Many people will be unfamiliar with Leon Trotsky’s Transitional programme which he set out in the 30’s which Trotskyist parties across the world worth their salt have looked to base their programme on. The Socialist party formally Militant Labour and part of the CWI the Committee for Workers International which I’m a member of would claim to look towards and formulate a transitional programme which can fit to the current consciousness of the working class at a given period.
Trotsky described the situation as thus
The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.
Which still till this day is absolutely bang on the money, the leadership of the working class is at best asleep at worst in the pockets of the boss’s and the capitalist class. Trotsky made many points in his original transitional programme and by no means meant it to be a blueprint which to follow but any Marxist worth his or her salt in today’s society will recognise the need to bridge the gap between current consciousness and where we need to be heading. Trotsky in his day recognised this too with the gap between the minimum programmes
It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include 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.
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 specifying. The Comintern has set out to follow the path of Social Democracy in an epoch of decaying capitalism: when, in general, there can be no discussion of systematic social reforms and the raising of he masses’ living standards; when every serious demand of the proletariat and even every serious demand of the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reaches beyond the limits of capitalist property relations and of the bourgeois state.
The strategic task of the CWI lies not in reforming capitalism but in its overthrow. Its political aim is the conquest of power by the proletariat for the purpose of expropriating the bourgeoisie. However, the achievement of this strategic task is unthinkable without the most considered attention to all, even small and partial, questions of tactics. All sections of the proletariat, all its layers, occupations and groups should be drawn into the revolutionary movement. The present epoch is distinguished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from day-to-day work but because it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution.
As Trotsky says we fight for every reform and defend all the gains of the working class but look to go a lot lot further than just defending reforms won in the past.
The CWI does not discard the program of the old “minimal” demands to the degree to which these have preserved at least part of their vital forcefulness. Indefatigably, it defends the democratic rights and social conquests of the workers. But it carries on this day-to-day work within the framework of the correct actual, that is, revolutionary perspective. Insofar as the old, partial, “minimal” demands of the masses clash with the destructive and degrading tendencies of decadent capitalism – and this occurs at each step – the CWI advances a system of transitional demands, the essence of which is contained in the fact that ever more openly and decisively they will be directed against the very bases of the bourgeois regime. The old “minimal program” is superseded by the transitional program, the task of which lies in systematic mobilization of the masses for the proletarian revolution.
As the socialist party we not only use Trotsky’s transitional programme we actively look to learn and develop it to discover by living and interacting with day to day struggles of the working class able to use our Marxist theory to develop a understanding as to which demands are reasonable at this time to put forward which raise consciousness but also look to move the working c lass forward in its pursuit of power and the eventual over throw of the current exploitative system of capitalism.
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Showing posts with label case for socialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label case for socialism. Show all posts
Saturday, 23 June 2012
Monday, 4 June 2012
Che’ Guevara, the peoples latin revolutionary lives on
Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara died young. This Argentine doctor who left his home and a career to join the Cuban Revolution was murdered in a Bolivian mountain village while he lay on a bare table. It was October 1967, and Guevara was not yet 40 years old.
In Cuba itself, where Che was a charistmatic and powerful leader of the revolution of 1959, his face picked out in neon lights decorates several floors of a building in Revolution Square in Havana. And on posters and hoardings Che’s image sits beside propaganda to support the Cuban government. Che’s face fills the public spaces of Cuban cities rather than the man who has dominated Cuban life ever since the revolution: Fidel Castro.
There is now an entirely new generation who instantly recognise the deep eyes and wispy beard of Guevara, who wear the T-shirt and buy the enormous variety of consumer goods that carry that famous image. Even though many have little memory of the Cuban revolution and the details of Che’s life aren’t well known; there seems to be wide ackonowledgement that the face has a symbolic power and a meaning that everyone understands. The symbolism of Che, the beret, the star and the red scarf, is a call for something different, a call for revoltution to transform society. That project has a general characther. It is generous, honest, selfless and romantic. And it is youthful. Most fundamentally though it is Socialist.
Che
Ernesto Che Guevara’s birth happened under a garb of ambiguity. Guevara’s birth certificate records his birthday as June 14, 1928. His real birth date was on May 14, 1928. In a way this typified the way Che spent most of his adult life. He was born in Rosario, Argentina, the eldest of five children in an Argentine family of Spanish, Basque and Irish descent. In reference to Che’s “restless” nature, his father declared “the first thing to note is that in my son’s veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels. Very early on in life Ernestito (as he was then called) developed an “affinity for the poor”. Growing up in a family with leftist leanings, Guevara was introduced to a wide spectrum of political perspectives even as a boy. His father, a staunch supporter of Republicans from the Spanish Civil War, often hosted many veterans from the conflict in the Guevara home.
During adolescence he found the Guevara home contained more than 3,000 books, which allowed him to be an enthusiastic and eclectic reader, with interests including Karl Marx, William Faulkner and Jules Verne. Additionally, he enjoyed the works of Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Vladimir Lenin, Friedrich Engels and Jean-Paul Sartre (who would later describe Che as the most complete human being of our time).
As he grew older, he developed an interest in the Latin American writers Ciro Alegría, Rubén Darío, and Miguel Asturias. Many of these authors’ ideas he cataloged in his own handwritten notebooks of concepts, definitions, and philosophies of influential intellectuals. These included composing sketches of Buddha and Aristotle, along with examining Bertrand Russell on love and patriotism, Jack London on society, and Nietzsche on the idea of death. Sigmund Freud’s ideas fascinated him as he quoted him on a variety of topics from dreams and libido to narcissism and the oedipus complex. His favorite subjects in school included philosophy, political science, sociology, history and archaeology. Years later, a 1958, declassified CIA ‘biographical and personality report’ would make note of Guevara’s wide range of academic interests and intellect, describing him as “quite well read” while adding that “Che is fairly intellectual for a Latino.”
His main objective though at this point was still to qualify as a doctor with a view to helping the sick and the poor. However, within him a passion for travel was beginning to develop. Initially this was within Argentina itself and then later he undertook two journeys which brought him throughout Latin America and eventually beyond.
The experiences which he encountered during this Odyssey changed his perception of the tasks necessary to end poverty and exploitation. It was during the adventures and events which he witnessed on these journeys that Che eventually embraced socialist ideas.
Che’s first international tours took place in the early 50s. These had a more pronounced effect and ultimately changed the direction of his entire life. At first Che Guevara was content to play the role of an observer at the beginning of his voyage. As it progressed he was eventually increasingly drawn into the revolutionary struggle which ultimately cost him his life.
At the outset of his voyage he and his traveling companion, Alberto, were more interested in having a good time and gaining some medical experience as they toured South America on a Harley Davidson. Che’s Motor Cycle Diaries provide brilliant examples of this. Drunken brawls, romantic encounters and other, “youthful” adventures, dominated the trip they were making around the continent. As they crossed the border into Chile they passed themselves off as leprologists. Frequently they had to flee local towns and villages having aroused the wrath of the local peasants, especially fathers with attractive daughters. During this first trip Che led the largely bohemian and carefree existence which reflected the independent spirit which marked his character.
However, whilst it is this aspect of the trip which is the dominant feature in his diary, other experiences had an important impact on him. The poverty and conditions he witnessed increasingly aroused a profound social awareness. Che’s anger at the indifference shown towards the poor by the ruling class was being stirred during his travels.
Whilst encamped at the Chilean port of Valparaíso, Che was asked to use his medical skills to try and help an elderly woman who it transpired was dying of chronic asthma (which Che himself suffered terribly from all his life). There was little he could do but the experience of trying to treat her, surrounded by poverty, evidently left its mark. Afterwards he wrote: ” There, in the final moments of people whose farthest horizon is always tomorrow, one sees the tragedy that enfolds the lives of the proletariat throughout the whole world; in those dying eyes there is a submissive apology and also frequently, a desperate plea for consolation that is lost in the void, just as their body will soon be lost in the magnitude of misery surrounding us. How long this order of things based on an absurd sense of caste will continue is not within my means to answer, but it is time that those who govern dedicate less time to propagandising the compassion of their regimes and more money, much more money, sponsoring works of social utility.”
Unable to get a boat to Easter Island as they intended Che and his companion headed north, eventually arriving at Chuquicamata, the world’s largest open cast copper mine. “Chuqui” as it is still known in Chile today, was owned by US monopolies such as Anaconda and Kennecott. US ownership of the mines at “Chuqui” was a symbol of imperialist “gringo” domination of Chile. They were eventually nationalised by the Popular Unity government, led by Salvador Allende of the Socialist Party, between 1970 and 1973.
It was here Che and Alberto encountered the harsh realities of class struggle. They met a former miner and his wife, both members of the then illegal Chilean Communist Party. Che was told the bitter story of repression, disappearances and black-listing used by the company and government against those who tried to fight for workers’ rights. Che and Alberto succeeded in entering the mine where a strike was being prepared.
This visit to Chuqui made a lasting impression on Che and he kept a note book on the experience in which he detailed not only the impressions he had of the workers, but also production techniques and the political importance of the mines for Chile. Referring to the mineral rich mountains he protested about the “exploited proletariat” and environmental destruction of the landscape.
The next stop on his Odyssey was Peru which proved decisive in Che embracing socialist ideas through an encounter with a prominent leader of the Peruvian Communist Party, Doctor Hugo Pesce. The discussions with Pesce evidently had a profound effect upon Che. A decade later he sent the doctor a copy of his first book, Guerrilla Warfare, with the inscription, “To Doctor Hugo Pesce who, without knowing it perhaps, provoked a great change in my attitude towards life and society, with the same adventurous spirit as always, but channelled toward goals more harmonious with the needs of America.”
At a party to celebrate his twenty fourth birthday in Peru, Che made a toast declaring “…that (Latin) America’s division into illusory and uncertain nationalities is completely fictitious. We constitute a single mestizo race, which from Mexico to the Straights of Magellan presents notable ethnographic similarities. For this, in an attempt to rid myself of the weight of any meagre provincialism, I raise a toast to Peru and for a United America.”
This spirit of internationalism was a theme to which Che returned many times and he soon realised the aspiration of the masses to unify Latin America is not possible to obtain within the context of capitalism because the ruling capitalist class of each Latin American nation have their own economic and political interests to defend. They are also linked by economic and material interests to imperialism from which they cannot break free. Imperialism itself also opposes unity of the continent under capitalism, generally preferring to impose its will on a number of states weaker than itself. The establishment of a democratic federation of Latin American states, as a step to unify the continent is only possible by breaking free of capitalism and imperialism and building socialism.
Once back in Argentina Che’s family hoped that his days as a vagabond would end and that he would take up his chosen profession, medicine. Che completed his studies during April 1953 and received his doctor’s degree in June, a few days prior to his twenty fifth birthday. However Che soon set out again to visit other parts of Latin America with Che gravitating to the idea of committing himself to a life of disciplined and self-sacrificing revolutionary struggle.
Cuba
At the time of Che’s travels through the Americas, Cuba laboured under the Batista regime, Batista was a former army officer who, despite the pretense of independence had essentially run Cuba as a puppet leader for the United States since 1940. Batista had revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor. Havana and other Cuban cities became a playground for the rich Americans who visited the island and in a manner that antagonized the Cuban people, the U.S. government used their influence to advance the interests of and increase the profits of the private American companies, which “dominated the island’s economy.”
In 1953 Che, was in Guatemala where a “socialist” experiment was taking place that had drawn thousands from all over Latin America,to see first hand the challenge to US imperialism. Che secured work as a doctor in a hospital and was introduced to Hilda Gadea, an exiled leader of the youth wing of the radical populist Peruvian movement. She introduced him to activists and leaders of various political groupings and gave him political works to study, including some works of Mao. It was during these events that Che encountered a number of Cuban exiles. They had been given asylum by the Arbenz regime and had participated in an attempted assault on July 26 1953 against the Moncada military barracks in Cuba. For the first time Che began to discover the struggle developing against the Cuban Batista regime.
Arbenz was later defeated and Che fled to Mexico and it was while Che was here that he initially met one of the leaders of the July 26th Movement fighting the Batista dictatorship in Cuba, Fidel Castro. Their first meeting was during 1955, after which Che eventually joined the Movement. Che was drawn to the July 26th Movement rather than the Cuban Communist Party due to the policies advocated by the Stalinist Communist parties in Latin America at the time.
Born the illegitimate son of a wealthy farmer, Castro had became involved in leftist anti-imperialist politics while studying law at university. Involving himself in armed rebellions against right-wing governments in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, he concluded that the U.S.-backed Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, who was widely seen as a dictator, had to be overthrown; to this end he led a failed armed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. When Che finally met Castro the immediate prospect of a struggle which was offered to him by Castro and his movement together with his “well-defined convictions” finally led Che to accept that “iron discipline” which he had previously rejected. Che subsequently threw himself into the struggle body and soul as preparations were undertaken to land in Cuba and begin the “revolution” during 1956. However, the group was arrested in Mexico and then released. From prison Che wrote to his parents: “My future is linked with that of the Cuban revolution. I either triumph with it or die there”.
His commitment to the cause of revolution was now his entire life. This spirit is indispensable to defeat capitalism and win a revolution. It is the quality in Che which those fighting to free the working class and exploited classes today need to emulate. As he engaged directly in revolutionary struggle his self-sacrifice was to become very evident. At the same time his ideas developed in a one-sided manner. He based himself on the peasantry and guerrilla struggle. This is one important aspect of the Marxist policy which applies in the rural areas where a peasant class exists. The other though is the question of the role of the working class in urban centres is also of decisive importance. This is true even in countries where the working class which form a relatively small section of the population.
The revolutionaries, 80 strong, led by Fidel, his brother Raul and Che finally landed in Cuba on a boat called the Granma. It arrived two days later than planned because the boat was heavily loaded which dashed any hopes for a coordinated attack with the llano wing of the movement so the band of rebels began to make their way into the Sierra Maestra mountains, southeastern Cuba. Three days after the trek began, Batista’s army attacked and killed most of the Granma participants – no more than twenty of the original eighty-two men survived the initial bloody encounters with the Cuban army and escaped into the mountains. The dispersed survivors, alone or in small groups, wandered through the mountains, looking for each other. Eventually, the men would link up again – with the help of peasant sympathizers – and would form the core leadership of the guerrilla army.
On 13 March 1957, a separate group of revolutionaries – the anticommunist Revolutionary Directorate (RD), composed mostly of students – stormed the Presidential Palace in Havana, attempting to assassinate Batista. The attack was suicidal. The RD’s leader, student Jose Antonio Echeverria, died in a shootout with Batista’s forces at the Havana radio station he had seized to spread the news of Batista’s death. The handful of survivors included Dr. Humberto Castello and Rolando Cubela who would later play roles in the revolution. Batista’s support among Cubans began to fade, former supporters either joining the revolutionaries or distancing themselves from Batista. American capitalists however continued their support.The regime resorted to often brutal methods to keep Cuba’s cities under government control. But in the Sierra Maestra mountains, Castro staged successful attacks on small garrisons of Batista’s troops. Che Guevara and Raúl Castro helped Fidel to consolidate his political control in the mountains, in addition, poorly armed peasants harassed Batista’s forces in the foothills and plains of Oriente Province. These peasents also provided direct military support to Castro’s main forces by protecting supply lines and by sharing intelligence. Ultimately, the mountains came under Castro’s control.
Batista finally responded to Castro’s efforts with an attack on the mountains called Operation Verano, known to the rebels as la Ofensiva. The army sent some 12,000 soldiers into the mountains. In a series of small skirmishes, Castro’s determined guerrillas defeated the Cuban army. In the Battle of La Plata in July 1958, Castro’s forces defeated an entire battalion, capturing 240 men while losing just 3 of their own. However, the tide nearly turned on 29 July 1958, when Batista’s troops almost destroyed Castro’s small army of some 300 men at the Battle of Las Mercedes. With his forces pinned down by superior numbers, Castro asked for, and received, a temporary cease-fire on 1 August. Over the next seven days, while fruitless negotiations took place, Castro’s forces gradually escaped from the trap. By 8 August, Castro’s entire army had escaped back into the mountains, and Operation Verano had effectively ended in failure for the Batista government. After the defeat of Batista’s ofensiva, Castro’s forces began their own offensive directing attacks on four fronts. Descending from the mountains with new weapons captured during the ofensiva and smuggled in by plane, Castro’s forces won a series of initial victories.
