bring about the socialist industrialization of the country and persevere in the socialist revolution on the economic front, but also to carry on constant and arduous socialist revolutionary struggles and socialist education on the political and ideological fronts.

Socialism in One Country

Moreover, various complementary international conditions are required. In China the struggle to consolidate the socialist system, the struggle to decide whether socialism or capitalism will prevail, will still take a long historical period. But we should all realize that the new system of socialism will unquestionably be consolidated.

We can assuredly build a socialist state with modern industry, modern agriculture, and modern science and culture. The number of intellectuals who are hostile to our state is very small. They do not like our state, i. Whenever there is an opportunity, they will stir up trouble and attempt to overthrow the Communist Party and restore the old China. As between the proletarian and the bourgeois roads, as between the socialist and the capitalist roads, they stubbornly choose to follow the latter. In fact this road is impossible, and in fact, therefore, they are ready to capitulate to imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism.

Such persons are found in political circles and in industrial and commercial, cultural and educational, scientific and technological and religious circles, and they are extremely reactionary. The serious problem is the education of the peasantry. The peasant economy is scattered, and the socialization of agriculture, judging by the Soviet Union's experience, will require a long time and painstaking work. Without socialization of agriculture, there can be no complete, consolidated socialism.

We must have faith, first, that the peasant masses are willing to take the road of socialism step by step under the leadership of the Party and, second, that the Party is capable of leading the peasants onto this road. These two points are the essence of the matter, the main current. The leading bodies in co-operatives must establish the dominant position of the poor peasants and the new lower middle peasants in these bodies, with the old lower middle peasants and the upper middle peasants--whether old or new--as the supplementary force. Only thus can unity between the poor and middle peasants be attained, the co-operatives be consolidated, production be expanded and the socialist transformation of the entire countryside be correctly accomplished in accordance with the Party's policy.

Otherwise, unity between the middle and poor peasants cannot be attained, the co-operatives cannot be consolidated, production cannot be expanded and the socialist transformation of the entire countryside cannot be achieved. It is essential to unite with the middle peasants, and it is wrong not to do so. But on whom must the working class and the Communist Party rely in the countryside in order to unite with the middle peasants and realize the socialist transformation of the entire countryside? Surely on none other than the poor peasants. That was the case when the struggle against the landlords was being waged and the land reform was being carried out, and that is the case today when the struggle against the rich peasants and other capitalist elements is being waged to achieve the socialist transformation of agriculture.

In both these revolutionary periods, the middle peasants wavered in the initial stages. It is only after they clearly see the general trend of events and the approaching triumph of the revolution that the middle peasants will come in on the side of the revolution. The poor peasants must work on the middle peasants and win them over, so that the revolution will broaden from clay to day until final victory. There is a serious tendency towards capitalism among the well-to-do peasants. This tendency will become rampant if we in the slightest way neglect political work among the peasants during the co-operative movement and for a very long period after.

The agricultural co-operative movement has been a severe ideological and political struggle from the very beginning. No cooperative can be established without going through such a struggle. Before a brand-new social system can be built on the site of the old the site must be swept clean.

Invariably, remnants of old ideas reflecting the old system remain in people's minds for a long time, and they do not easily give way. After a co-operative is established, it must go through many more struggles before it can be consolidated. Even then, the moment it relaxes its efforts it may collapse. Find it on Scholar. Request removal from index. This entry has no external links. Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server Configure custom proxy use this if your affiliation does not provide a proxy.

Wei Hua - - Contemporary Chinese Thought 10 2: The Center Cannot Hold: The Struggle for Reform in the Communist Party, — Jerry Harris - - Science and Society 74 4: A British Version of "Browderism": British Communiste and the Teheran Conference of Neil Redfern - - Science and Society 66 3: Novotny - - Filosoficky Casopis 23 3: At the same time, he wants to draw attention to a variety of new conditions opening up new alternatives for society as a whole that have emerged as part of the same developments, and which could become the basis of the system that will follow.

