HighBeam Research

Title: Socialism in question.

Date: 3/1/1991; Publication: Monthly Review; Author: Miliband, Ralph
SOCIALISM IN QUESTION
I want to raise with you the question which, as socialists, is bound to concern us most
acutely nowadays, namely the question of the future of socialism itself--in fact, the question
whether socialism, as a project and even as an idea, has any future at all.
Our enemies say not. But it is not only they who think so. There are many people on the
Left who have come to have great doubt about it, who now reject the notion of a
comprehensive reorganization of society on socialist lines as an unrealistic and dangerous
utopia. If they still think of themselves as socialists at all, it is in terms of a series of
remedies to specific problems within the confines of capitalism, and as a vague hope of a
more equitable society.
There is now real skepticism, even despair, in our own ranks about the possibility of ever
achieving the kind of society defined by socialism, namely a cooperative, egalitarian,
democratic, and ultimately classless social order, a social order immeasurably more decent,
humane, and equitable than could ever lie in the power of capitalism to achieve. The very
terms I am using--capitalism, socialism, classless society--are now very suspect to a lot of
people on the Left. In short, it is socialism itself which is now in question.
There are many reasons for this questioning. One of them is the extraordinary resilience
and innovative power which capitalism has continued to display. Despite crisis,
unemployment, widespread poverty, homelessness, drugs, crime, starved public and social
services, injustices and cruelties of all kinds, and the basic inhumanity which goes with a
society whose social relations are dominated by the market, the system, at least in the
countries of advanced capitalism, has delivered enough to prevent any great demand for
radical change.
A related cause of socialist demoralization has been the ever more explicit desire of social
democratic parties, in opposition and even more in government, to present themselves and
to act as the managers of a system which they only want, at the most, to modify at the
margin.
But of all the reasons which may be advanced for the state of the socialist Left, it is the
experience of Communist and ex-Communist regimes which is probably the most
debilitating.
By no means everything in that experience is negative. It is in fact quite easy to point to
real Communist achievements in economic and social terms, particularly if account is taken
of the circumstances which Communist regimes inherited--backwardness, illiteracy, war,
civil war, imperialist intervention, a long tradition, in most of the countries concerned, of
centralized, authoritarian rule, often imposed from outside. In this perspective, it is perserve
to ignore what was accomplished, particularly in the early years of these regimes.
But when all this has been said, the fact of failure remains, and has been dramatically
highlighted by the events of recent years in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, or for
that matter China. What we are witnessing, to all apperances, is the termination of the
historical experience that was begun in 1917 and that is ending with a stampede towards
insertion into the world capitalist system, the market economy, privatization, etc.
There are of course many people on the left who have been saying for a very long time that
Communist regimes were aberrant, deformed versions of socialism, or that they were not
socialism at all but they did hope that these regimes would be replaced by authentic
socialist democracies. It now looks as if this was a futile, even naive, expectation and this
has been a crucial factor of disarray. No socialist could mourn the passing of oppressive
regimes but the sequel to that passing has, from a socialist perspective, been profoundly
disheartening. The question is: what are the lessons to be read from the Communist
experience? First, I want to note that, for all their many variations, all Communist regimes
had some basic features in common: a) they were for all practical purposes single-party
regimes, with the Communist Party, under whatever name, exercising comprehensive
control over society, and with a heavy, extreme concentration of power at the top, under the
guise of democratic centralism b) relatedly, there were extremely intolerant of dissent of
any kind, and severely punished it c) they had command economies, with detailed planning
of most economic activity. In addition, they also had a formal commitment to an official
doctrine called Marxism-Leninism. Many of them practiced a cult of personality which
often rached scarcely credible heights, or depths and they were adept at staging mass
mobilizations for symbolic occasions and anniversaries.
This model of rule was copied from the Soviet Union, as it had been created in the twenties
and perfected by Stalin. It was obviously a model which had great attraction for power-
holders in poor countries faced with cast and intractable problems. Although the model was
imposed from outside in Eastern Europe, it was freely adopted elsewhere, for instance in
Yugoslavia, Vietnam, China, Cuba, North Korea, and in some African countries as well.