On 31 December 1958, the Battle of Santa Clara took place in a scene of great confusion. The city of Santa Clara fell to the combined forces of Che Guevara, Cienfuegos, Revolutionary Directorate (RD) rebels led by Comandante Rolando Cubela. News of these defeats caused Batista to panic. He fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic just hours later on 1 January 1959. Comandante William Alexander Morgan, leading RD rebel forces, continued fighting as Batista departed, and had captured the city of Cienfuegos by 2 January. Castro learned of Batista’s flight in the morning and immediately started negotiations to take over Santiago de Cuba. On 2 January, the military commander in the city, Colonel Rubido, ordered his soldiers not to fight, and Castro’s forces took over the city. The forces of Guevara and Cienfuegos entered Havana at about the same time. They had met no opposition on their journey from Santa Clara to Cuba’s capital. Castro himself arrived in Havana on 8 January after a long victory march.
Aftermath
Initially in an effort to court, or at least confuse, the American government, Castro installed anti-communists, Havard graduates and political moderates in the new regime. The radical opinions of Che were far from invisible though. The pretence of non-alignment could not last long. In 1960, using laws drafted by Guevara, revolutionary Cuba seized thousands of acres of private property, most notably that owned by American capitalists. The Soviet Union could only afford to maitain a safe distance from such a thorn in it’s opponents’ side for so long. Che had been sent on secret diplomatic missions to meet Soviet officials, after which Kremlin interaction with Cuba increased rapidly.
At this point radicals took centre stage. Moderates resigned who were levered from power, Fidel assumed the presidency and Che took charge of econonmic reform. The US orchestrated a campaign to oust Castro by demanding he call elections. The response was a massive demonstration of hundreds of thousands on May Day, of armed Cubans chanting, “Revolution- Yes – Elections -No.”
Within Cuba itself a massive radicalisation of workers, poor peasants and youth was taking place alongside a polarisation within the government. Vendors were selling fruit juice on the streets to raise money for the state and the revolution.
Kruschev, the Soviet leader, committed to buy the newly nationalised sugar exports which Kennedy had rejected. US-led arms and trade embargos followed. While uncertainty exists over the depth of KGB operations in Cuba, Eastern bloc military hardware and Soviet ballistic missiles were being shipped to Cuba within eighteen months of the revolution. The resultasnt nuclear face-off in October 1962 – the Cuban missile crisis – underlined how high the stakes were that Castro and his band of former mountain guerillas were now playing for.
More than anybody else in Cuba, Che now terrified US imperialism with what he was preaching. He anticipated the onslaught from the US government which would follow the adoption of more radical policies. He delivered a speech, ‘Social Projections of the Rebel Army”. Che proclaimed: “Our revolution is intimately linked to all the underdeveloped countries of Latin America. The revolution is not limited to the Cuban nation because it has touched the conscience of (Latin) America and seriously alerted the enemies of our peoples. The revolution has put the Latin American tyrants on guard because these are the enemies of popular regimes, as are the monopolistic foreign companies…… Today, all the people of Cuba are on a war footing and should remain so, so that the victory against the dictatorship is not a passing one but becomes the first step to the victory of (Latin) America.”
It was a call to revolutionaries throughout Latin America and a declaration of war against US interests. The US was adopting a policy aimed at strangling the measures being taken by the new regime. Castro retaliated to the trade embrago with a decree legalising the nationalisation of all foreign assets. In October, 383 large Cuban industries and the banks were taken over by the state. Capitalism was snuffed out. Soon after, Castro for the first time proclaimed the revolution in Cuba as “Socialist”.
Eventually though, in the face of increased pressure from the US and therefore increased reliance on the USSR a Stalinist bureacuracy manifested itself in Cuba with the resultant impositions on personal freedom. This has only worsened since the collapse of the USSR in the early 90s.
Che meanwhile reacted with hostility to what he saw in the Soviet Union. On one visit, invited to dinner in the apartment of a government official, he ate his meal on the finest imported French porcelain. During the dinner he turned to his host and sarcastically quipped: “So, the proletariat here eats off French porcelain, eh?” Although repelled by what he saw in the USSR and frustrated by the emerging bureaucratic methods and mistakes in Cuba, Che had no clear alternative. His central weakness, the lack of an understanding of the role of the working class in the revolution and in consciously planning and running society, now prevented him from developing a viable alternative policy. To this must be added his lack of any worked out explanation about the Stalinist states in the USSR and Eastern Europe. From a Marxist point of view, both of these deficiencies in his ideas would conspire against him. He correctly looked to extend the revolution beyond Cuba’s borders but failed to grasp how this could be done.
Conclusion
Che’s revolutionary yearnings took him first to the Congo and then to Bolivia where he ultimately met his death. The tragedy of Che was that his heroism was not linked with a fully rounded-out programme and ideas which could bring about the objective he aspired to – an international socialist revolution. The necessity of achieving this is more urgent than ever. It will be accomplished if today’s revolutionaries learn from the experience of Che Guevara’s struggle and emulate his audacity and self-sacrifice in the struggle to bring about a socialist society.
For me Che wasn’t, as Satre said the most the complete human being of his age, but most fundamentally he had the potential to be the most complete human being of all time. Amongst Che’s possesions when he died was some of the works of Leon Trotsky. Who knows what this heroic, courageous, passionate and beautiful Marxist revolutionary would have achieved, armed with the programme of Trotsky! Nevertheless he shall correctly, forever remain a symbol of struggle for Marxists and oppressed masses the world over.
As for Cuba four decades after Che’s death it is once again at a cross-roads. Against the background of a transformed international situation the threat of counter-revolution and capitalist restoration threatens. US imperialism has once again tightened its grip and is spearheading attempts to overthrow the communist regime and recapture a playground for business tycoons.
With the loss of favourable trading arrangements with the former USSR in 1990/91 Cuba was plunged into economic crisis. This has been compounded by the attempts of US imperialism to isolate Cuba with the imposition of a brutal trade embargo aimed at strangling the economy. Every US President since the Cuban Revolution in 1959 has attempted to take measures aimed at bringing about the downfall of the Castro regime and restoring capitalism. Castro (despite last year handing power to his brother) much to the irritation of the occupants of the White House, has survived nine US Presidents, each of which underestimated the massive support which existed in Cuba for the revolution – despite the absence of a genuine regime of workers’ democracy.
However, the past gains of the Cuban Revolution are now under threat as the prospect of capitalist restoration looms. The regime, confronting the loss of economic support from the former USSR and isolation, has been driven to adopt a new economic policy. This has opened it up to foreign investment and ownership of sections of the economy, legalised the circulation of the US dollar and begun to threaten the existence of a centrally planned economy.
The apparent defence by Castro of the revolution and “socialism” in the face of imperialist aggression from the USA has re-enforced support for Cuba in the minds of many youth and workers internationally during the last five years. For many Cuba is now seen as the only regime which is still defending socialism and fighting the threat of imperialist aggression and capitalist restoration. The international workers’ movement has a responsibility to oppose all aggression by imperialism and attempts to restore capitalism in Cuba as it must never be forgotten that Cuba has continued to set an example to the world of what can be achieved if an economy is organised according to people’s needs rather than corporate profits.
One of the first tasks of the revolution was to eradicate illiteracy, achieved within a year with the aid of hundreds of thousands of volunteers. Quality, free education is now universally available to all Cubans, and thousands of Cuban teachers are volunteering in dozens of countries around the world. The story is similar for health care. Before the revolution, the life expectancy of Cubans was only 58 years, the country’s 6300 doctors demanded exorbitant fees that placed treatment beyond the reach of most and there was only one hospital in rural Cuba. Today, world-class healthcare is universally free in Cuba and in 2008, Cuban life expectancy was 78 years — more comparable to developed countries than Cuba’s poor neighbours. In 2008, infant mortality in Cuba reached a new low of 4.7 per thousand births, well below the US rate of 6.4 per thousand, and the world average of 52. Cuba has more than 70,000 doctors — the most per capita in the world — and tens of thousands of these are volunteering in more than 80 countries, including Venezuela, Bolivia, the Solomon Islands and in East Timor, where there are currently over 300 Cuban doctors.
At the same time it is necessary to see what lies behind the defence of “socialism” by Castro and the Cuban bureaucracy. Thankfully a section of it is resisting attempts to move towards capitalist restoration. In part this is because it does not want to abandon the social gains conquered by the revolution and preside over the misery and chaos which a return to capitalism would mean in Cuba. But those sections of the leadership which are more inclined towards capitalist restoration are likely to be more assertive with the death of Castro who, at 85, is in ailing health.
The establishment of genuine workers’ councils, locally and nationally, which have control and management of the economy are essential. All representatives and officials must be elected, subject to recall by those they represent and receive only the average wage of a skilled worker.
There must be an ending of the one party regime which exists. This is often justified because of the threat to the revolution from imperialism. This threat is real but will not be averted by only allowing the party of the bureaucracy to organise itself. All parties which are opposed to imperialism and defend the idea of a socialist planned economy should be allowed to organise, conduct propaganda and stand candidates in elections. Independent trade unions need to be established.
The threat posed by imperialism and capitalist restoration in Cuba can only be avoided through the victory of the socialist revolution in Cuba and throughout Latin America and internationally. This would win the support of the working class in Latin America and put pressure on socialist leaders Morales and Chavez to establish a true socialist state in Bolivia and Venezuela respectively and to then establish a Socialist Federation of the continent. This would be the start of worldwide revolution and the foundation of Che’s dream, international socialism.
For further reading see “Che Guevara ~ Symbol of Struggle” by Tony Saunois of the Committee for a Worker’s International.
This is a written version of a lead off first given at a Llanelli & West Wales Socialist Party branch meeting on 22 May 2012.
In Cuba itself, where Che was a charistmatic and powerful leader of the revolution of 1959, his face picked out in neon lights decorates several floors of a building in Revolution Square in Havana. And on posters and hoardings Che’s image sits beside propaganda to support the Cuban government. Che’s face fills the public spaces of Cuban cities rather than the man who has dominated Cuban life ever since the revolution: Fidel Castro.
There is now an entirely new generation who instantly recognise the deep eyes and wispy beard of Guevara, who wear the T-shirt and buy the enormous variety of consumer goods that carry that famous image. Even though many have little memory of the Cuban revolution and the details of Che’s life aren’t well known; there seems to be wide ackonowledgement that the face has a symbolic power and a meaning that everyone understands. The symbolism of Che, the beret, the star and the red scarf, is a call for something different, a call for revoltution to transform society. That project has a general characther. It is generous, honest, selfless and romantic. And it is youthful. Most fundamentally though it is Socialist.
Che
Ernesto Che Guevara’s birth happened under a garb of ambiguity. Guevara’s birth certificate records his birthday as June 14, 1928. His real birth date was on May 14, 1928. In a way this typified the way Che spent most of his adult life. He was born in Rosario, Argentina, the eldest of five children in an Argentine family of Spanish, Basque and Irish descent. In reference to Che’s “restless” nature, his father declared “the first thing to note is that in my son’s veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels. Very early on in life Ernestito (as he was then called) developed an “affinity for the poor”. Growing up in a family with leftist leanings, Guevara was introduced to a wide spectrum of political perspectives even as a boy. His father, a staunch supporter of Republicans from the Spanish Civil War, often hosted many veterans from the conflict in the Guevara home.
During adolescence he found the Guevara home contained more than 3,000 books, which allowed him to be an enthusiastic and eclectic reader, with interests including Karl Marx, William Faulkner and Jules Verne. Additionally, he enjoyed the works of Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Vladimir Lenin, Friedrich Engels and Jean-Paul Sartre (who would later describe Che as the most complete human being of our time).
As he grew older, he developed an interest in the Latin American writers Ciro Alegría, Rubén Darío, and Miguel Asturias. Many of these authors’ ideas he cataloged in his own handwritten notebooks of concepts, definitions, and philosophies of influential intellectuals. These included composing sketches of Buddha and Aristotle, along with examining Bertrand Russell on love and patriotism, Jack London on society, and Nietzsche on the idea of death. Sigmund Freud’s ideas fascinated him as he quoted him on a variety of topics from dreams and libido to narcissism and the oedipus complex. His favorite subjects in school included philosophy, political science, sociology, history and archaeology. Years later, a 1958, declassified CIA ‘biographical and personality report’ would make note of Guevara’s wide range of academic interests and intellect, describing him as “quite well read” while adding that “Che is fairly intellectual for a Latino.”
His main objective though at this point was still to qualify as a doctor with a view to helping the sick and the poor. However, within him a passion for travel was beginning to develop. Initially this was within Argentina itself and then later he undertook two journeys which brought him throughout Latin America and eventually beyond.
The experiences which he encountered during this Odyssey changed his perception of the tasks necessary to end poverty and exploitation. It was during the adventures and events which he witnessed on these journeys that Che eventually embraced socialist ideas.
Che’s first international tours took place in the early 50s. These had a more pronounced effect and ultimately changed the direction of his entire life. At first Che Guevara was content to play the role of an observer at the beginning of his voyage. As it progressed he was eventually increasingly drawn into the revolutionary struggle which ultimately cost him his life.
At the outset of his voyage he and his traveling companion, Alberto, were more interested in having a good time and gaining some medical experience as they toured South America on a Harley Davidson. Che’s Motor Cycle Diaries provide brilliant examples of this. Drunken brawls, romantic encounters and other, “youthful” adventures, dominated the trip they were making around the continent. As they crossed the border into Chile they passed themselves off as leprologists. Frequently they had to flee local towns and villages having aroused the wrath of the local peasants, especially fathers with attractive daughters. During this first trip Che led the largely bohemian and carefree existence which reflected the independent spirit which marked his character.
However, whilst it is this aspect of the trip which is the dominant feature in his diary, other experiences had an important impact on him. The poverty and conditions he witnessed increasingly aroused a profound social awareness. Che’s anger at the indifference shown towards the poor by the ruling class was being stirred during his travels.
Whilst encamped at the Chilean port of Valparaíso, Che was asked to use his medical skills to try and help an elderly woman who it transpired was dying of chronic asthma (which Che himself suffered terribly from all his life). There was little he could do but the experience of trying to treat her, surrounded by poverty, evidently left its mark. Afterwards he wrote: ” There, in the final moments of people whose farthest horizon is always tomorrow, one sees the tragedy that enfolds the lives of the proletariat throughout the whole world; in those dying eyes there is a submissive apology and also frequently, a desperate plea for consolation that is lost in the void, just as their body will soon be lost in the magnitude of misery surrounding us. How long this order of things based on an absurd sense of caste will continue is not within my means to answer, but it is time that those who govern dedicate less time to propagandising the compassion of their regimes and more money, much more money, sponsoring works of social utility.”
Unable to get a boat to Easter Island as they intended Che and his companion headed north, eventually arriving at Chuquicamata, the world’s largest open cast copper mine. “Chuqui” as it is still known in Chile today, was owned by US monopolies such as Anaconda and Kennecott. US ownership of the mines at “Chuqui” was a symbol of imperialist “gringo” domination of Chile. They were eventually nationalised by the Popular Unity government, led by Salvador Allende of the Socialist Party, between 1970 and 1973.
It was here Che and Alberto encountered the harsh realities of class struggle. They met a former miner and his wife, both members of the then illegal Chilean Communist Party. Che was told the bitter story of repression, disappearances and black-listing used by the company and government against those who tried to fight for workers’ rights. Che and Alberto succeeded in entering the mine where a strike was being prepared.
This visit to Chuqui made a lasting impression on Che and he kept a note book on the experience in which he detailed not only the impressions he had of the workers, but also production techniques and the political importance of the mines for Chile. Referring to the mineral rich mountains he protested about the “exploited proletariat” and environmental destruction of the landscape.
The next stop on his Odyssey was Peru which proved decisive in Che embracing socialist ideas through an encounter with a prominent leader of the Peruvian Communist Party, Doctor Hugo Pesce. The discussions with Pesce evidently had a profound effect upon Che. A decade later he sent the doctor a copy of his first book, Guerrilla Warfare, with the inscription, “To Doctor Hugo Pesce who, without knowing it perhaps, provoked a great change in my attitude towards life and society, with the same adventurous spirit as always, but channelled toward goals more harmonious with the needs of America.”