Whatever force lies in Marx's projection of the death of capitalism and the birth of socialism comes from his study of the capitalist mode of production organized around a set of overlapping contradictions, or mutually supporting and mutually undermining tendencies, that reach back to the origins of the system. Instead, tracing the unfolding contradictions in the capitalist mode of production, the most important of which is that between social production and private appropriation sometimes referred to as the contradiction between the logic of production and the logic of consumption , Marx can expect, albeit modestly, what other socialists can only hope for.

Marx's projections of where the contradictions he uncovered were headed are only possible because his present was extended far enough back into the past to include the trends and patterns of which the present moment partakes and the pace at which change has occurred. Without any analysis of the capitalist mode of production, of exploitation and alienation, however, the market is deprived of a past, so that contradictions in the present appear as tensions or temporary disfunctions, and lead nowhere.

They don't get worse or better; they just are, and there is no reason to expect them to change. Viewed statically, and apart from its necessary ties to production, the market, then, doesn't seem to have a future, in any case, not one different from its present. Conceived in this manner, whether we look forwards or backwards, the market seems to be eternal, and socialism becomes an impossibility.

Finally, by mystifying the possible future of the market, as well as its present character and its real past, the market mystifies the kind of politics required to deal effectively with its own worst problems, to wit, social and economic inequality, unemployment, overproduction relative to what people can buy , corruption, pollution, and recurrent crises. Working with an a-historical notion of the market ,itself detached from developments in the sphere of production, these problems seem to exist independently of one another as well as of the system in which they arose. Capitalism's lack of transparency is greatest just where our need for transparency is most acute.

With nothing more to go on than the form in which each problem presents itself, the solutions that are advocated usually involve getting those with power to change some of their practises, particularly as buyers or sellers of commodities, labor power and capital, viz increase investment in poor communities, hire more workers, bribe fewer government officials, cheat less on quality and prices, etc.

The aim is not to get rid of the market, since this is considered impossible, but to reform it, to make it work for everyone, with the implication that this ideal state is attainable. Class divisions, if mentioned at all, are understood mainly in terms of what people get rather than what they do, so that workers are viewed as simply one group among others that gets less than it should. Since many workers, especially unionized workers, are better off than a lot of people in other oppressed groups, there is no reason to give workers any special priority.

Politically, this has led to the "Social Movement Strategy" of trying to create a coalition of all oppressed groups in order to secure a more just division of the pie for each of them. Not so with Marx. Starting out from production, he is involved immediately with the interaction of classes and its effect on what happens in the market, including all the interrelated problems that arise with their accompanying injustices. The same analysis enables him to catch a glimpse of a non-market alternative germinating within capitalism itself that would resolve these problems and do away with these injustices.

To alter, radically and permanently, the inequities associated with the market, therefore, requires overturning the workers' subordinate relation to the capitalists in production. Nothing else will do, or will do only a little bit, and that for only a short time before it gets reversed as we see today. To abolish the conditions underlying their own exploitation and alienation requires that the workers do away with all forms of oppression. Treating everyone as equals is the only way the workers themselves can be treated as equals, without which no thorough-going reform is possible.

Here, the workers simply cannot help themselves without helping others. This, then, is the politics of class struggle. Our final complaint against the market, then, is that it mystifies the politics of class struggle, both its centrality and its potential, as well as what's needed to make the workers our side more effective in carrying it out. In drawing up this bill of particulars against market mystification, I may have made it sound more like a seamless whole that it really is.

There are, after all, major contradictions in the operations of the market narrowly construed, such as that between the individual's freedom to choose and the restraint that comes from not having enough money to buy what one wants; or between wishing to sell one's labor power and not being able to find anyone who will buy it. Such contradictions bring many people to question market verities. These often stress the importance of cooperation, and clash head on with ways of thinking promoted by the market. And, of course, criticisms of the market, whenever they break through the sophisticated forms of censorship thrown up by our ruling class, can also help to undermine what we learn as buyers and sellers.