Now, whatever else may be said about it, it cannot be said that the model has anything to do
with socialism. For it contravenes fundamentally the defining features of the socialist
project. It is an exceedingly undemocratic form of
rule. It concentrates extreme power in the hands of relatively few people. It solidifies and
strengthens bureaucracy and grants great privileges to it. It sacrifices individual rights to
what the leaders declared to be social requirements, and this is often quite arbitrary. It is at
best a kind of paternalism which admits of no disagreement. It is not a socialist model, if
you take socialism to represent the fulfillment of an ancient democratic purpose. The
Communist regimes presided over thorough social revolutions, indigenous or imposed. But
what they made of these revolutions was a system of power which cannot legitimately be
called socialist.
What, then, are the lessons to be learned?
First, and perhaps most important, and not at all welcome, is the fact that habit, tradition,
encrusted beliefs and prejudices exercise a tremendous pull against innovation and renewal.
Nowhere does one start with a clean slate, not even in the most revolutionary situations.
Antonio Gramsci once drew a sharp contrast between the East, where, he said, the state was
everything and society was "gelatinous", unlike the West where a multitude of
"earthworks" and trenches crisscrossed civil society. In fact, no society is really gelatinous-
-all societies are full of earthworks and trenches and fortifications of many kinds and this is
as true for "under-developed" societies as for other ones. This slows down social change
and has to be reckoned with. In other words, there is a very difficult path to treat, in
programaatic and practical terms, between going too fast and going too slow. If you go too
fast and trample over habit, tradition, history, fears and prejudices, you narrow your base of
support. If you go too slowly, you lose momentum, discourage activists, comfort your
enemies. This tension can only be resolved in practice but it is at least important to be
aware that it is a real tension, reflecting very real problems.
Related to this, and equally unwelcome, there is the vision which socialists have of the
project to which they are committed. Many people have thought of socialism in quasi-
religious terms--in terms of redemption, salvation, making the world anew, creating a new
man or woman. This has been an enormously sustaining vision, which has moved many
generations of socialists to heroic sacrifices and struggles. The danger, however, is that it
tends to foster a rash and arrogant kind of "voluntarism," a belief that everything is
possible, very quickly. But socialism, we have learned, is a process, long drawn out, slow,
arduous, painful, which will extend over many generations. Marx, you will recall, makes a
sharp distinction between communism, the "true realm of freedom," which is a far-distant
prospect, and socialism, which precedes it. It is with socialism that we must get on, and let
future generations take care of the true realm of freedom. One of the most obvious lessons
of the Communist experience has to do with the corruption of power, particularly
unconstrained, unchecked power. It is worth saying, though it is very unfashionable at the
present time, that may of the people who took power in Eastern Europe in 1945 were not
unprincipled careerists. Many of them had fought against their own authoritarian regimes in
the inter-war years, had spent many years in jail and concentration camps, had fought the
fascists in the Second World Wad and had taken power with the determination to build
what they took to be socialism. Among the reasons why they failed, a crucial one is surely
that they were running political systems which did not admit of checks at the top, which
dispensed with critical debate and accountability. This not only made for personal corruptio
it also fostered gigantic errors of policy, harebrained adventurism, productivist
megalomania, environmental vandalism, purges and repression, which on one a position of
responsiblity dared opposed.
What this means, rather obviously, is that the process of building a socialist society will be
deformed, perverted, and ultimately blighted if it is pursued outside a reasonably
democratic context. But what does that involve?
The classical Marxist view, enshrined in such writings as Marx's The Civil War in France
and Lenin's The State and Revolution, is that socialism was to be built by way of a system
of semidirect democracy, with popular rule at all levels, with representation kept to a
minimum, with representatives as delegates strictly subservient to the wishes and dictates
of their constituents, and with very little if any constraint on popular rule itself.
I do not believe that this is a good recipe for the socialist exercise of power, not at any rate
for a very long time to come, when a new breed of people will have been produced by a
prolonged experience of socialist relations of life.