At a party to celebrate his twenty fourth birthday in Peru, Che made a toast declaring “…that (Latin) America’s division into illusory and uncertain nationalities is completely fictitious. We constitute a single mestizo race, which from Mexico to the Straights of Magellan presents notable ethnographic similarities. For this, in an attempt to rid myself of the weight of any meagre provincialism, I raise a toast to Peru and for a United America.”
This spirit of internationalism was a theme to which Che returned many times and he soon realised the aspiration of the masses to unify Latin America is not possible to obtain within the context of capitalism because the ruling capitalist class of each Latin American nation have their own economic and political interests to defend. They are also linked by economic and material interests to imperialism from which they cannot break free. Imperialism itself also opposes unity of the continent under capitalism, generally preferring to impose its will on a number of states weaker than itself. The establishment of a democratic federation of Latin American states, as a step to unify the continent is only possible by breaking free of capitalism and imperialism and building socialism.
Once back in Argentina Che’s family hoped that his days as a vagabond would end and that he would take up his chosen profession, medicine. Che completed his studies during April 1953 and received his doctor’s degree in June, a few days prior to his twenty fifth birthday. However Che soon set out again to visit other parts of Latin America with Che gravitating to the idea of committing himself to a life of disciplined and self-sacrificing revolutionary struggle.
Cuba
At the time of Che’s travels through the Americas, Cuba laboured under the Batista regime, Batista was a former army officer who, despite the pretense of independence had essentially run Cuba as a puppet leader for the United States since 1940. Batista had revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor. Havana and other Cuban cities became a playground for the rich Americans who visited the island and in a manner that antagonized the Cuban people, the U.S. government used their influence to advance the interests of and increase the profits of the private American companies, which “dominated the island’s economy.”
In 1953 Che, was in Guatemala where a “socialist” experiment was taking place that had drawn thousands from all over Latin America,to see first hand the challenge to US imperialism. Che secured work as a doctor in a hospital and was introduced to Hilda Gadea, an exiled leader of the youth wing of the radical populist Peruvian movement. She introduced him to activists and leaders of various political groupings and gave him political works to study, including some works of Mao. It was during these events that Che encountered a number of Cuban exiles. They had been given asylum by the Arbenz regime and had participated in an attempted assault on July 26 1953 against the Moncada military barracks in Cuba. For the first time Che began to discover the struggle developing against the Cuban Batista regime.
Arbenz was later defeated and Che fled to Mexico and it was while Che was here that he initially met one of the leaders of the July 26th Movement fighting the Batista dictatorship in Cuba, Fidel Castro. Their first meeting was during 1955, after which Che eventually joined the Movement. Che was drawn to the July 26th Movement rather than the Cuban Communist Party due to the policies advocated by the Stalinist Communist parties in Latin America at the time.
Born the illegitimate son of a wealthy farmer, Castro had became involved in leftist anti-imperialist politics while studying law at university. Involving himself in armed rebellions against right-wing governments in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, he concluded that the U.S.-backed Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, who was widely seen as a dictator, had to be overthrown; to this end he led a failed armed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. When Che finally met Castro the immediate prospect of a struggle which was offered to him by Castro and his movement together with his “well-defined convictions” finally led Che to accept that “iron discipline” which he had previously rejected. Che subsequently threw himself into the struggle body and soul as preparations were undertaken to land in Cuba and begin the “revolution” during 1956. However, the group was arrested in Mexico and then released. From prison Che wrote to his parents: “My future is linked with that of the Cuban revolution. I either triumph with it or die there”.
His commitment to the cause of revolution was now his entire life. This spirit is indispensable to defeat capitalism and win a revolution. It is the quality in Che which those fighting to free the working class and exploited classes today need to emulate. As he engaged directly in revolutionary struggle his self-sacrifice was to become very evident. At the same time his ideas developed in a one-sided manner. He based himself on the peasantry and guerrilla struggle. This is one important aspect of the Marxist policy which applies in the rural areas where a peasant class exists. The other though is the question of the role of the working class in urban centres is also of decisive importance. This is true even in countries where the working class which form a relatively small section of the population.
The revolutionaries, 80 strong, led by Fidel, his brother Raul and Che finally landed in Cuba on a boat called the Granma. It arrived two days later than planned because the boat was heavily loaded which dashed any hopes for a coordinated attack with the llano wing of the movement so the band of rebels began to make their way into the Sierra Maestra mountains, southeastern Cuba. Three days after the trek began, Batista’s army attacked and killed most of the Granma participants – no more than twenty of the original eighty-two men survived the initial bloody encounters with the Cuban army and escaped into the mountains. The dispersed survivors, alone or in small groups, wandered through the mountains, looking for each other. Eventually, the men would link up again – with the help of peasant sympathizers – and would form the core leadership of the guerrilla army.
On 13 March 1957, a separate group of revolutionaries – the anticommunist Revolutionary Directorate (RD), composed mostly of students – stormed the Presidential Palace in Havana, attempting to assassinate Batista. The attack was suicidal. The RD’s leader, student Jose Antonio Echeverria, died in a shootout with Batista’s forces at the Havana radio station he had seized to spread the news of Batista’s death. The handful of survivors included Dr. Humberto Castello and Rolando Cubela who would later play roles in the revolution. Batista’s support among Cubans began to fade, former supporters either joining the revolutionaries or distancing themselves from Batista. American capitalists however continued their support.The regime resorted to often brutal methods to keep Cuba’s cities under government control. But in the Sierra Maestra mountains, Castro staged successful attacks on small garrisons of Batista’s troops. Che Guevara and Raúl Castro helped Fidel to consolidate his political control in the mountains, in addition, poorly armed peasants harassed Batista’s forces in the foothills and plains of Oriente Province. These peasents also provided direct military support to Castro’s main forces by protecting supply lines and by sharing intelligence. Ultimately, the mountains came under Castro’s control.
Batista finally responded to Castro’s efforts with an attack on the mountains called Operation Verano, known to the rebels as la Ofensiva. The army sent some 12,000 soldiers into the mountains. In a series of small skirmishes, Castro’s determined guerrillas defeated the Cuban army. In the Battle of La Plata in July 1958, Castro’s forces defeated an entire battalion, capturing 240 men while losing just 3 of their own. However, the tide nearly turned on 29 July 1958, when Batista’s troops almost destroyed Castro’s small army of some 300 men at the Battle of Las Mercedes. With his forces pinned down by superior numbers, Castro asked for, and received, a temporary cease-fire on 1 August. Over the next seven days, while fruitless negotiations took place, Castro’s forces gradually escaped from the trap. By 8 August, Castro’s entire army had escaped back into the mountains, and Operation Verano had effectively ended in failure for the Batista government. After the defeat of Batista’s ofensiva, Castro’s forces began their own offensive directing attacks on four fronts. Descending from the mountains with new weapons captured during the ofensiva and smuggled in by plane, Castro’s forces won a series of initial victories.
On 31 December 1958, the Battle of Santa Clara took place in a scene of great confusion. The city of Santa Clara fell to the combined forces of Che Guevara, Cienfuegos, Revolutionary Directorate (RD) rebels led by Comandante Rolando Cubela. News of these defeats caused Batista to panic. He fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic just hours later on 1 January 1959. Comandante William Alexander Morgan, leading RD rebel forces, continued fighting as Batista departed, and had captured the city of Cienfuegos by 2 January. Castro learned of Batista’s flight in the morning and immediately started negotiations to take over Santiago de Cuba. On 2 January, the military commander in the city, Colonel Rubido, ordered his soldiers not to fight, and Castro’s forces took over the city. The forces of Guevara and Cienfuegos entered Havana at about the same time. They had met no opposition on their journey from Santa Clara to Cuba’s capital. Castro himself arrived in Havana on 8 January after a long victory march.
Aftermath
Initially in an effort to court, or at least confuse, the American government, Castro installed anti-communists, Havard graduates and political moderates in the new regime. The radical opinions of Che were far from invisible though. The pretence of non-alignment could not last long. In 1960, using laws drafted by Guevara, revolutionary Cuba seized thousands of acres of private property, most notably that owned by American capitalists. The Soviet Union could only afford to maitain a safe distance from such a thorn in it’s opponents’ side for so long. Che had been sent on secret diplomatic missions to meet Soviet officials, after which Kremlin interaction with Cuba increased rapidly.
At this point radicals took centre stage. Moderates resigned who were levered from power, Fidel assumed the presidency and Che took charge of econonmic reform. The US orchestrated a campaign to oust Castro by demanding he call elections. The response was a massive demonstration of hundreds of thousands on May Day, of armed Cubans chanting, “Revolution- Yes – Elections -No.”
Within Cuba itself a massive radicalisation of workers, poor peasants and youth was taking place alongside a polarisation within the government. Vendors were selling fruit juice on the streets to raise money for the state and the revolution.
Kruschev, the Soviet leader, committed to buy the newly nationalised sugar exports which Kennedy had rejected. US-led arms and trade embargos followed. While uncertainty exists over the depth of KGB operations in Cuba, Eastern bloc military hardware and Soviet ballistic missiles were being shipped to Cuba within eighteen months of the revolution. The resultasnt nuclear face-off in October 1962 – the Cuban missile crisis – underlined how high the stakes were that Castro and his band of former mountain guerillas were now playing for.
More than anybody else in Cuba, Che now terrified US imperialism with what he was preaching. He anticipated the onslaught from the US government which would follow the adoption of more radical policies. He delivered a speech, ‘Social Projections of the Rebel Army”. Che proclaimed: “Our revolution is intimately linked to all the underdeveloped countries of Latin America. The revolution is not limited to the Cuban nation because it has touched the conscience of (Latin) America and seriously alerted the enemies of our peoples. The revolution has put the Latin American tyrants on guard because these are the enemies of popular regimes, as are the monopolistic foreign companies…… Today, all the people of Cuba are on a war footing and should remain so, so that the victory against the dictatorship is not a passing one but becomes the first step to the victory of (Latin) America.”
It was a call to revolutionaries throughout Latin America and a declaration of war against US interests. The US was adopting a policy aimed at strangling the measures being taken by the new regime. Castro retaliated to the trade embrago with a decree legalising the nationalisation of all foreign assets. In October, 383 large Cuban industries and the banks were taken over by the state. Capitalism was snuffed out. Soon after, Castro for the first time proclaimed the revolution in Cuba as “Socialist”.
Eventually though, in the face of increased pressure from the US and therefore increased reliance on the USSR a Stalinist bureacuracy manifested itself in Cuba with the resultant impositions on personal freedom. This has only worsened since the collapse of the USSR in the early 90s.
Che meanwhile reacted with hostility to what he saw in the Soviet Union. On one visit, invited to dinner in the apartment of a government official, he ate his meal on the finest imported French porcelain. During the dinner he turned to his host and sarcastically quipped: “So, the proletariat here eats off French porcelain, eh?” Although repelled by what he saw in the USSR and frustrated by the emerging bureaucratic methods and mistakes in Cuba, Che had no clear alternative. His central weakness, the lack of an understanding of the role of the working class in the revolution and in consciously planning and running society, now prevented him from developing a viable alternative policy. To this must be added his lack of any worked out explanation about the Stalinist states in the USSR and Eastern Europe. From a Marxist point of view, both of these deficiencies in his ideas would conspire against him. He correctly looked to extend the revolution beyond Cuba’s borders but failed to grasp how this could be done.
Conclusion
Che’s revolutionary yearnings took him first to the Congo and then to Bolivia where he ultimately met his death. The tragedy of Che was that his heroism was not linked with a fully rounded-out programme and ideas which could bring about the objective he aspired to – an international socialist revolution. The necessity of achieving this is more urgent than ever. It will be accomplished if today’s revolutionaries learn from the experience of Che Guevara’s struggle and emulate his audacity and self-sacrifice in the struggle to bring about a socialist society.
For me Che wasn’t, as Satre said the most the complete human being of his age, but most fundamentally he had the potential to be the most complete human being of all time. Amongst Che’s possesions when he died was some of the works of Leon Trotsky. Who knows what this heroic, courageous, passionate and beautiful Marxist revolutionary would have achieved, armed with the programme of Trotsky! Nevertheless he shall correctly, forever remain a symbol of struggle for Marxists and oppressed masses the world over.
As for Cuba four decades after Che’s death it is once again at a cross-roads. Against the background of a transformed international situation the threat of counter-revolution and capitalist restoration threatens. US imperialism has once again tightened its grip and is spearheading attempts to overthrow the communist regime and recapture a playground for business tycoons.
With the loss of favourable trading arrangements with the former USSR in 1990/91 Cuba was plunged into economic crisis. This has been compounded by the attempts of US imperialism to isolate Cuba with the imposition of a brutal trade embargo aimed at strangling the economy. Every US President since the Cuban Revolution in 1959 has attempted to take measures aimed at bringing about the downfall of the Castro regime and restoring capitalism. Castro (despite last year handing power to his brother) much to the irritation of the occupants of the White House, has survived nine US Presidents, each of which underestimated the massive support which existed in Cuba for the revolution – despite the absence of a genuine regime of workers’ democracy.
However, the past gains of the Cuban Revolution are now under threat as the prospect of capitalist restoration looms. The regime, confronting the loss of economic support from the former USSR and isolation, has been driven to adopt a new economic policy. This has opened it up to foreign investment and ownership of sections of the economy, legalised the circulation of the US dollar and begun to threaten the existence of a centrally planned economy.
The apparent defence by Castro of the revolution and “socialism” in the face of imperialist aggression from the USA has re-enforced support for Cuba in the minds of many youth and workers internationally during the last five years. For many Cuba is now seen as the only regime which is still defending socialism and fighting the threat of imperialist aggression and capitalist restoration. The international workers’ movement has a responsibility to oppose all aggression by imperialism and attempts to restore capitalism in Cuba as it must never be forgotten that Cuba has continued to set an example to the world of what can be achieved if an economy is organised according to people’s needs rather than corporate profits.
One of the first tasks of the revolution was to eradicate illiteracy, achieved within a year with the aid of hundreds of thousands of volunteers. Quality, free education is now universally available to all Cubans, and thousands of Cuban teachers are volunteering in dozens of countries around the world. The story is similar for health care. Before the revolution, the life expectancy of Cubans was only 58 years, the country’s 6300 doctors demanded exorbitant fees that placed treatment beyond the reach of most and there was only one hospital in rural Cuba. Today, world-class healthcare is universally free in Cuba and in 2008, Cuban life expectancy was 78 years — more comparable to developed countries than Cuba’s poor neighbours. In 2008, infant mortality in Cuba reached a new low of 4.7 per thousand births, well below the US rate of 6.4 per thousand, and the world average of 52. Cuba has more than 70,000 doctors — the most per capita in the world — and tens of thousands of these are volunteering in more than 80 countries, including Venezuela, Bolivia, the Solomon Islands and in East Timor, where there are currently over 300 Cuban doctors.
At the same time it is necessary to see what lies behind the defence of “socialism” by Castro and the Cuban bureaucracy. Thankfully a section of it is resisting attempts to move towards capitalist restoration. In part this is because it does not want to abandon the social gains conquered by the revolution and preside over the misery and chaos which a return to capitalism would mean in Cuba. But those sections of the leadership which are more inclined towards capitalist restoration are likely to be more assertive with the death of Castro who, at 85, is in ailing health.
The establishment of genuine workers’ councils, locally and nationally, which have control and management of the economy are essential. All representatives and officials must be elected, subject to recall by those they represent and receive only the average wage of a skilled worker.
There must be an ending of the one party regime which exists. This is often justified because of the threat to the revolution from imperialism. This threat is real but will not be averted by only allowing the party of the bureaucracy to organise itself. All parties which are opposed to imperialism and defend the idea of a socialist planned economy should be allowed to organise, conduct propaganda and stand candidates in elections. Independent trade unions need to be established.
The threat posed by imperialism and capitalist restoration in Cuba can only be avoided through the victory of the socialist revolution in Cuba and throughout Latin America and internationally. This would win the support of the working class in Latin America and put pressure on socialist leaders Morales and Chavez to establish a true socialist state in Bolivia and Venezuela respectively and to then establish a Socialist Federation of the continent. This would be the start of worldwide revolution and the foundation of Che’s dream, international socialism.
For further reading see “Che Guevara ~ Symbol of Struggle” by Tony Saunois of the Committee for a Worker’s International.
This is a written version of a lead off first given at a Llanelli & West Wales Socialist Party branch meeting on 22 May 2012.