If all these "countervailing forces" were not present, capitalism would not need such an imposing consciousness industry to reinforce the mystification that arises as a matter of course from our immersion in the market. Yet, overall, with the spread of market relations to all walks of life and their growing importance for our very existence as well as an increasing number of our joys and sorrows, the market has become the chief mold in which most of humanity's worst imperfections are cast, just as the mystifications associated with the market have become the major ideological defense for the status quo.

With the market responsible for so much mystification, which, in turn, contributes to so many of capitalism's worst problems, it would seem that socialists would be of one mind in wanting to abolish it as quickly as possible. Instead, one of the strongest trends in current socialist thinking would retain a substantial role for the market in any future socialist society.

To what extent does my critique of market mystification under capitalism apply to what its advocates have labeled "market socialism"? There are different versions of market socialism. What makes them market societies is that buying and selling, however restricted, continue to go on for commodities and labor power and, in some versions, even capital.

And money continues to mediate between people and what they want as under capitalism. What makes them socialist is that the capitalist class has been removed from its dominant position in society. The capitalists, as a distinct class, are either abolished or, in cases where a small private sector remains, have their power severely restricted. As co-owners of their enterprise, the workers, like any capitalist, will buy raw materials, hire labor, and sell finished goods.

Selling their own labor power and especially buying commodities, on the other hand, will continue to take a lot of time and will offer many of the same experiences that workers have today. Furthermore, when the worker first applies for a job and is treated by the collective as an outsider, the fear and insecurity he will feel is all too familiar.

The collective, after all, will only hire new people if it believes their work will increase its profit, or secure or improve its market share ultimately reducible to profit. With this approach, the collective is unlikely to show more concern for the human needs, including the need for a job, of the unemployed and others in the community than businesses do under capitalism. Even on the job, the interests of the individual worker and the interests of the collective do not coincide, for while he may wish to work shorter hours, at a reduced pace, etc.

And, as in capitalist society, it is the owner of the enterprise whose interests predominate. The worker's desire to reorganize his job in function of his interests as a worker will carry little weight in comparison with the profit maximizing interests of the collective, backed as it is by the logic of the market.

In which case, the worker's actual experience in selling his labor power, even where he is part of the collective that buys it and whatever soothing label is used to hide the reality of this exchange , will not be very different from what it is now. The political scientist, Robert Lane, studied a number of worker owned enterprises in capitalist society, and found that, while there was some increase in empowerment and in overall morale, this change did not produce the expected effect on the workers' quality of life or on their general satisfaction.

What people actually do at work, their ability to use initiative and their own judgment, and how much of the process they control, turn out to have a much bigger effect on their satisfaction than simply acquiring a new status as co-owners in a context that doesn't allow for major changes in work conditions. In all versions of market socialism that I have seen, it is the market for commodities that changes least, but this is the market that is most responsible for the long laundry list of mystifications that I sketched earlier.

They will constantly desire more money so that they can buy more, or have the power and status of someone who could. As now, they will worship money as something that gives them this power. And in order to be more effective in the competition for goods and money, they will develop an indifference for the human needs of others against whom they are competing.

Even the mystification of the production process, which leads to a whole series of mystifications under capitalism, would have its parallel in market socialism. Consequently, grasping one's identity as part of a society-side working class would continue to be an uphill struggle for most workers. If, today, the market's occlusion and distortion of production and hence of class makes it virtually impossible for people to acquire an adequate understanding of capitalism and to develop the class based politics needed to overthrow it, under market socialism, the same cause will make it extraordinarily difficult to raise the workers' class consciousness, and especially their class solidarity, to the level required for socialism to work anywhere in society.

It may be the oldest idea in socialism: For people to act upon this, however, they must really think of others as their brothers and sisters , or, in this case, as members of the same class whose common interests makes them brothers and sisters. Expanding a worker's sense of self to include others in his enterprise is a poor substitute for perceiving one's identity in the entire class, especially in light of the no-holds-barred competition between enterprises and therefore between groups of workers that would mark this arrangement.

The mystery surrounding money also gives no signs of disappearing under market socialism.