For the foreseeable future, I believe that socialists will have to build no the foundations of
liberal democracy, and to push it much further in democratic directions. Socialist
democrary needs a separation of powers in the state, representative assemblies, accountable
executives, decentralization and strong local and regional government, constitutionally
enshrined civic and political rights, a plurality of parties, frequent elections. It also requires
democratic life at all levels of society, at work and everywhere else, with a vigorous and
pervasive grassroots democracy. But grassroots democracy is no substitute for democratic
mechanisms in the internal organization of state power.
Having said this, I must add that there are circumstances where a socialist government,
seriously concerned to advance the socialist process, might well have to dispense with some
or many of the guarantees of democratic rule--if for instance it was faced by violent
opposition from the right. Bourgeois governments invoke readily enough emergency
circumstances to reduce or abrogate political and civic rights. Why should a socialist
government be denied the means to defend itself? The point, however, is that any such
erosion of rights represents a grievous loss, and should be clearly understood to be such, as
a departure from socialist principles, to be ended as soon as possible.
It is as well to realize that socialist democracy involves a real tension between the need for
a strong state, on the one hand (and I believe that such a need will continue to exist for a
long time), and for a controlled, limited, curbed, accountable state on the other.
Representative democracy, as open, responsive, decentralized as possible, with a real
measure of direct self-government wherever possible, should reduce the tension, even if it
does not altogether resolve it. This is no ideal solution to the problem of the socialist
exercise of power but it is probably the best that can be hoped for in a relevant future.
Liberal democracy is crippled by its capitalist context. Its main task is to sustain and defend
a profoundly inequitable social order, based on class domination and exploitation. The
fulfillment of that task requires that democratic forms should be contained, manipulated,
weakened, and corrupted. In this kind of democracy, politics for the dominant class and its
allies, is largely a matter of containing and defeating pressure from below. This form of
class struggle from above imperatively and inherently demands the perversion of the
democratic process.
This amounts to saying that democracy, in any really meaningful sense, requires as an
absolute, though not sufficient condition, the dissolution of the existing structures of
economic and political power.
At the core of these structures is the private ownership and control of the main industrial,
financial, commercial and communications resources of capitalist countries. This represents
an extraordinary concentration of power in the hands of a relatively small number of
people, whose degree of freedom from any kind of democratic control is the most flagrant
denial of the democratic pretensions of Western capitalist regimes. For all the talk about the
transformations of capitalism, this remains a basic fact about it and is so far as democracy
requires a rough equality of citizenship, the dissolution of this concentration of power is
one of its prime conditions. This is why the transfer of the main means of economic activity
into one form or another of public ownership remains a crucial socialist task. Nothing less
will do, if what is wanted is a truly democratic society. Communist experience shows very
clearly tht this is not enough to create such a society, and that it is possible to have all the
means of economic activity in the public domain, with no democracy or socialism at all but
the radical enlargement of the public domain, under conditions very different from those
which prevailed in Communist regimes, is nevertheless essential to the socialist purpose.
Such insistence does not mean the disappearance of all private ownership and control. The
point is not to nationalize everything in sight, which is an absurd and destructive notion, but
to create a "mixed economy" in which the public sector is predominant--in other words, to
reverse the present arrangements where it is the private sector which is overwhelmingly
predominant. To achieve this, and to make a success of it, presents many problems, which
the left still has to resolve. But let us at least be clear that without it, any talk of a new
social order radically different from capitalism is just talk.
As for the market, the question is not whether it should exist, but how large should be its
role. Socialism means, among other things, that cash, the ability to pay, is not the means of
access to health, education, and much else on which civilized life depends. It means, in
other words, a progressive decommodification of life, the removal of the cash nexus as the
core of social relations.
So too with planning. A socialist government must be able to set priorities, after due public
debate and democratic decision, and must be able to plan their fulfillment. This is very
different from the kind of comprehensive, detailed planning from the center, which was
practiced in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.
These are large and long-term aims, whose realization will not soon be attempted, let alone
realized yet they need to be kept in mind, since they define, or should define, what
socialists are ultimately about. But there is a vast array of immediate issues which daily
confront us, and which are an intrinsic part of socialist struggles. I mean issues like wages,
hours, and conditions the rights of working people at their place of work the whole range of
other citizen rights the struggle against sexism, racism, and every form of discrimination
wherever it occurs, not excluding labor and socialist movements the defense of collective
and social services and the demands for their enlargement the defence of the environment
ideological and cultural struggles a range of international issues, with, today, opposition to
war in the Gulf.