Monday, 23 April 2012
No such thing as a national interest only class interest
We are often told that a certain thing has to happen in the national interest we need to make cuts to reduce our deficit in the national interest is one notable one. But what is this so called national interest?
It certainly doesn’t cover all of us as the 99% are facing all of the cuts while the 1% increases their wealth.
The politicians in the UK and across Europe whether on the centre left or centre right you can hardly tell the difference these days all talk of acting in the national interest but this can be translated to in the interest of the markets, the city and the capitalist system. When Ed Miliband told David Cameron he should be looking after the British interest he meant the city of London’s interest. It is clear to me as a Marxist who sees the world in a class based system not through wish but through reality and the ways things are.
As I explained above the rich and the ruling class do not share the same interests as the poorest in society and the workers the working class’s if you like. The workers wish to improve their life their pay, conditions and living standards all the time while the rich 1% look to hang on to their wealth and only look to invest when they can see a profit opportunity and increasing their already vast wealth’s.
So I for one do not believe there is such thing as a “national interest” a nations interests are bound up in a class based society whose interests are polar opposites.
For me until the class based system of exploitation is abolished for good this will continue to haunt us. With the use of language in a broad sense of a national interest the ruling class and their capitalist politicians who do their bidding like to try and distort class lines and try and catch all in affect claiming we are “all in this together” is another well known one from this present time. It’s to distort the true reason behind the capitalist crisis and also lay the blame at ordinary peoples doors, even though they played no part in such things. Its to pass the burden like is happening right now that we all must pay for this mess we are in and we all spent too much which frankly is just not true at all.
So I and others struggle for a new society a better society based in the interests of all not a fictitious national interest how about a socialist interest.
Under socialism there would not be nations as such any borders at least. This is not possible under capitalism due to the havoc it would cause but under socialism and eventually communism this would be possibly with free moving people as all would have access to what they need there would be no great reason to move about to a better area for a job or house as the idea would be that you could have that where you are if you so wish.
Socialism can only be democratic. At one time Socialism was known also as "social democracy", a phrase which shows well that democratic control would extend to all aspects of social affairs, including the production and distribution of wealth. There is an old socialist slogan which speaks of "government over people" giving way to "the administration of things"; meaning that the public power of coercion, and the government that operates it, will have no place in Socialism.
The State, which is an organisation composed of soldiers, policemen, judges and gaolers charged with enforcing the laws, is only needed in class society for in such societies there is no community of interest, only class conflict. The purpose of government is to maintain law and order in the interests of the dominant class. It is in fact an instrument of class oppression.
In socialism there will be no classes and no built-in class conflicts: everyone will have the same basic social interest. There will be genuine social harmony and community of interest. In these circumstances there is no need for any coercive machine to govern or rule over people. The phrase "socialist government" is a contradiction in terms. Where there is Socialism there is no government and where there is government there is no Socialism.
Those who wrongly assume that government and administration is one and the same thing will have some difficulty in imagining a society without government. A society without administration would indeed be impossible since "society" implies that human beings organise themselves to provide for their needs. But a society without government is both possible and desirable. Socialism will in fact mean the extension of democratic administration to all aspects of social life on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production and distribution. There will be administrative centres but they will merely be clearing-houses for settling social affairs.
But will not the administrators become the new ruling class? Democratic organisation does indeed involve the delegation of functions to groups and individuals. Such people will be charged by the community with organising necessary social functions. They will be chosen by the community and will be answerable to it. Those who perform the administrative functions in Socialism would be in no position to dominate. They will not be regarded as superior persons, as tends to be the case today, but as social equals doing just an essential job. Nor will they have at their command armies and policemen to enforce their will. There will be no opportunity for bribery and corruption since everybody, including those in administrative jobs, will have free access to the stock of wealth set aside for individual consumption. The material conditions for the rise of a new ruling class would not exist.
The purpose of socialist production will be simply and solely to satisfy human needs. Production solely for use will replace production for the market with a view to profit, in line with the social basis that the means for producing wealth will belong to and be under the democratic control of the entire community. The production and distribution of sufficient wealth to meet the needs of the socialist community as individuals and as a community will be an administrative and organisational problem. It will of course be no small problem but the tools for solving it have already been created by capitalism.
Capitalism has developed technology and social productivity to the point where plenty for all can be produced. A society of abundance has long been technically possible and it is this that is the material basis for Socialism. Capitalism, because it is a class society with production geared to profit-making rather than meeting human needs, cannot make full use of the world-wide productive system it has built up over the past two hundred or so years. Socialism, making full use of the developed methods of production, will alter the purpose of production. Men and women will be producing wealth solely to meet their needs, and not for the profit of the privileged few.
Using techniques for predicting social wants, at present prostituted to the service of capital, socialist society can work out how much and what sort of products and services will be needed over a given period. Men and women will be free to discuss what they would like to be produced. So with social research and after democratic discussion an estimate of what is needed can be made. The next problem is to arrange for these amounts to be produced. Capitalism, in modern computing machines, input-output analysis and information technology, has developed the techniques which socialist society can use.
When the wealth has been produced, apart from that needed to renew and expand the means of production, all will freely take what they feel they need to live and enjoy life. This is what we mean by "free access" There will be no buying and selling, and hence no need for money. What communities and individuals want does not vary greatly except over long periods and it will be a simple administrative task to see that the stores are well-stocked with what people want. If any shortages develop they will not last long. Planned reserves will be produced as a safeguard against unforeseen natural disasters.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is another long-standing socialist slogan. It means what it says: that men and women will freely take part in social production to the best of their abilities and freely take from the fruits of their common labour whatever they need.
Confronted for the first time with this proposal for free distribution according to need, many people are sceptical. What about the lazy man? Or the greedy man? Who will do the dirty work? What will be the incentive to work? These are objections socialists hear time and time again. These are perhaps understandable reactions to what seems, to those who have never thought about it, a startling proposition. As a matter of fact, behind these objections, is a carefully cultivated popular prejudice as to what human nature is. This is dealt in the section "Is human nature a barrier to Socialism?" Suffice it to say here the biological and social science and anthropological research conclusively show that so-called human nature is not a barrier to the establishment of Socialism.
Work, or the expenditure of energy, is both a biological and a social necessity for human beings. They must work to use up the energy generated by eating food. They must work also to provide the food, clothing and shelter they need to live. So in any society, be it feudal, capitalist or socialist, men and women must work. The point at issue is how that work should be organised. A very strong argument against capitalism is that it reduces so central a human activity as work to the drudgery it is for most people, instead of allowing it to provide the pleasure it could, and would be in a socialist society.
To suggest that work could be pleasant often raises a laugh; but this only shows how much capitalism has degraded human life. Most, but certainly not all work under capitalism is done in the service of an employer so that people almost without thinking identify work with employment. Working for an employer is always degrading, often boring and unpleasant and sometimes unhealthy and dangerous. But even under capitalism not all work, as we have defined it, is done in the course of employment. Men and women are working when they clean their cars or dig their gardens or pursue their hobbies -and enjoy themselves at the same time. So close is the misleading association of work and employment that many would not even regard such activities as work. They think anything that is pleasant cannot by definition be work!
There is no reason at all why the work of producing and distributing useful things cannot be as enjoyable as are the leisure activities today. The physical conditions under which work is done can be vastly improved. So can the relations between people at work. Human beings, as free and equal members of a socialist community, will no longer have to sell their mental and physical energies to an employer for a wage or a salary. The degrading wages system will be abolished so that there will be no such thing as employment. Instead work will be done by free men and women co-operating and controlling their conditions of work, getting enjoyment from creating things and doing socially-useful tasks.
In socialist society there will be no social stigma attaching to any kind of work. Nor will there be pressures, such as exist at present, to continue - because they are cheap and therefore profitable to the capitalist -industrial processes which are harmful or dangerous to those engaged in them. In any event, with human needs and enjoyment as the guiding principle, there will be no need for anybody to be tied to the same job continuously. The opportunities for men ands women to develop and exercise their talents and to enjoy doing so will be immense.
Finally, Socialism must be world-wide because the productive system which capitalism has built up and which Socialism will take over is already international. There will be no frontiers and people will be free to travel over the whole earth. Socialism will mean the end to all national oppression -and indeed in its current political sense to all "nations" -and to discriminations on the grounds of race and sex. All the people of the world wherever they live, whatever their skin colour, whatever language they speak, really will be members of one vast human family. Socialism will at last realise the age-old dream of a world-wide community of interests.
It certainly doesn’t cover all of us as the 99% are facing all of the cuts while the 1% increases their wealth.
The politicians in the UK and across Europe whether on the centre left or centre right you can hardly tell the difference these days all talk of acting in the national interest but this can be translated to in the interest of the markets, the city and the capitalist system. When Ed Miliband told David Cameron he should be looking after the British interest he meant the city of London’s interest. It is clear to me as a Marxist who sees the world in a class based system not through wish but through reality and the ways things are.
As I explained above the rich and the ruling class do not share the same interests as the poorest in society and the workers the working class’s if you like. The workers wish to improve their life their pay, conditions and living standards all the time while the rich 1% look to hang on to their wealth and only look to invest when they can see a profit opportunity and increasing their already vast wealth’s.
So I for one do not believe there is such thing as a “national interest” a nations interests are bound up in a class based society whose interests are polar opposites.
For me until the class based system of exploitation is abolished for good this will continue to haunt us. With the use of language in a broad sense of a national interest the ruling class and their capitalist politicians who do their bidding like to try and distort class lines and try and catch all in affect claiming we are “all in this together” is another well known one from this present time. It’s to distort the true reason behind the capitalist crisis and also lay the blame at ordinary peoples doors, even though they played no part in such things. Its to pass the burden like is happening right now that we all must pay for this mess we are in and we all spent too much which frankly is just not true at all.
So I and others struggle for a new society a better society based in the interests of all not a fictitious national interest how about a socialist interest.
Under socialism there would not be nations as such any borders at least. This is not possible under capitalism due to the havoc it would cause but under socialism and eventually communism this would be possibly with free moving people as all would have access to what they need there would be no great reason to move about to a better area for a job or house as the idea would be that you could have that where you are if you so wish.
Socialism can only be democratic. At one time Socialism was known also as "social democracy", a phrase which shows well that democratic control would extend to all aspects of social affairs, including the production and distribution of wealth. There is an old socialist slogan which speaks of "government over people" giving way to "the administration of things"; meaning that the public power of coercion, and the government that operates it, will have no place in Socialism.
The State, which is an organisation composed of soldiers, policemen, judges and gaolers charged with enforcing the laws, is only needed in class society for in such societies there is no community of interest, only class conflict. The purpose of government is to maintain law and order in the interests of the dominant class. It is in fact an instrument of class oppression.
In socialism there will be no classes and no built-in class conflicts: everyone will have the same basic social interest. There will be genuine social harmony and community of interest. In these circumstances there is no need for any coercive machine to govern or rule over people. The phrase "socialist government" is a contradiction in terms. Where there is Socialism there is no government and where there is government there is no Socialism.
Those who wrongly assume that government and administration is one and the same thing will have some difficulty in imagining a society without government. A society without administration would indeed be impossible since "society" implies that human beings organise themselves to provide for their needs. But a society without government is both possible and desirable. Socialism will in fact mean the extension of democratic administration to all aspects of social life on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production and distribution. There will be administrative centres but they will merely be clearing-houses for settling social affairs.
But will not the administrators become the new ruling class? Democratic organisation does indeed involve the delegation of functions to groups and individuals. Such people will be charged by the community with organising necessary social functions. They will be chosen by the community and will be answerable to it. Those who perform the administrative functions in Socialism would be in no position to dominate. They will not be regarded as superior persons, as tends to be the case today, but as social equals doing just an essential job. Nor will they have at their command armies and policemen to enforce their will. There will be no opportunity for bribery and corruption since everybody, including those in administrative jobs, will have free access to the stock of wealth set aside for individual consumption. The material conditions for the rise of a new ruling class would not exist.
The purpose of socialist production will be simply and solely to satisfy human needs. Production solely for use will replace production for the market with a view to profit, in line with the social basis that the means for producing wealth will belong to and be under the democratic control of the entire community. The production and distribution of sufficient wealth to meet the needs of the socialist community as individuals and as a community will be an administrative and organisational problem. It will of course be no small problem but the tools for solving it have already been created by capitalism.
Capitalism has developed technology and social productivity to the point where plenty for all can be produced. A society of abundance has long been technically possible and it is this that is the material basis for Socialism. Capitalism, because it is a class society with production geared to profit-making rather than meeting human needs, cannot make full use of the world-wide productive system it has built up over the past two hundred or so years. Socialism, making full use of the developed methods of production, will alter the purpose of production. Men and women will be producing wealth solely to meet their needs, and not for the profit of the privileged few.
Using techniques for predicting social wants, at present prostituted to the service of capital, socialist society can work out how much and what sort of products and services will be needed over a given period. Men and women will be free to discuss what they would like to be produced. So with social research and after democratic discussion an estimate of what is needed can be made. The next problem is to arrange for these amounts to be produced. Capitalism, in modern computing machines, input-output analysis and information technology, has developed the techniques which socialist society can use.
When the wealth has been produced, apart from that needed to renew and expand the means of production, all will freely take what they feel they need to live and enjoy life. This is what we mean by "free access" There will be no buying and selling, and hence no need for money. What communities and individuals want does not vary greatly except over long periods and it will be a simple administrative task to see that the stores are well-stocked with what people want. If any shortages develop they will not last long. Planned reserves will be produced as a safeguard against unforeseen natural disasters.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is another long-standing socialist slogan. It means what it says: that men and women will freely take part in social production to the best of their abilities and freely take from the fruits of their common labour whatever they need.
Confronted for the first time with this proposal for free distribution according to need, many people are sceptical. What about the lazy man? Or the greedy man? Who will do the dirty work? What will be the incentive to work? These are objections socialists hear time and time again. These are perhaps understandable reactions to what seems, to those who have never thought about it, a startling proposition. As a matter of fact, behind these objections, is a carefully cultivated popular prejudice as to what human nature is. This is dealt in the section "Is human nature a barrier to Socialism?" Suffice it to say here the biological and social science and anthropological research conclusively show that so-called human nature is not a barrier to the establishment of Socialism.
Work, or the expenditure of energy, is both a biological and a social necessity for human beings. They must work to use up the energy generated by eating food. They must work also to provide the food, clothing and shelter they need to live. So in any society, be it feudal, capitalist or socialist, men and women must work. The point at issue is how that work should be organised. A very strong argument against capitalism is that it reduces so central a human activity as work to the drudgery it is for most people, instead of allowing it to provide the pleasure it could, and would be in a socialist society.
To suggest that work could be pleasant often raises a laugh; but this only shows how much capitalism has degraded human life. Most, but certainly not all work under capitalism is done in the service of an employer so that people almost without thinking identify work with employment. Working for an employer is always degrading, often boring and unpleasant and sometimes unhealthy and dangerous. But even under capitalism not all work, as we have defined it, is done in the course of employment. Men and women are working when they clean their cars or dig their gardens or pursue their hobbies -and enjoy themselves at the same time. So close is the misleading association of work and employment that many would not even regard such activities as work. They think anything that is pleasant cannot by definition be work!
There is no reason at all why the work of producing and distributing useful things cannot be as enjoyable as are the leisure activities today. The physical conditions under which work is done can be vastly improved. So can the relations between people at work. Human beings, as free and equal members of a socialist community, will no longer have to sell their mental and physical energies to an employer for a wage or a salary. The degrading wages system will be abolished so that there will be no such thing as employment. Instead work will be done by free men and women co-operating and controlling their conditions of work, getting enjoyment from creating things and doing socially-useful tasks.
In socialist society there will be no social stigma attaching to any kind of work. Nor will there be pressures, such as exist at present, to continue - because they are cheap and therefore profitable to the capitalist -industrial processes which are harmful or dangerous to those engaged in them. In any event, with human needs and enjoyment as the guiding principle, there will be no need for anybody to be tied to the same job continuously. The opportunities for men ands women to develop and exercise their talents and to enjoy doing so will be immense.
Finally, Socialism must be world-wide because the productive system which capitalism has built up and which Socialism will take over is already international. There will be no frontiers and people will be free to travel over the whole earth. Socialism will mean the end to all national oppression -and indeed in its current political sense to all "nations" -and to discriminations on the grounds of race and sex. All the people of the world wherever they live, whatever their skin colour, whatever language they speak, really will be members of one vast human family. Socialism will at last realise the age-old dream of a world-wide community of interests.