Money, we will recall, only has the power to buy goods, because the workers who produced them have lost all connection to them. In capitalism, having produced a good conveys no right to use it, no matter how great the need; nor do workers have any say in who can; nor can they easily understand why this is the case. The context in which workers have lost control over whatever it is that their labor has transformed is hidden behind the apparent independence of the final product on the market and the power of money to acquire control over it.

All this applies equally to capitalism and market socialism. Even if a case can be made that exploitation no longer exists under market socialism because workers, as co-owners of their enterprise, belong to the collective entity that retains the surplus the alternative interpretation is that the collectivity exploits the individual workers , it is clear that alienated relations of labor would remain substantially intact and with them the mystification and deification of money.

The modifying influence that one would expect to come from workers electing their own manager is more than offset by the regime of production for the market and its pitiless logic of profit maximization. What is new in market socialism, as I've said, are the experiences workers have as co-owners of their enterprise, and to the extent their relations with their co-workers are cooperative and democratic these experiences could be very empowering. Marx spoke of the cooperative factories of his day as turning "the associated laborers into their own capitalists". To the extent that workers participate in these activities directly, or even indirectly, they will share in far more than the profits that typically go to a capitalist class.

For by making workers into collective capitalists, market socialism has added capitalist alienation to their alienation as workers, while modifying the latter only slightly. Now, they too can experience the lopsided perceptions and twisted emotions, the worries and anxieties that derive from competing with other capitalists; they too can manipulate consumers and themselves as workers in quest of the highest possible profit; they too can develop a greed for money abstracted from all human purpose; and they too can turn a blind eye to the human needs of others. There is not much room here for acting as one's brother's keeper.

Marx aptly characterized competition between capitalists as "avarice and war between the avaricious". To be sure, there are some important differences between what is projected for market socialism and our own market capitalism. Likewise, one would expect "fairer" treatment for groups that are currently discriminated against, and a greater degree of cushioning for those who lose out in market competition.

Still, the experiences people have selling their labor power and buying commodities, combined with the new experiences they have as co-owners of their enterprise, are likely to create ways of thinking and feeling that are very similar to what exists under capitalism. Also, as happens today, this mystification will spill over into other areas of life, into the family, into politics, into culture, and into education.

The attempt to educate the people of this time in socialist values can have only modest results in the face of daily experiences in exchange that teach other lessons. Confused about money, competition, human nature, and the market itself, its real past and potential for change, people will be able neither to build socialism nor to live according to its precepts in any consistent manner. Granting that a certain amount of capitalist mystification would continue under market socialism, defenders of this arrangement have argued that a balance of pro- and anti-socialist qualities could still be reached, and that the end result would be at least partly socialist.

To decide this, we need to understand just what kind of mix is being proposed here, and how volatile it is. There are, after all, some things that mix quite well, like salt and pepper, and others that don't mix at all, like fire and water. As an attempt to mix opposite qualities, is the market more like salt and pepper, or is it more like fire and water? The same question can be directed at social democrats who favor a mixed economy, i.

In both cases, their advocates believe that a more or less permanent coexistence between socialist and capitalist forms is possible. Neither market socialists or social democrats, however, take sufficient account of the logic of the market and of what might be called the "dynamics of cognitive dissonance". The market, as I've tried to show, is not only a place and a practise but also a set of rules for a game that embodies this practise. As rules, it lays down goals, ways of attaining them, and a series of rewards and punishments for keeping players in line.

Winning requires amassing money, which people can only do by investing capital and selling labor power and commodities. Competition with others turns what seems like standing still into falling back, so those with capital seek to expand it, moving into new areas whenever possible. This is necessary not only to increase their profit but, in the face of heightened competition, to maintain it. While everyone looks for what more they can sell. Worse, it makes no sense. The market operates on the basis of what people are able to sell and can afford to buy, while the public sector is dependent on some estimate of social need.