All this is common ground. What is not is the question of organization. In recent years,
many voices have been heard to say that parties had had their day, that they were in any
case inherently undemocratic, and that the struggles of the left would best be waged by
social movements concerned with gender, race, the enviroment, peace, sexual orientations,
cultural issues, and so on.
I do think that such movements are needed, and will continue to form part of the political
landscape as agencies of pressure and protest. But they are not a substitute for socialist
parties. It is true that the notion of a single, vanguard, all-encompassing party of the left has
had its day. But socialist parties are nevertheless badly needed, to affirm a socialist
presence, to advance socialist alternatives, to inscribe immediate demands and grievances
into a larger framework. Such parties will be no more than a part of the constellation of
forces on the left and they would have to earn their place in that constellation of forces by
their clearsightedness, integrity, and behavior.
You cannot count on social democratic parties to do this job and neither, experience also
suggests, can it be done by groupings which are unable to break out of the sectarian
ghettoes in which they have been confined, one might even say self-confined. Yet it is a job
that needs to be done and the building of such parties seems to me to be a task, a very
difficult task, which ought to be on the agenda of the left in many countries.
There is one final question which I must raise, namely the question of the status of
Marxism and its place on the left. This, too, is now a very controversial topic: a lot of
people on the left now reject Marxism as fatally tainted with economic determinism, as
class reductionist, as blind to gender, as analytically flawed, and as generally obsolete.
Much of this strkes me as greatly overdone. It is true that Marxism is full of unresolved
tensions, between determinism and contingency, individually versus sociality, spontaneity
versus organization, and one could go on stringing up these contradictory couplets. But the
strength of Marxism has never been that it offers ready-made solutions to contradictions
which are an intrinsic part of real life: it is rather that it highlights these contradictions and
challenges us to find ways of resolving them, or at least of attenuating them.
More than any other body of though, Marxism has some features which seem to me to form
an indispensable part of socialist thinking. It directs attention to the most important
characteristic of capitalist society, namely that it is fundamentally divided: between, on the
one hand, dominant classes, so defined by virtue of their ownership or control of the main
means of domination and exploitation--the means of production, the means of
administration and coercion, and the means of communication and persuasion and on the
other hand, dominated classes so defined by their relative or absolute lack of such means.
Secondly, Marxism focuses on the fundamental divergence of interest between these
classes and shows why class societies, based as they are on domination and exploitation,
are precluded from ever being harmonious, peaceful and cooperative, and why conflict,
now more acute, now less, but always permanent, is their law of life. But Marxism also
insists that domination and exploitation and conflict are not unalterably inscribed in the
human condition, and that they can be overcome by the collective endeavors of the
dominated classes themselves.
On this last point, Marxism has been greatly derided in recent decades for its reliance on
the working class to act as an agent of radical and revolutionary change. The working class,
it has been said, is ever more fragmented and dispersed, to the point where it can hardly be
said to exist. Nor in any case, critics add, has the working class ever shown much or any
will to play the role assigned to it by Marx and later Marxists. All this requires detailed
argument. Let me just say here that the working class actually constitutes the majority of
the population of capitalist countries and while it is true that most of it never has been
revolutionary in Marx's sense, and is not now, its divisions have not prevented a large part
of it from quite frequently supporting radical programs of social renewal. That these
programs have not been carried out cannot be attributed to the failings of the working class
itself.
To conclude: there is no question that socialism, as a body of thought and as a movement,
is now in crisis. But we need not take seriously the constant procalamations that it is dead
or dying. What renders such proclamations absurd is the existence of capitalism itself.
Given its ineradicable limitations, capitalism guarantees that men and women everywhere
will continue to search for alternatives to it and socialism does represent the only rational
and humane alternative to capitalism. Our business as socialists, now more than ever, is to
defend and advance that alternative.
Ralph Miliband is the author, most recently, of Divided Societies: Class Struggle in
Contemporary Capitalism (Oxford University Press). This article is the slightly revised text
of an address given at the Australian Socialist Scholars Conference in Sydney on
September 30, 1990.


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