Sunday, 8 April 2012
Can a planned economy work by producing for peoples needs?
We are often asked as socialists well how would your socialism work? Well for a start it wouldn’t be ours it would be everyone’s everyone would have a true stake in society at long last.
Capitalism has created enormous wealth, science and technique. We have technology today that was unimaginable a generation ago.
The world economy is 17 times the size it was a century ago. Yet we are being told that the most basic public services - a decent public health service, the right to an affordable home - cannot be afforded by capitalism.
The current crisis is not caused by a bloated public sector but by the worst crisis of capitalism in 70 years. This is a crisis of the private not the public sector.
Yet all the major capitalist parties - Tories, Lib Dem and New Labour agree that it should be the working class and public services that pay for it.
It is clear to me and many others that there is the wealth in society to pay for all that we need. It is a lie that there is no money left and something we must and I mean must smash as there is huge amounts of money out there if it wasn’t so concentrated among a select rich few.
Capitalism has always been a system based on the exploitation of the majority, the working class, for the profits of a few at the top.
There was a brief period, from around 1950-73, when capitalism developed rapidly. At least in the more economically developed countries, including Britain, working-class people were able to win a few crumbs from the capitalists' table.
In Britain, a National Health Service and a mass council house building programme made a real improvement in workers' lives.
However, when capitalism went into crisis, it set about restoring its profits by driving down the share of the wealth taken by the working class. Production was moved abroad to countries with cheaper labour, wages were driven down, and spending on public services was cut back.
During the last boom profits reached an all-time record. However, they had difficulty finding profitable fields to invest in.
Investment in science, technique and production remained at an historic low. Why? Because working-class people lacked the means to buy the goods that could potentially be produced.
This is the terrible reality of capitalism. It does not matter that two billion people are without the most basic necessities of life; they are not 'a market' because they lack the money to buy what is produced.
Instead of investing in industry, the capitalist class made its profits in the last boom by gambling on the world's stock markets in a speculative frenzy. To try and increase their markets the working class got its own little share in the credit frenzy: cheap credit cards and mortgages - not crumbs but bubbles from the table.
How does Socialism create and maintain jobs and keep the economy functioning effectively and growing?
The first thing that would happen under socialism is that unemployment would be eliminated overnight. Even in 2000, during a boom period, the UK had 2 million people unemployed. The cost of this is estimated at £5,000 per family per year in terms of lost production and benefit claims. Under socialism everyone would be guaranteed a job by reducing the working week without loss of pay. The reason this doesn’t happen under capitalism (or at least neo-liberal capitalism) is because getting fewer people to do more work is a fantastic way to make profit! However, as Tony Benn said, if full employment can be used to fight Hitler why can’t it be used to feed people? Jobs would be created for the benefit of society as a whole, not for the bank balances of the rich.
As for allowing the economy to grow; even in a bureaucratically deformed workers’ state with no democracy such the USSR and other planned economies they had production levels that were for decades on a par and often better than in the West. This phenomenon would be magnified in a true socialist society with the active engagement of the population and the ‘oxygen’ of workers’ democracy.
Besides, as we’ve all seen recently, capitalism by no means guarantees economic growth indefinitely. What is happening at the present time is precisely what Karl Marx analysed years before, a classic case of over-production. Products such as cars were produced for people to buy but we could no long afford to buy back the things we had produced. And who suffers as a result of this system? Not the capitalists who caused this crisis but the ordinary workers who one day were in a job (so long as it made profit for the bosses) and the next on the scrapheap! This anarchy and unjust ‘employment strategy’ would be consigned to the dustbin of history.
How does it invest in research and development, and find new alternatives for industry, for example switching from dirty fuel such as coal to clean and renewable energy such as wind or hydroelectric power?
How does it create innovation and entrepreneurs, and inspire young people to work hard and achieve?
Under capitalism, the majority of people (i.e. the working class) are coerced to work, we literally have no choice but to otherwise we starve! We are compelled by the logic of capitalism to sell our labour and, as such, capitalism calls the shots, not the people who produce the wealth in society. Under socialism, people would of course be expected to work, but for very different reasons. Instead, workers would be encouraged to work for the benefit of society and not just reasons for of survival. Despite the arguments of conservatives, socialists believe that humanity is basically good but is shaped by the society it lives in. Therefore, I believe that people that believe in a society that works for them, and is, ultimately, run by them will make sure it works. As a socialist society is run by the working class it is in our interests to make sure it works. Every effort will be made to make people’s lives easier and it stands to reason that innovation will still be needed under socialism. A society can never be too efficient.
Again, under capitalism, innovation and entrepreneurship reflect class interests and is therefore only utilised to make profit and not for the overall good of society. The technology exists for everyone to drive around in environmentally-friendly cars but capitalism will not allow this to happen on a mass scale because it will cut into its profits. Production would be based on human need not personal greed.
As always the capitalists will fight back to maintain their profits and their system at the heart of all this.
That is why a crucial step towards solving the economic crisis would be to take the big corporations that dominate Britain's economy into democratic public ownership.
This would allow for production to be planned for need and not for profit. Even some of the representatives of capitalism have inadvertently recognised that this is the only way to solve the crisis.
Alan Greenspan, head of the US federal reserve during the boom years - once treated as a god by capitalism and how reviled as being responsible for the crisis - recently excused his role in the crisis by saying: "Unless there is a societal choice to abandon dynamic markets and leverage for some sort of central planning, I fear that preventing bubbles will in the end turn out to be unfeasible. Assuaging their aftermath seems to be the best we can hope for."
Democratically planned economy
In the coming years, on the basis of their experience of capitalism, millions of workers will draw the same conclusion as Greenspan. 'Central planning' in Britain - in the sense of a democratically planned economy - would mean that building workers, for example, could be put to work building and refurbishing high quality, environmentally friendly affordable social housing for the five million people who want it.
Huge resources could be put into the development of environmentally friendly technologies. The working week could be cut, without loss of pay.
This measure, combined with an expansion of public services, could quickly eliminate unemployment. All of these and much more would be possible on the basis of a democratic socialist plan of production.
Of course, capitalism is an international system, and any alternative could not stop at the shores of Britain. However, if a democratically elected socialist government in any country was to begin to implement the kind of programme outlined here it would act as an enormous inspiration to workers in the rest of the world struggling against capitalism's devastation of their living standards.
The ideas of genuine democratic socialism would spread like wildfire.
With extracts taken from Portsmouth socialist party s excellent blog and the socialist party’s website at www.socialistparty.org.uk
Capitalism has created enormous wealth, science and technique. We have technology today that was unimaginable a generation ago.
The world economy is 17 times the size it was a century ago. Yet we are being told that the most basic public services - a decent public health service, the right to an affordable home - cannot be afforded by capitalism.
The current crisis is not caused by a bloated public sector but by the worst crisis of capitalism in 70 years. This is a crisis of the private not the public sector.
Yet all the major capitalist parties - Tories, Lib Dem and New Labour agree that it should be the working class and public services that pay for it.
It is clear to me and many others that there is the wealth in society to pay for all that we need. It is a lie that there is no money left and something we must and I mean must smash as there is huge amounts of money out there if it wasn’t so concentrated among a select rich few.
Capitalism has always been a system based on the exploitation of the majority, the working class, for the profits of a few at the top.
There was a brief period, from around 1950-73, when capitalism developed rapidly. At least in the more economically developed countries, including Britain, working-class people were able to win a few crumbs from the capitalists' table.
In Britain, a National Health Service and a mass council house building programme made a real improvement in workers' lives.
However, when capitalism went into crisis, it set about restoring its profits by driving down the share of the wealth taken by the working class. Production was moved abroad to countries with cheaper labour, wages were driven down, and spending on public services was cut back.
During the last boom profits reached an all-time record. However, they had difficulty finding profitable fields to invest in.
Investment in science, technique and production remained at an historic low. Why? Because working-class people lacked the means to buy the goods that could potentially be produced.
This is the terrible reality of capitalism. It does not matter that two billion people are without the most basic necessities of life; they are not 'a market' because they lack the money to buy what is produced.
Instead of investing in industry, the capitalist class made its profits in the last boom by gambling on the world's stock markets in a speculative frenzy. To try and increase their markets the working class got its own little share in the credit frenzy: cheap credit cards and mortgages - not crumbs but bubbles from the table.
How does Socialism create and maintain jobs and keep the economy functioning effectively and growing?
The first thing that would happen under socialism is that unemployment would be eliminated overnight. Even in 2000, during a boom period, the UK had 2 million people unemployed. The cost of this is estimated at £5,000 per family per year in terms of lost production and benefit claims. Under socialism everyone would be guaranteed a job by reducing the working week without loss of pay. The reason this doesn’t happen under capitalism (or at least neo-liberal capitalism) is because getting fewer people to do more work is a fantastic way to make profit! However, as Tony Benn said, if full employment can be used to fight Hitler why can’t it be used to feed people? Jobs would be created for the benefit of society as a whole, not for the bank balances of the rich.
As for allowing the economy to grow; even in a bureaucratically deformed workers’ state with no democracy such the USSR and other planned economies they had production levels that were for decades on a par and often better than in the West. This phenomenon would be magnified in a true socialist society with the active engagement of the population and the ‘oxygen’ of workers’ democracy.
Besides, as we’ve all seen recently, capitalism by no means guarantees economic growth indefinitely. What is happening at the present time is precisely what Karl Marx analysed years before, a classic case of over-production. Products such as cars were produced for people to buy but we could no long afford to buy back the things we had produced. And who suffers as a result of this system? Not the capitalists who caused this crisis but the ordinary workers who one day were in a job (so long as it made profit for the bosses) and the next on the scrapheap! This anarchy and unjust ‘employment strategy’ would be consigned to the dustbin of history.
How does it invest in research and development, and find new alternatives for industry, for example switching from dirty fuel such as coal to clean and renewable energy such as wind or hydroelectric power?
How does it create innovation and entrepreneurs, and inspire young people to work hard and achieve?
Under capitalism, the majority of people (i.e. the working class) are coerced to work, we literally have no choice but to otherwise we starve! We are compelled by the logic of capitalism to sell our labour and, as such, capitalism calls the shots, not the people who produce the wealth in society. Under socialism, people would of course be expected to work, but for very different reasons. Instead, workers would be encouraged to work for the benefit of society and not just reasons for of survival. Despite the arguments of conservatives, socialists believe that humanity is basically good but is shaped by the society it lives in. Therefore, I believe that people that believe in a society that works for them, and is, ultimately, run by them will make sure it works. As a socialist society is run by the working class it is in our interests to make sure it works. Every effort will be made to make people’s lives easier and it stands to reason that innovation will still be needed under socialism. A society can never be too efficient.
Again, under capitalism, innovation and entrepreneurship reflect class interests and is therefore only utilised to make profit and not for the overall good of society. The technology exists for everyone to drive around in environmentally-friendly cars but capitalism will not allow this to happen on a mass scale because it will cut into its profits. Production would be based on human need not personal greed.
As always the capitalists will fight back to maintain their profits and their system at the heart of all this.
That is why a crucial step towards solving the economic crisis would be to take the big corporations that dominate Britain's economy into democratic public ownership.
This would allow for production to be planned for need and not for profit. Even some of the representatives of capitalism have inadvertently recognised that this is the only way to solve the crisis.
Alan Greenspan, head of the US federal reserve during the boom years - once treated as a god by capitalism and how reviled as being responsible for the crisis - recently excused his role in the crisis by saying: "Unless there is a societal choice to abandon dynamic markets and leverage for some sort of central planning, I fear that preventing bubbles will in the end turn out to be unfeasible. Assuaging their aftermath seems to be the best we can hope for."
Democratically planned economy
In the coming years, on the basis of their experience of capitalism, millions of workers will draw the same conclusion as Greenspan. 'Central planning' in Britain - in the sense of a democratically planned economy - would mean that building workers, for example, could be put to work building and refurbishing high quality, environmentally friendly affordable social housing for the five million people who want it.
Huge resources could be put into the development of environmentally friendly technologies. The working week could be cut, without loss of pay.
This measure, combined with an expansion of public services, could quickly eliminate unemployment. All of these and much more would be possible on the basis of a democratic socialist plan of production.
Of course, capitalism is an international system, and any alternative could not stop at the shores of Britain. However, if a democratically elected socialist government in any country was to begin to implement the kind of programme outlined here it would act as an enormous inspiration to workers in the rest of the world struggling against capitalism's devastation of their living standards.
The ideas of genuine democratic socialism would spread like wildfire.
With extracts taken from Portsmouth socialist party s excellent blog and the socialist party’s website at www.socialistparty.org.uk
Saturday, 7 April 2012
Remembering Leon Trotsky one of the greatest class fighters of all time
Down the years people have stood out against oppression and exploitation including the likes of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Lenin, Robert Owen George Orwell and many more to mention here but I would like to focus on Leon Trotsky.
A comrade born into a middle class environment dedicated his whole life to struggle for ordinary poor people and his life story featured in my life by Leon Trotsky highlights exactly this. The struggles that Trotsky took up was a never ending battle with people who he opposed. Trotsky didn’t oppose people for the sake of it he opposed them on principle and never ever let his principles drop until his death in 1940 at the hands of the Stalinist regime.
Leon Trotsky, the greatest living revolutionary of the time, was murdered by Josef Stalin's hit man Ramón Mercader in 1940. Previous attempts on Trotsky's life had failed. But this time a fatal blow from an ice-pick successfully destroyed the 'brain' of the working class and the symbol of implacable opposition to capitalism and to totalitarian Stalinism.
This event, celebrated in the Kremlin by Stalin and the bureaucratic elite he represented, also brought joy to the capitalist governments of Europe, America and the world. At the time of the notorious Moscow Trials, which laid the basis for Trotsky's murder, Winston Churchill said to the Russian ambassador in Britain: "I've kept an eye on his activities for some time. He's Russia's evil genius, and it is a very good thing that Stalin has got even with him."
If by killing Trotsky they thought they could destroy his ideas they were profoundly mistaken. For succeeding generations, when the most politically aware layers have moved into struggle against capitalism and Stalinism, they looked for explanation and inspiration in the works of Trotsky. Even in the post-1989 period of ideological counter-revolution his ideas still proved attractive.
Now, confronted by the worst economic crisis of capitalism since the 1930s and the resulting inevitable mass revolt of the working class and poor, the ideologues of capitalism fear the influence of the ideas of Trotsky. They are conscious, or at least half conscious, that figures like Che Guevara, seen as fighting for socialism and national liberation while opposing the Stalinist bureaucracy, and Leon Trotsky will be looked towards. Thus a campaign to discredit Trotsky is necessary. This is the purpose of books like those of Robert Service, reviewed in The Socialist, and others that have been produced in the last year.
Trotsky, along with most of his family and the heroic generation he represented, was assassinated by Stalin. But nevertheless Service seeks to create the unbelievable impression that Trotsky is a blood-brother of Stalin and the system of bureaucratic terror Stalin represented. For Service and his ilk, like Stalinism, Trotsky's ideas are also an 'outgrowth' of Bolshevism which was 'inherently' totalitarian and authoritarian in character. This, of course, is a gross slander against the Bolshevik party Lenin led, the most democratic party of workers in history, which led the Russian Revolution. Stalinism, with its totalitarian methods (including the wiping out of the Bolshevik party itself) rather than being a continuation of Bolshevism represented its negation.
Stalinism cannot act as a pole of attraction, as it did for instance in the 1930s and, to some extent, in the immediate period after 1945. Then a new generation moving into struggle was, unlike today, largely ignorant of the crimes of Stalinism. In this new explosive period Trotsky can provide a way forward through his heroic struggle for workers' democracy and his method of analysis, not just on the vital issue of Stalinism, but also on the general struggles of the working class today.
This does not mean that Trotsky was 'infallible', no more than were Marx, Engels and Lenin. But he was more correct, sometimes spectacularly so, on the major issues which confronted the workers' movement in his day. Witness his colossal contribution through his dissection of fascism in the 1930s. Even then he was prepared to openly correct his earlier comments on 'fascism' from the 1920s when it was a new phenomenon.
Then, with a broad brush, even Trotsky tended to describe dictatorial regimes - like that of Primo de Rivera in Spain - as 'fascist'. Later he recognised that this was mistaken and gave a much more precise definition of fascism, which annihilated workers' organisations, and its differences with military bonapartist regimes, which, although reactionary, had not managed to destroy all democratic rights and organisations.