In a mixed economy, however, it doesn't take long before maintaining the health of the private sector gets interpreted as the most important social need. Wherever the market is given a privileged place and role in society, whenever the firms operating on market criteria are expected to provide society with a sizable proportion of its jobs and goods, the state has no choice but to do whatever is necessary to enable the market to fulfill its role. Thus, in all mixed economies, the state assumes many of the costs of doing business through subsidies, tax benefits, low interest loans, publicly financed training and research, i.

Private companies, whether owned by capitalists or by their own workers, have always required this kind of help, and have generally gotten it from social democratic as well as from liberal and conservative governments, since the need for a strong private sector has gone unquestioned. More recently, with the enormous growth in production throughout the capitalist world, and therefore of capital to be invested and commodities to be sold, what was once enough help has proven insufficient, and governments in countries with mixed economies have been busy rearranging the mix to increase still further the size and advantages of the private sector.

The progressive dismantling of the welfare state, deregulation, and the privatization of many previously public enterprises are the main forms taken by this rearrangement. For all the party battles won and lost in the political arena, this development has taken place essentially because of what the market is, because of its logic, the same logic that argues against the possibility of market and socialist features enjoying long term stability in any future market socialist society. At its simplest, can people develop the mutual concern needed to cooperate effectively while maintaining the mutual indifference and lust for private advantage that makes them good competitors?

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While at any given moment, it is probably possible to find such contrasting qualities inside the same personality, the mix is an extremely volatile one. Neither beliefs or values or emotions are easy to compartmentalize, and when they come into contact with their opposites a battle for dominance generally ensues. Cognitive dissonance evolves, and at least in this contest the victor is not in doubt. The political theorist, Robert Goodin, has argued convincingly that people's ability to respond to moral incentives the kind that make socialism possible diminish with the increase of material incentives, money and the like.

China provides us with a recent example of just how quickly and apparently thoroughly this transformation can occur. As long as market ways of thinking and feeling receive daily reinforcement through people's experiences in exchange, the development of socialist sentiments, and hence socialist practise in any sphere, cannot proceed very far. If market socialism cannot lead to socialism, how should we characterize those who advocate it? Before answering, it is important to recognize that the school of thinking that calls itself "market socialism" is further divisible along three different lines: Those who understand market socialism as a mix of worker and privately owned enterprises, consider it all that human beings can attain, and believe that we can begin building such a society right now inside capitalism are best viewed as reformers and not socialists, since their market socialism is really capitalist reform.

A more accurate name for their goal is "economic democracy", and for them "radical democrats". On the other hand, market socialists who want an economy dominated by worker owned enterprises, who view market socialism as a transition to communism, and who believe that a change of this magnitude requires a socialist revolution and a workers' government are clearly some kind of socialist. One of the leading market socialists, the philosopher David Schweickart, denies that market socialism is utopian, in part, because "it recognizes that at this stage in our development, none of our values can be perfectly realized".

The moderation of the market socialist vision doesn't save it from being unrealizeable and, hence, utopian. What remains to be explained is how market socialists, radical democrats as well as utopian socialists, have come to favor a solution that is both overly modest and unworkable. I believe that both faults arise out of their inadequate analysis of capitalism as well as of communism as a post-socialist society , of socialism as a post-capitalist society , and of the socialist revolution that serves as a bridge from capitalism to socialism.

As for capitalism, I have tried to show that market socialists don't realize just how much of capitalism, of its practises and ways of thinking and feeling, and of its problems, are contained in its market relations, and, consequently, how much retaining a market, any market, will interfere with the building of socialism. Here, the fundamental error in their analysis is to identify capital with capitalists, the current embodiment of capital, and not see that capital, as a relation of production, can also be embodied in the state as in state capitalism or even in workers' cooperatives as in market socialism.

Capital is self-expanding wealth, wealth used not to satisfy wants but to create more wealth, satisfying wants only where this does so and developing new, artificial wants where it doesn't. What is decisive is its goal, and not who owns it. It is how capital functions in pursuit of this goal that gives our society most of its capitalist character and problems.