But Trotsky's ideas are 'outdated', it is argued. This is the refrain of the professors and defenders of the present system. 'Trotskyism' is, in fact, a modern manifestation of the ideas of Marx.
From its inception, the hirelings of capitalism tried to imply that Marxism is inapplicable to 'democratic' societies, particularly after the experience of the 20th century.
If Marxism is so 'outdated' why was it possible that we, the Marxists, better understood the workings of the system of capitalism than the defenders of the system themselves? They argued, through the mouthpiece of Francis Fukuyama, that the "end of history" had arrived. The Wall Street Journal declared in 1990 following the collapse of Stalinism that: "We (capitalism) won".
Marxists, of course, recognised that the liquidation of the planned economy, flowing from the collapse of the totalitarian system that existed, was a historic defeat for the working class. Economically at least, the planned economies of Russia and Eastern Europe, despite the drag of the bureaucracy, was a point of reference, a glimpse of what could have been possible on the basis of workers' democracy.
Many 'Marxists' were either in denial of the earth-shattering event of Stalinism's collapse, while others evacuated the field of struggle. The CWI understood that while it was a defeat, in the main of an ideological character in the first instance, it nevertheless was not on the lines of the destruction of the workers' organisations by fascism in the 1930s.
We predicted, virtually alone apart from a handful of capitalist commentators, such as Nouriel Robin, who arrived at the same conclusions empirically, that the very methods which boosted capitalism following the collapse of Stalinism would savagely recoil on the system at a certain stage. The colossal injection of credit, fictitious capital, led to the biggest economic bubble in history.
In 1987, following the collapse of Stalinism, we said, that by using the reserves of Germany and Japan, capitalism could temporarily find a way out. However in 2007 we said that the system would go into a deep crisis. And so it has proved to be. Our analysis was not based, as it is with the economic witch doctors of capitalism on alchemy, but on a scientific analysis of their system. This in turn is reliant on the approach of Trotsky which was also based upon the methods of Marx.
, the capitalist system is based upon production for profit for a handful of millionaires, multimillionaires and billionaires - economic plutocrats - and not social need. The ultimate contradiction of the system is that the working class cannot buy back the full value of what it produces. This arises from the fact that the working class only receives a share of the value it creates in the form of wages, the surplus Marx described as 'unpaid labour'. The system can go ahead so long as this surplus is productively invested into industry, science and technique - the means of production.
However this situation at a certain stage develops into a crisis, resulting in the overproduction of both 'consumer' goods and capital goods. The very idea of 'overproduction' would have been seen as absurd in all previous economic systems, in a world of dire poverty and need. But the main motive force of this system is profits not human need. The struggle over the surplus is the catalyst for a programme to decrease wages and the share of wealth that the working class receives.
"The proof of the pudding is in the eating". Every day, almost, confirmation of the analysis of Marxism can be found in the press.
Marx's criticism of capitalism, stubbornly defended by Trotsky, was very simple. If the system can deliver the basics of jobs, shelter, food, the abolition of war and racism, the overcoming of national divisions, etc, then it will maintain itself. But the essence, surely, of the current situation of world capitalism is that it is incapable of solving even the basic needs of humankind, particularly for the two thirds living in the neo-colonial countries.
This was summed up by the manifesto of the previous Haitian president, Aristide, who pledged to abolish the "obscene poverty" which affected his country but, after his assumption to power, replaced it with "acceptable poverty"! Not even this was achieved as the catastrophic situation following the earthquake in Haiti demonstrates today.
Trotsky's idea of the 'permanent revolution' retains its validity for countries in the neo-colonial world. This holds that the democratic revolution in the modern era cannot, ironically, be carried through by the capitalists. The tasks of land reform, a real parliament and democracy, freedom from the economic and political shackles of imperialism are impossible for the weak ruling classes in these countries and regions.
Only the working class in alliance with the poor peasantry is capable of completing the national democratic revolution. But then it has to secure its victory by going over to the tasks of socialism both on the national sphere and internationally. This was the effect of the Russian Revolution which eliminated landlordism and capitalism but also provoked a revolutionary wave worldwide.
But cynics say "you'll end with some kind of bloody dictatorship" as in Russia. This is a lie. Russia in 1917 was a beacon, not only for planning and socialism, but for spreading workers' democracy to the masses worldwide. Stalinism flowed, not from the Russian Revolution in its initial period, but from its isolation. Some, like Service, argue that Trotsky, if he had been victorious against Stalin, would have established the same 'personal power' as that ultimately established by Stalin.
This begs the question that Trotsky, given the isolation of the Russian Revolution, the consequent rise of the bureaucracy and destruction of workers' democracy, could have taken the place of Stalin without violating his democratic and socialist programme both for Russia and internationally. Incredibly, some Marxists go further today and argue that Trotsky should have taken power when it was offered to him by Antonov-Ovseyenko the chief commissar of the Red Army in the 1920s.
After all, Trotsky at that time enjoyed immense authority, much greater than Stalin, with the Red Army, not only amongst the ranks, but also in the upper echelons of the officers who had fought with him in the civil war and defeated the 21 armies of imperialism.
But Trotsky understood that by accepting 'power' from this source he would have ultimately become a prisoner of perhaps a worse 'military bureaucracy' which would have inevitably developed given the isolation of the Russian Revolution at the time.
This demonstrates that Trotsky understood, as Marx, Engels and Lenin did, and that it is not through manoeuvres, cliques or alleged coups that socialism and Marxism will grow. It is only by basing ourselves upon the consciousness of the working class - its political understanding at each stage - and attempting to take that forward with a clear programme, slogans and organisation that socialism and Marxism can genuinely grow. The CWI, for instance, did fall back after the collapse of Stalinism and particularly with the liquidation of the planned economy. It could not be otherwise given the orgies of capitalist propaganda which flowed from this.
However, the Socialist Party and the CWI maintained the democratic, socialist banner of Trotsky, not without experiencing opportunist splits or ultra-left ones. This is not unusual in a period such as we have been through. Lenin and Trotsky were engaged in similar struggles in the period between 1907 and 1911. But inevitably, as we foresaw, capitalism would break down and usher in a new period. Political struggle, not just during the high tides of working-class movements but also in periods of retreat, is necessary in order to prepare for future, mighty events.
What are the lessons for today? There is an urgent need to create a new mass force that can gather together the struggles of the working class both on an industrial plane but also in the political arena itself. This requires the 'dual task' that the CWI set itself in the early 1990s of fighting for the rehabilitation of the ideas of socialism for the mass movement and of maintaining the clear programme of Marxism-Trotskyism.
We are in one of the most explosive periods in history. If the economic crisis has proved 'contagious', spreading to one country after another, how much more will socialism spread? Globalisation has created the basis for this to an extent unimagined by Marx himself. In the Vietnamese revolution, imperialism developed the theory of the 'domino' effect, which held that if one country was lost to capitalism, there would be a similar collapse throughout south-east Asia. To some extent this was borne out.
with extracts from the socialist party's website www.socialist party.org.uk
A comrade born into a middle class environment dedicated his whole life to struggle for ordinary poor people and his life story featured in my life by Leon Trotsky highlights exactly this. The struggles that Trotsky took up was a never ending battle with people who he opposed. Trotsky didn’t oppose people for the sake of it he opposed them on principle and never ever let his principles drop until his death in 1940 at the hands of the Stalinist regime.
Leon Trotsky, the greatest living revolutionary of the time, was murdered by Josef Stalin's hit man Ramón Mercader in 1940. Previous attempts on Trotsky's life had failed. But this time a fatal blow from an ice-pick successfully destroyed the 'brain' of the working class and the symbol of implacable opposition to capitalism and to totalitarian Stalinism.
This event, celebrated in the Kremlin by Stalin and the bureaucratic elite he represented, also brought joy to the capitalist governments of Europe, America and the world. At the time of the notorious Moscow Trials, which laid the basis for Trotsky's murder, Winston Churchill said to the Russian ambassador in Britain: "I've kept an eye on his activities for some time. He's Russia's evil genius, and it is a very good thing that Stalin has got even with him."
If by killing Trotsky they thought they could destroy his ideas they were profoundly mistaken. For succeeding generations, when the most politically aware layers have moved into struggle against capitalism and Stalinism, they looked for explanation and inspiration in the works of Trotsky. Even in the post-1989 period of ideological counter-revolution his ideas still proved attractive.
Now, confronted by the worst economic crisis of capitalism since the 1930s and the resulting inevitable mass revolt of the working class and poor, the ideologues of capitalism fear the influence of the ideas of Trotsky. They are conscious, or at least half conscious, that figures like Che Guevara, seen as fighting for socialism and national liberation while opposing the Stalinist bureaucracy, and Leon Trotsky will be looked towards. Thus a campaign to discredit Trotsky is necessary. This is the purpose of books like those of Robert Service, reviewed in The Socialist, and others that have been produced in the last year.
Trotsky, along with most of his family and the heroic generation he represented, was assassinated by Stalin. But nevertheless Service seeks to create the unbelievable impression that Trotsky is a blood-brother of Stalin and the system of bureaucratic terror Stalin represented. For Service and his ilk, like Stalinism, Trotsky's ideas are also an 'outgrowth' of Bolshevism which was 'inherently' totalitarian and authoritarian in character. This, of course, is a gross slander against the Bolshevik party Lenin led, the most democratic party of workers in history, which led the Russian Revolution. Stalinism, with its totalitarian methods (including the wiping out of the Bolshevik party itself) rather than being a continuation of Bolshevism represented its negation.
Stalinism cannot act as a pole of attraction, as it did for instance in the 1930s and, to some extent, in the immediate period after 1945. Then a new generation moving into struggle was, unlike today, largely ignorant of the crimes of Stalinism. In this new explosive period Trotsky can provide a way forward through his heroic struggle for workers' democracy and his method of analysis, not just on the vital issue of Stalinism, but also on the general struggles of the working class today.
This does not mean that Trotsky was 'infallible', no more than were Marx, Engels and Lenin. But he was more correct, sometimes spectacularly so, on the major issues which confronted the workers' movement in his day. Witness his colossal contribution through his dissection of fascism in the 1930s. Even then he was prepared to openly correct his earlier comments on 'fascism' from the 1920s when it was a new phenomenon.
Then, with a broad brush, even Trotsky tended to describe dictatorial regimes - like that of Primo de Rivera in Spain - as 'fascist'. Later he recognised that this was mistaken and gave a much more precise definition of fascism, which annihilated workers' organisations, and its differences with military bonapartist regimes, which, although reactionary, had not managed to destroy all democratic rights and organisations.
But Trotsky's ideas are 'outdated', it is argued. This is the refrain of the professors and defenders of the present system. 'Trotskyism' is, in fact, a modern manifestation of the ideas of Marx.
From its inception, the hirelings of capitalism tried to imply that Marxism is inapplicable to 'democratic' societies, particularly after the experience of the 20th century.
If Marxism is so 'outdated' why was it possible that we, the Marxists, better understood the workings of the system of capitalism than the defenders of the system themselves? They argued, through the mouthpiece of Francis Fukuyama, that the "end of history" had arrived. The Wall Street Journal declared in 1990 following the collapse of Stalinism that: "We (capitalism) won".
Marxists, of course, recognised that the liquidation of the planned economy, flowing from the collapse of the totalitarian system that existed, was a historic defeat for the working class. Economically at least, the planned economies of Russia and Eastern Europe, despite the drag of the bureaucracy, was a point of reference, a glimpse of what could have been possible on the basis of workers' democracy.
Many 'Marxists' were either in denial of the earth-shattering event of Stalinism's collapse, while others evacuated the field of struggle. The CWI understood that while it was a defeat, in the main of an ideological character in the first instance, it nevertheless was not on the lines of the destruction of the workers' organisations by fascism in the 1930s.
We predicted, virtually alone apart from a handful of capitalist commentators, such as Nouriel Robin, who arrived at the same conclusions empirically, that the very methods which boosted capitalism following the collapse of Stalinism would savagely recoil on the system at a certain stage. The colossal injection of credit, fictitious capital, led to the biggest economic bubble in history.
In 1987, following the collapse of Stalinism, we said, that by using the reserves of Germany and Japan, capitalism could temporarily find a way out. However in 2007 we said that the system would go into a deep crisis. And so it has proved to be. Our analysis was not based, as it is with the economic witch doctors of capitalism on alchemy, but on a scientific analysis of their system. This in turn is reliant on the approach of Trotsky which was also based upon the methods of Marx.
, the capitalist system is based upon production for profit for a handful of millionaires, multimillionaires and billionaires - economic plutocrats - and not social need. The ultimate contradiction of the system is that the working class cannot buy back the full value of what it produces. This arises from the fact that the working class only receives a share of the value it creates in the form of wages, the surplus Marx described as 'unpaid labour'. The system can go ahead so long as this surplus is productively invested into industry, science and technique - the means of production.
However this situation at a certain stage develops into a crisis, resulting in the overproduction of both 'consumer' goods and capital goods. The very idea of 'overproduction' would have been seen as absurd in all previous economic systems, in a world of dire poverty and need. But the main motive force of this system is profits not human need. The struggle over the surplus is the catalyst for a programme to decrease wages and the share of wealth that the working class receives.
"The proof of the pudding is in the eating". Every day, almost, confirmation of the analysis of Marxism can be found in the press.
Marx's criticism of capitalism, stubbornly defended by Trotsky, was very simple. If the system can deliver the basics of jobs, shelter, food, the abolition of war and racism, the overcoming of national divisions, etc, then it will maintain itself. But the essence, surely, of the current situation of world capitalism is that it is incapable of solving even the basic needs of humankind, particularly for the two thirds living in the neo-colonial countries.
This was summed up by the manifesto of the previous Haitian president, Aristide, who pledged to abolish the "obscene poverty" which affected his country but, after his assumption to power, replaced it with "acceptable poverty"! Not even this was achieved as the catastrophic situation following the earthquake in Haiti demonstrates today.
Trotsky's idea of the 'permanent revolution' retains its validity for countries in the neo-colonial world. This holds that the democratic revolution in the modern era cannot, ironically, be carried through by the capitalists. The tasks of land reform, a real parliament and democracy, freedom from the economic and political shackles of imperialism are impossible for the weak ruling classes in these countries and regions.
Only the working class in alliance with the poor peasantry is capable of completing the national democratic revolution. But then it has to secure its victory by going over to the tasks of socialism both on the national sphere and internationally. This was the effect of the Russian Revolution which eliminated landlordism and capitalism but also provoked a revolutionary wave worldwide.
But cynics say "you'll end with some kind of bloody dictatorship" as in Russia. This is a lie. Russia in 1917 was a beacon, not only for planning and socialism, but for spreading workers' democracy to the masses worldwide. Stalinism flowed, not from the Russian Revolution in its initial period, but from its isolation. Some, like Service, argue that Trotsky, if he had been victorious against Stalin, would have established the same 'personal power' as that ultimately established by Stalin.
This begs the question that Trotsky, given the isolation of the Russian Revolution, the consequent rise of the bureaucracy and destruction of workers' democracy, could have taken the place of Stalin without violating his democratic and socialist programme both for Russia and internationally. Incredibly, some Marxists go further today and argue that Trotsky should have taken power when it was offered to him by Antonov-Ovseyenko the chief commissar of the Red Army in the 1920s.
After all, Trotsky at that time enjoyed immense authority, much greater than Stalin, with the Red Army, not only amongst the ranks, but also in the upper echelons of the officers who had fought with him in the civil war and defeated the 21 armies of imperialism.
But Trotsky understood that by accepting 'power' from this source he would have ultimately become a prisoner of perhaps a worse 'military bureaucracy' which would have inevitably developed given the isolation of the Russian Revolution at the time.
This demonstrates that Trotsky understood, as Marx, Engels and Lenin did, and that it is not through manoeuvres, cliques or alleged coups that socialism and Marxism will grow. It is only by basing ourselves upon the consciousness of the working class - its political understanding at each stage - and attempting to take that forward with a clear programme, slogans and organisation that socialism and Marxism can genuinely grow. The CWI, for instance, did fall back after the collapse of Stalinism and particularly with the liquidation of the planned economy. It could not be otherwise given the orgies of capitalist propaganda which flowed from this.
However, the Socialist Party and the CWI maintained the democratic, socialist banner of Trotsky, not without experiencing opportunist splits or ultra-left ones. This is not unusual in a period such as we have been through. Lenin and Trotsky were engaged in similar struggles in the period between 1907 and 1911. But inevitably, as we foresaw, capitalism would break down and usher in a new period. Political struggle, not just during the high tides of working-class movements but also in periods of retreat, is necessary in order to prepare for future, mighty events.
What are the lessons for today? There is an urgent need to create a new mass force that can gather together the struggles of the working class both on an industrial plane but also in the political arena itself. This requires the 'dual task' that the CWI set itself in the early 1990s of fighting for the rehabilitation of the ideas of socialism for the mass movement and of maintaining the clear programme of Marxism-Trotskyism.
We are in one of the most explosive periods in history. If the economic crisis has proved 'contagious', spreading to one country after another, how much more will socialism spread? Globalisation has created the basis for this to an extent unimagined by Marx himself. In the Vietnamese revolution, imperialism developed the theory of the 'domino' effect, which held that if one country was lost to capitalism, there would be a similar collapse throughout south-east Asia. To some extent this was borne out.
with extracts from the socialist party's website www.socialist party.org.uk
Sunday, 4 March 2012
Marx on human nature and peoples ideas on peoples greed
I thought I’d blog about human nature and peoples perceived ideas on the matter. I was having a debate with someone on twitter earlier who was so gloomy about the future and what change we can affect. I naturally disagreed as I am new to revolutionary politics learning all the time and very keen and enthusiastic for socialist politics and Marxist ideas to boot.
MANY PEOPLE think socialism is impossible not because the ruling class is too powerful or the world’s resources are too limited, though many people believe this but because “human nature” will not allow it. They think “people are too lazy,” “too passive,” “too greedy,” “too self-absorbed,” “too violent,” “too ambitious.” They think that people are inherently racist, sexist, and homophobic, that they can’t help but hate people from other countries, cultures, and religions. They think that “people like being told what to do” and “people can’t think for themselves” and “people like to boss other people around.” Nevermind that some of these “inherent” traits are contradictory. Together they work to prevent socialism in the minds of many. And, as if all this weren’t enough, human nature is thought to be not only negative, but permanently fixed: “There will always be good people and evil people” and “You can’t change human nature.”
It is no surprise that people often think this way. Marx once said that the ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of the ruling class. The ruling ideas about human nature under capitalism—that it is static, and for the most part awful—greatly benefit the capitalists. On the one hand, they suggest that, because of traits inherent to human beings like greed, ambition, and a tendency towards violence, capitalism—which rewards greed and requires violence—is not only the best and most efficient economic system ever, but also the most natural. On the other hand, such ideas make it possible to blame the enormous inequality and suffering produced by the system on the “natural” defects of certain individuals. If it is natural for some people to claw their way to the top, it is also natural for others to remain stuck in squalor at the bottom.
Socialists argue something quite different. We say that human nature is flexible and multifaceted, and that the behaviors of human beings are shaped by their social circumstances. We are all capable of greed as well as generosity; which one gets expressed has more to do with the values of a society than with the inborn tendencies of the individual. As Karl Marx put it: “the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations.”1 From a socialist perspective, there is such a thing as human nature, but its most prominent feature is its changeability. What makes us distinctly human is our ability, not only to change as our circumstances change, but to create new and different social relations and then adapt to them. Socialists argue that if humans could create capitalism, humans can create socialism.
There is a lot at stake in this argument. If it is natural for humans to engage in the practices that capitalism supports or requires, then any attempt to change the system is pointless.
Today, when the ruling class controls weapons and oversees business practices that threaten the existence of the planet, promoting a socialist understanding of human nature is not only correct, but urgent.
From the beginning
The tendency to revert to human nature to justify social and economic structures and to explain their failures has been present from the very beginning of United States history. James Madison rationalized the system of checks and balances between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches that, at the time, distinguished the U.S. form of government, on the basis of a negative view of human nature.
The idea that capitalism’s failures should be blamed on the poor also got an early start. Eager to please their ruling-class benefactors, scientists and scholars have always been willing to develop theories and misinterpret or fabricate experimental results to support this notion. In the nineteenth century, eugenicists and “Teutonists” (think of an upper-crust Aryan Nation) fudged test scores and measured heads to produce what was considered scientific backing for the idea that poverty is the result of inherited weaknesses of character or intellect called “social inadequacy.” The resulting conviction that “poverty begets poverty” led to forced sterilization and enforced illiteracy; if the children of illiterate parents cannot be taught to read, the argument went, why waste money on schools?
This “scientific racism,” which was applied to all members of the lower classes regardless of skin color, existed alongside of and in combination with the racism used to rationalize the enslavement of Blacks and the genocide of Native Americans. An excellent example of the way these ideas came together is a statement by Oxford University Professor Edward Freeman, who toured America in 1881, speaking to university and “learned society” audiences. According to Freeman, and to the delight of his “learned” listeners: “the best remedy for whatever is amiss in America would be if every Irishman should kill a Negro and be hanged for it.”
What is human nature?
Although the human race has seen enormous and rapid cultural evolution, human beings’ basic physical needs have remained the same for hundreds of thousands of years: we need air, water, food, shelter, or other protection from the elements, sleep, parenting for the young, and sex to propagate the species.18 These general needs are accompanied by a set of specific abilities: because humans have large brains, walk upright, have hands with opposable thumbs, and vocal chords that allow speech, we are able to use our physicality, our bodies and brains and the five senses they afford us, in ways that other creatures can’t. First and foremost, we work in a distinctively human way and, through social labor, we change our environment and the conditions that determine our “nature.”
Friedrich Engels, writing in 1876, placed labor at the very center of human development: “[Labor] is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labor created man himself.”19 Engels goes on to attribute changes in human anatomy to work in general and working with tools in particular, comparing the bone structure of the human hand to that of other primates and noting “the great gulf between the undeveloped hand of even the most man-like apes and the human hand that has been highly perfected by hundreds of thousands of years of labor.”20
In addition to working with tools, humans have always lived and worked in groups: “The development of labor necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual.” From cooperative labor arose the need to speak and the development of language: “In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other. Necessity created the organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but surely transformed.” The development of complex systems of language allowed for human social consciousness: the transmission of culture and history from generation to generation.
Of course it can be argued that animals also work: they hunt, gather, and in some cases store food; they build nests and dens and tend their young. Some cooperate; some communicate, albeit nonverbally; some even use tools. But the work done by animals is mostly instinctive and unchanging. Otters may use stones to crack open sea urchins but they can’t invent a sea urchin cracker. Beavers take down trees to build their dams but they’ll never use a chain saw. Whales may communicate through songs, but they can’t write lyrics or mass produce CDs. Only humans have the ability to record their history and create art. Only humans can conceive of a project, plan out the various steps to completion, and reflect with satisfaction on a job well done. Only humans can invent and construct complex tools that alter the environment and allow for enormous increases in productivity—tools that enable us to make a lot more stuff with a lot less effort.
By acting on nature to produce their subsistence, human beings change themselves. Laboring socially, humans change the material forms of what Marx called their means of production. These engender new social relations, allowing, in the end, for the distinctive variability of human behavior through history, and from one society to the next.
Marx observed that, under capitalism, human productive capacity increased so much that, for the first time in history, it was possible to have enough of everything for everybody. What’s more, the satisfaction of basic needs and the ways in which they were satisfied led to the development of more complicated needs. Crowded living conditions create a need for systems of sanitation. Complex machinery creates a need for higher education. These complications further the development of human tastes and abilities, and could lead, under conditions of socialized, planned production, to the fullest expression of human nature:
Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his needs, to maintain and reproduce his life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all forms of society and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. This realm of natural necessity expands with his development, because his needs do too; but the productive forces to satisfy these expand at the same time. Freedom, in this sphere, can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under the collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature.
But there was (and is) a problem. Capitalists were not (and are not) “rationally regulating their interchange with Nature.” They compete in an irrational and unplanned manner with an eye towards maximizing profit rather than meeting human need. Promoting “conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature” does not concern them either. Instead, their interests lie in getting people to work as hard as possible for as little as possible. And so, despite its potential to do so, capitalism does not allow most of humanity to satisfy its basic needs with “the least expenditure of energy.” Instead, it works some people to the bone while others are thrown out of work. Under capitalism, advances in technology like automation create, not leisure, but unemployment for some and overtime hours of mind-numbing repetitive labor for the rest.
Capitalism created the conditions for the fullest expression of human nature, but simultaneously denied them to the vast majority of humanity by directing all the wealth up to the tiny minority at the top of society. Members of the ruling class collect homes and cars and gadgets, attend first-rate universities, travel the world, eat exquisite food and drink exquisite wine, enjoy operas and the fine arts , and develop whatever talents or abilities they have, and often those they do not. Meanwhile, the majority of the working class struggles from day to day to make ends meet, with a few weeks off per year to develop ourselves in areas other than work—if we’re lucky. Capitalism not only stunts further human development, it is also a stupendous failure when it comes to providing for the basic needs of most people. Every day, all over the world, tens of thousands of people starve or die young of curable diseases.
Far from being naturally adapted to capitalism, most humans are battered or broken by it. If it doesn’t straight out kill them, it stunts their physical and mental development; their intellects are neglected, their artistic talents remain undiscovered or unappreciated, and the distinctively human capacity to engage in creative, socially useful work is reduced to a commodity worth only as much as the capitalist can pay and still turn a profit.
Even those who recognize that capitalism thwarts and distorts human nature—and that we now possess the means to eliminate inequality and want—may still wonder whether humans are capable of the kind of truly egalitarian society that socialists envision. Forced to compete with each other for limited opportunities, compelled to work mindlessly at jobs they don’t like, encouraged to view themselves and those around them as commodities, many people might not seem prepared, at any given moment, to plan and create, “in place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms…an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”24 We are swimming (or, more accurately, treading water) in what Marx called “the muck of ages”—racism, sexism, homophobia, competitiveness, conformity, passivity, insecurity—all the ideas capitalists require to divide and enervate the masses and maintain their minority hold on power.
And it is easy to feel, after a few hundred years of capitalism, that things have always been the way they are now and always will be. Luckily for us, this is simply not true. Capitalism is a fairly recent development, and prior to the rise of class society some several thousand years ago, human society was not characterized by classes or inequality or systematic warfare. There are class-free societies on the planet at this very moment, societies that are “egalitarian, cooperative, and on the move.”25 All of the Ju/’hoansi (!Kung) Nharo Basarwa (San or Bushmen) from Ngamiland, Botswana, lived until just recently in societies where egalitarianism—notably along gender lines—was the rule. As some communities shift from nomadism to sedentism, this has started to change—not due to some “resurgence” of human nature, but rather to “the adoption of the economics and attitudes towards gender from non-foraging neighbors [that] facilitates the emergence of gender inequality.… [In addition, some] current development programs designed by Westerners exclude women and contribute to the increase in gender inequality which is emerging in these societies.”
SO to conclude human nature is a big beast and something we cant simply target to being the failings of everything we fail to do. Thinking that things will stay the same forever is a very unmarxist way of thinking and fails to take account of history and the class struggles.
There is nothing about human nature that makes socialism impossible, but there is also nothing that makes it inevitable. According to Marx, people make their own history but not in circumstances of their own choosing.28 If we want socialism—and the possibility of developing human nature to the fullest—we will need to organize and fight for it. This may seem like a pipe dream given the low level of class struggle in the Uk . at this time. But a socialist conception of human nature also allows us to understand how groups of people that for a long time appeared to be hardwired for one set of behaviors—like not fighting back—can transform radically and rapidly in response to social changes.
with extracts used to back up my opinions from http://www.isreview.org/issues/47/wdss-humnature.shtml
MANY PEOPLE think socialism is impossible not because the ruling class is too powerful or the world’s resources are too limited, though many people believe this but because “human nature” will not allow it. They think “people are too lazy,” “too passive,” “too greedy,” “too self-absorbed,” “too violent,” “too ambitious.” They think that people are inherently racist, sexist, and homophobic, that they can’t help but hate people from other countries, cultures, and religions. They think that “people like being told what to do” and “people can’t think for themselves” and “people like to boss other people around.” Nevermind that some of these “inherent” traits are contradictory. Together they work to prevent socialism in the minds of many. And, as if all this weren’t enough, human nature is thought to be not only negative, but permanently fixed: “There will always be good people and evil people” and “You can’t change human nature.”
It is no surprise that people often think this way. Marx once said that the ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of the ruling class. The ruling ideas about human nature under capitalism—that it is static, and for the most part awful—greatly benefit the capitalists. On the one hand, they suggest that, because of traits inherent to human beings like greed, ambition, and a tendency towards violence, capitalism—which rewards greed and requires violence—is not only the best and most efficient economic system ever, but also the most natural. On the other hand, such ideas make it possible to blame the enormous inequality and suffering produced by the system on the “natural” defects of certain individuals. If it is natural for some people to claw their way to the top, it is also natural for others to remain stuck in squalor at the bottom.
Socialists argue something quite different. We say that human nature is flexible and multifaceted, and that the behaviors of human beings are shaped by their social circumstances. We are all capable of greed as well as generosity; which one gets expressed has more to do with the values of a society than with the inborn tendencies of the individual. As Karl Marx put it: “the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations.”1 From a socialist perspective, there is such a thing as human nature, but its most prominent feature is its changeability. What makes us distinctly human is our ability, not only to change as our circumstances change, but to create new and different social relations and then adapt to them. Socialists argue that if humans could create capitalism, humans can create socialism.
There is a lot at stake in this argument. If it is natural for humans to engage in the practices that capitalism supports or requires, then any attempt to change the system is pointless.
Today, when the ruling class controls weapons and oversees business practices that threaten the existence of the planet, promoting a socialist understanding of human nature is not only correct, but urgent.
From the beginning
The tendency to revert to human nature to justify social and economic structures and to explain their failures has been present from the very beginning of United States history. James Madison rationalized the system of checks and balances between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches that, at the time, distinguished the U.S. form of government, on the basis of a negative view of human nature.
The idea that capitalism’s failures should be blamed on the poor also got an early start. Eager to please their ruling-class benefactors, scientists and scholars have always been willing to develop theories and misinterpret or fabricate experimental results to support this notion. In the nineteenth century, eugenicists and “Teutonists” (think of an upper-crust Aryan Nation) fudged test scores and measured heads to produce what was considered scientific backing for the idea that poverty is the result of inherited weaknesses of character or intellect called “social inadequacy.” The resulting conviction that “poverty begets poverty” led to forced sterilization and enforced illiteracy; if the children of illiterate parents cannot be taught to read, the argument went, why waste money on schools?
This “scientific racism,” which was applied to all members of the lower classes regardless of skin color, existed alongside of and in combination with the racism used to rationalize the enslavement of Blacks and the genocide of Native Americans. An excellent example of the way these ideas came together is a statement by Oxford University Professor Edward Freeman, who toured America in 1881, speaking to university and “learned society” audiences. According to Freeman, and to the delight of his “learned” listeners: “the best remedy for whatever is amiss in America would be if every Irishman should kill a Negro and be hanged for it.”
What is human nature?
Although the human race has seen enormous and rapid cultural evolution, human beings’ basic physical needs have remained the same for hundreds of thousands of years: we need air, water, food, shelter, or other protection from the elements, sleep, parenting for the young, and sex to propagate the species.18 These general needs are accompanied by a set of specific abilities: because humans have large brains, walk upright, have hands with opposable thumbs, and vocal chords that allow speech, we are able to use our physicality, our bodies and brains and the five senses they afford us, in ways that other creatures can’t. First and foremost, we work in a distinctively human way and, through social labor, we change our environment and the conditions that determine our “nature.”
Friedrich Engels, writing in 1876, placed labor at the very center of human development: “[Labor] is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labor created man himself.”19 Engels goes on to attribute changes in human anatomy to work in general and working with tools in particular, comparing the bone structure of the human hand to that of other primates and noting “the great gulf between the undeveloped hand of even the most man-like apes and the human hand that has been highly perfected by hundreds of thousands of years of labor.”20
In addition to working with tools, humans have always lived and worked in groups: “The development of labor necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual.” From cooperative labor arose the need to speak and the development of language: “In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other. Necessity created the organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but surely transformed.” The development of complex systems of language allowed for human social consciousness: the transmission of culture and history from generation to generation.