The market, through which newly created wealth circulates allowing what initially takes the form of commodities to return to the owners of the means of production in the form of capital, is a more important feature of capitalism than is private ownership. Thus, ownership may be transferred to the state as has occurred with nationalized industries in many countries or to workers' cooperatives, but if the market remains essentially intact so, too, will most of the problems associated with capitalism.

Market thinking, as we saw, is produced by people's experiences in any market without regard to who owns the values that are exchanged. As for communism, radical democrats and market utopian socialists are insufficiently aware of how different socialism as a transitional form must be from capitalism if it is to lay the foundations for the extraordinary achievements of full communism.

To make this case, however, one would have to sketch out the communist future in more detail than is appropriate on this occasion, and, since most market socialists do not believe that communism is possible in any case, this line of argument is not likely to have much effect. As regards socialism, market socialists, like most non-socialists, have generally confused planning in this era with the central planning that existed in the Soviet style economies.

Unlike the situation that existed in the Soviet lands, there is a plentiful supply of goods and the material means, scientific knowledge, and skilled workers needed to make more. Consequently, most planning decisions, at least initially, are likely to be in the nature of revisions of the distorted priorities bequeathed by the market to wit, too many large mansions and not enough public housing. There is no overriding need to build an industry from scratch.

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Advice from a cooperative public, computers and other modern communication technology, and, of course, repeated trial and error and correction of error will permit quick adjustments whenever necessary. Hence, there is little likelihood of making major miscalculations or of suffering much material deprivation when errors are made.

Equally important is the nature of socialist democracy as it effects the economy of this time. For the workers to function as the new ruling class, it is not enough that the government act in their interests. They must also participate in making crucial political decisions, and none are more crucial than choosing the economic planners and establishing the main priorities of the plan. I would expect debates on these matters to be an essential part of politics under socialism, as workers overcome their political alienation by realizing their powers as social and communal beings.

They wouldn't want to get so involved, or, if they did, the result would be chaos". Enter the revolution, a successful revolution, since we are discussing what comes after capitalism. Market socialists don't seem to realize what an extraordinary educational and transformative experience participation in a successful revolution would be, and consequently what workers in socialism will want to do and will be capable of doing that most workers today do not and cannot.

Like most people, market socialists are simply projecting the same personalities with which they are familiar from their daily lives into the future. New conditions and experiences, however, bring out new qualities in people. Perhaps no lesson from Marx's materialism is more obvious; yet, there can be few things that are more frequently overlooked.

Marx believes that taking part in a revolution is the most powerful educational experience one can have, with its greatest impact in just those areas that are crucial for the success of what comes afterwards. Given the enormous power of the capitalist class, for a socialist revolution to succeed, the majority of workers will have to become class conscious, which involves, among other things, understanding their common interests, developing greater mutual concern, becoming more cooperative, and acquiring a keener interest in political affairs as well as a stronger sense of personal responsibility for how they turn out.

But these are the same qualities that make building socialism after the revolution, including democratic central planning, possible. Naturally, the more transparent society is at this time, a feature on which Marx insists, the easier it will be for people to carry out their socialist functions.

When we consider the favorable conditions in which socialist planning will take place and the altered character of the workers who will be involved in it, we can see just how spurious is the comparison that is so often made with Soviet planning. Would the workers in a post-capitalist socialist society give the planners the accurate information that they need? Would workers at this time exhibit the mutual concern necessary to provide help to those who are worse off?

Would they have sufficient flexibility and understanding to make the needed compromises among themselves? Would workers then do their best to make sure that the plan, which they have played a role in making, succeeds? In his widely influential book, The Economics of Feasible Socialism, Alec Nove answers all these questions in the negative.

There is little, if anything, however, to learn from the fate of undemocratic central planning functioning in a context of extreme scarcity, and with an increasingly skeptical and uncooperative working class, for a situation where none of these conditions will apply. What market socialist analyses of capitalism, communism, socialism, and the revolution, almost without exception, have in common is the treatment of each period in virtual isolation from the others. Yet these periods are internally related.

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