Of course it can be argued that animals also work: they hunt, gather, and in some cases store food; they build nests and dens and tend their young. Some cooperate; some communicate, albeit nonverbally; some even use tools. But the work done by animals is mostly instinctive and unchanging. Otters may use stones to crack open sea urchins but they can’t invent a sea urchin cracker. Beavers take down trees to build their dams but they’ll never use a chain saw. Whales may communicate through songs, but they can’t write lyrics or mass produce CDs. Only humans have the ability to record their history and create art. Only humans can conceive of a project, plan out the various steps to completion, and reflect with satisfaction on a job well done. Only humans can invent and construct complex tools that alter the environment and allow for enormous increases in productivity—tools that enable us to make a lot more stuff with a lot less effort.
By acting on nature to produce their subsistence, human beings change themselves. Laboring socially, humans change the material forms of what Marx called their means of production. These engender new social relations, allowing, in the end, for the distinctive variability of human behavior through history, and from one society to the next.
Marx observed that, under capitalism, human productive capacity increased so much that, for the first time in history, it was possible to have enough of everything for everybody. What’s more, the satisfaction of basic needs and the ways in which they were satisfied led to the development of more complicated needs. Crowded living conditions create a need for systems of sanitation. Complex machinery creates a need for higher education. These complications further the development of human tastes and abilities, and could lead, under conditions of socialized, planned production, to the fullest expression of human nature:
Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his needs, to maintain and reproduce his life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all forms of society and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. This realm of natural necessity expands with his development, because his needs do too; but the productive forces to satisfy these expand at the same time. Freedom, in this sphere, can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under the collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature.
But there was (and is) a problem. Capitalists were not (and are not) “rationally regulating their interchange with Nature.” They compete in an irrational and unplanned manner with an eye towards maximizing profit rather than meeting human need. Promoting “conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature” does not concern them either. Instead, their interests lie in getting people to work as hard as possible for as little as possible. And so, despite its potential to do so, capitalism does not allow most of humanity to satisfy its basic needs with “the least expenditure of energy.” Instead, it works some people to the bone while others are thrown out of work. Under capitalism, advances in technology like automation create, not leisure, but unemployment for some and overtime hours of mind-numbing repetitive labor for the rest.
Capitalism created the conditions for the fullest expression of human nature, but simultaneously denied them to the vast majority of humanity by directing all the wealth up to the tiny minority at the top of society. Members of the ruling class collect homes and cars and gadgets, attend first-rate universities, travel the world, eat exquisite food and drink exquisite wine, enjoy operas and the fine arts , and develop whatever talents or abilities they have, and often those they do not. Meanwhile, the majority of the working class struggles from day to day to make ends meet, with a few weeks off per year to develop ourselves in areas other than work—if we’re lucky. Capitalism not only stunts further human development, it is also a stupendous failure when it comes to providing for the basic needs of most people. Every day, all over the world, tens of thousands of people starve or die young of curable diseases.
Far from being naturally adapted to capitalism, most humans are battered or broken by it. If it doesn’t straight out kill them, it stunts their physical and mental development; their intellects are neglected, their artistic talents remain undiscovered or unappreciated, and the distinctively human capacity to engage in creative, socially useful work is reduced to a commodity worth only as much as the capitalist can pay and still turn a profit.
Even those who recognize that capitalism thwarts and distorts human nature—and that we now possess the means to eliminate inequality and want—may still wonder whether humans are capable of the kind of truly egalitarian society that socialists envision. Forced to compete with each other for limited opportunities, compelled to work mindlessly at jobs they don’t like, encouraged to view themselves and those around them as commodities, many people might not seem prepared, at any given moment, to plan and create, “in place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms…an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”24 We are swimming (or, more accurately, treading water) in what Marx called “the muck of ages”—racism, sexism, homophobia, competitiveness, conformity, passivity, insecurity—all the ideas capitalists require to divide and enervate the masses and maintain their minority hold on power.
And it is easy to feel, after a few hundred years of capitalism, that things have always been the way they are now and always will be. Luckily for us, this is simply not true. Capitalism is a fairly recent development, and prior to the rise of class society some several thousand years ago, human society was not characterized by classes or inequality or systematic warfare. There are class-free societies on the planet at this very moment, societies that are “egalitarian, cooperative, and on the move.”25 All of the Ju/’hoansi (!Kung) Nharo Basarwa (San or Bushmen) from Ngamiland, Botswana, lived until just recently in societies where egalitarianism—notably along gender lines—was the rule. As some communities shift from nomadism to sedentism, this has started to change—not due to some “resurgence” of human nature, but rather to “the adoption of the economics and attitudes towards gender from non-foraging neighbors [that] facilitates the emergence of gender inequality.… [In addition, some] current development programs designed by Westerners exclude women and contribute to the increase in gender inequality which is emerging in these societies.”
SO to conclude human nature is a big beast and something we cant simply target to being the failings of everything we fail to do. Thinking that things will stay the same forever is a very unmarxist way of thinking and fails to take account of history and the class struggles.
There is nothing about human nature that makes socialism impossible, but there is also nothing that makes it inevitable. According to Marx, people make their own history but not in circumstances of their own choosing.28 If we want socialism—and the possibility of developing human nature to the fullest—we will need to organize and fight for it. This may seem like a pipe dream given the low level of class struggle in the Uk . at this time. But a socialist conception of human nature also allows us to understand how groups of people that for a long time appeared to be hardwired for one set of behaviors—like not fighting back—can transform radically and rapidly in response to social changes.
with extracts used to back up my opinions from http://www.isreview.org/issues/47/wdss-humnature.shtml
Sunday, 26 February 2012
misrepresenting socialism, answering the critics
Socialism is a system that is often misrepresented on purpose and accidentily by various groups of people.
If you’re a capitalist or a person who supports capitalism you will look for any way at all to discredit Marxism and socialism that it cannot work and is doomed to failure.
I thought I’d look at some of the most common attacks that are made on socialists and others who see a future in a alternative system of socialism.
People tend to accept as true the things they hear over and over again. But repetition doesn't make things true. Because the truth and the facts often contradict "common knowledge", socialists have to show that "common knowledge" is wrong. That takes more words than just accepting the status quo.
How would a socialist economy work?
Under capitalism, institutions where immense wealth is concentrated (corporations) run the economy, exploiting working people to increase their own concentrated wealth. The essence of a socialist economy is to flip this relationship upside-down, with working people running the economy, utilizing the enormous wealth and productivity of society to enrich their lives. To do this, we would have to take over all the biggest banks and corporations and put their resources into public ownership and democratic control.
Employing those out of work and reallocating investment and jobs towards social priorities – healthcare, education, clean energy, etc. – would give a huge boost to productivity and wealth in society. Democratic planning of the economy would allow us to make sure everyone had a good-paying job, high-quality health care, free education at all levels, and, of course, basic physical necessities like food and housing. It wouldn’t be limited to just the basics, though; we could choose to invest in empowering people to make music, art, writing, film, fashion, and all sorts of other forms of cultural development.
This type of economic system would require conscious planning, but this is already true to a large extent under capitalism. Corporations, with economies larger than entire countries are able to plan out their levels of production, spread of distribution, pricing schemes and so on without falling to pieces, so there’s no reason working people shouldn’t be able to do the same.
The difference is that planning under capitalism is fractured, incomplete and undemocratic, with the goal of maximizing profit for the individual firm. Under socialism, we could structure investment of the world’s wealth with a big picture, bird’s eye view of the whole economy, with the goal of fulfilling human needs, sustaining the environment and enabling a liberated human existence.
A socialist economic system would have to be globally integrated. This is also the case already under capitalism, where we live in a globally interdependent world. Right now globalization on a capitalist basis means brutal exploitation of the weaker economies, and a race to the bottom for workers everywhere. Under socialism, global economic integration would be part of the plan to enrich people’s lives on a global scale.
A socialist economy would handle the environment very differently. Today, companies don’t care about environmental costs because they are able to externalize them onto the public. The costs associated with contaminated air and drinking water are real, but they don’t show up as a red number on Monsanto’s balance sheet. That is why no corporation will ever undertake the necessary steps to save the environment on the basis of “free market” principles.
Democratic planning of the economy would eliminate the profit motive behind externalizing the costs of pollution. Instead, efficiency, environmental sustainability and meeting the basic needs of all would form the core principles of economic decision-making. Instead of inadequate measures like energy-efficient light bulbs and recycling-awareness programs, a socialist economy could invest in completely overhauling the way everything is produced, utilizing all the latest green technologies for maximum sustainability and creating millions of jobs in the process.
How would a socialist democracy work?
As most of us currently experience it, “democracy” boils down to voting once every couple years for which wealthy career politician will make all the decisions for us. Of course, there’s nothing democratic about this at all, especially when the whole process is corrupted by corporate money.
In contrast, socialist democracy would take place day to day, week to week, in every workplace, school and community. Workers would rotate management tasks, and elected managers would be subject to recall and replacement whenever the workers saw fit. All decisions could be overturned by majority vote.
School curriculum and policy would be jointly agreed upon by parents, teachers and students, rather than imposed by distant administrators and bureaucrats. Neighborhood assemblies would decide who is and is not empowered with policing authority and instruct elected officers how to prioritize their efforts.
All investment and economic decisions should be made democratically. Workplace and neighborhood assemblies would elect representatives to massively expanded local and regional councils, which in turn would elect national representatives. Elected representatives should have no special privileges or pay above their electorate, and they should be subject to instant recall.
In order to facilitate this process of democratic decision-making, there should be space roped off in regular work and school schedules for decision-making meetings and discussions. With the increased wealth created, the work-week could be shortened without loss of pay to allow people time and energy to become engaged politically, and to pursue their other life goals outside work and school.
Wouldn’t a bureaucratic elite just take over?
Undoubtedly, in the first stages of a socialist society, a struggle against careerists and corruption within the system would be necessary. The poisonous ideological baggage inherited from centuries of class rule would not just fade away overnight. However, by establishing public ownership of society’s productive resources, eliminating privileges, and creating bottom-up structures of democratic management and control, the obstacles to prevent aspiring bureaucrats seizing power would be immense.
The main example driving fear of a bureaucratic takeover is Stalin seizing power in the Soviet Union only a few years after Russia’s working-class revolution in 1917. This tragic degeneration of the Russian Revolution is something Marxists have grappled with in numerous books. The basic conclusion supported by a serious historical analysis is that this degeneration was neither natural nor inevitable, but the result of particular circumstances.
Russia was among the poorest countries in the world at the time of its revolution, and it was even further devastated when the deposed capitalist rulers, backed by 21 foreign armies, tried to violently retake power from the democratic workers’ movement, resulting in a bloody civil war. Though revolutions took place elsewhere across Europe, most notably Germany, they were all defeated, leaving Russia poor, broken and alone.
This was not a healthy ground upon which socialism could be built. The whole basis of socialism is having enough to go around, but Russia didn’t have that. In this context, the democratic structures in the Soviets (workers’ assemblies) ceased to function. Who wants to go to political meetings when you’re worried about where your next meal is going to come from?
It was this vacuum of workers’ power from below, fueled by the isolation and economic starvation of the country, that spawned the bureaucratization of Russian society and the rise of Stalin as this bureaucracy’s dictatorial figurehead. Even then, it was not a natural progression. Stalin had to jail, murder, exile, or otherwise force into submission literally millions of people whose only crime was adherence to the democratic principles of the 1917 revolution.
This experience shows the importance of building the fight for socialism as a global movement. Because of imperialist plundering of resources around the world, some countries may lack a stable economic basis for socialism, and will need to trade with and get help from the richer countries. If Russia had been joined by a successful revolution in even one other country, such as Germany, history would have turned out very differently.
Wouldn’t it be easier to reform capitalism?
Unfortunately, contrary to official accounts, the history of capitalism is not one of consistent progress towards ever loftier heights of democracy and prosperity. Rather, every serious reform has required mass struggle, often shaking the system to its core.
Reforms are not granted out of the kind hearts of well-meaning politicians, but are concessions grudgingly granted to appease or distract rising movements of working people hungry for real change. Whether we’re talking about civil rights, the weekend off, or the right to organize a union, every one of these required an all-out fight against the profit-driven logic of capitalism, where countless innocents were murdered by elites desperate to put down their struggles.
Under capitalism, even these partial reforms are not permanent, not a foothold or new baseline to work from. As we have seen in the last few decades, the capitalists and their politicians will roll back reforms as soon as they think they can get away with it.
Social programs that people fought tooth and nail for in the past are being dismantled or undermined via budget cuts. After almost destroying unions in the private sector already – where less than 7% of workers in the US are in a union – corporate politicians in state after state are now going after the public sector, where over a third of workers are still unionized.
A stable basis for ongoing reforms will require working people to take political power out of the hands of the capitalists and wield it themselves – that is, overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. There’s no way around it; the fight for reforms and the struggle for socialist transformation are one and the same.
Socialism sounds great on paper, but is it realistic?
The only constant in history is uninterrupted change. From ancient slave states to the feudal landowner lordships to the global capitalist system of today, people have repeatedly overthrown old systems after they became a brake on progressive development. The truly unrealistic and utopian idea is that problems like war, poverty and environmental devastation will be solved on the basis of capitalism.
Though socialism is realistic, it’s not inevitable. Again and again, crisis-ridden capitalism has forced workers and the oppressed into revolutionary uprisings. Several have happened in the last year, most prominently in Egypt and Tunisia. But while many revolutions succeed in toppling governments, few have achieved system change. Capitalism will always find a way out on the backs of workers, youth and the poor if we fail to replace it with something better.
That’s where socialists come in: We take seriously the study of history, learning from both defeats and successes of revolutions and mass movements. We aim to spread these lessons widely so that future revolutions succeed in establishing socialism. That doesn’t just mean reading a lot of books. It means actively building and engaging with the movements that exist right now, boldly bringing in socialist ideas while learning from others in struggle, working out the way forward together.
If you agree with these ideas, consider joining the Socialist Party today.
If you’re a capitalist or a person who supports capitalism you will look for any way at all to discredit Marxism and socialism that it cannot work and is doomed to failure.
I thought I’d look at some of the most common attacks that are made on socialists and others who see a future in a alternative system of socialism.
People tend to accept as true the things they hear over and over again. But repetition doesn't make things true. Because the truth and the facts often contradict "common knowledge", socialists have to show that "common knowledge" is wrong. That takes more words than just accepting the status quo.
How would a socialist economy work?
Under capitalism, institutions where immense wealth is concentrated (corporations) run the economy, exploiting working people to increase their own concentrated wealth. The essence of a socialist economy is to flip this relationship upside-down, with working people running the economy, utilizing the enormous wealth and productivity of society to enrich their lives. To do this, we would have to take over all the biggest banks and corporations and put their resources into public ownership and democratic control.
Employing those out of work and reallocating investment and jobs towards social priorities – healthcare, education, clean energy, etc. – would give a huge boost to productivity and wealth in society. Democratic planning of the economy would allow us to make sure everyone had a good-paying job, high-quality health care, free education at all levels, and, of course, basic physical necessities like food and housing. It wouldn’t be limited to just the basics, though; we could choose to invest in empowering people to make music, art, writing, film, fashion, and all sorts of other forms of cultural development.
This type of economic system would require conscious planning, but this is already true to a large extent under capitalism. Corporations, with economies larger than entire countries are able to plan out their levels of production, spread of distribution, pricing schemes and so on without falling to pieces, so there’s no reason working people shouldn’t be able to do the same.
The difference is that planning under capitalism is fractured, incomplete and undemocratic, with the goal of maximizing profit for the individual firm. Under socialism, we could structure investment of the world’s wealth with a big picture, bird’s eye view of the whole economy, with the goal of fulfilling human needs, sustaining the environment and enabling a liberated human existence.
A socialist economic system would have to be globally integrated. This is also the case already under capitalism, where we live in a globally interdependent world. Right now globalization on a capitalist basis means brutal exploitation of the weaker economies, and a race to the bottom for workers everywhere. Under socialism, global economic integration would be part of the plan to enrich people’s lives on a global scale.
A socialist economy would handle the environment very differently. Today, companies don’t care about environmental costs because they are able to externalize them onto the public. The costs associated with contaminated air and drinking water are real, but they don’t show up as a red number on Monsanto’s balance sheet. That is why no corporation will ever undertake the necessary steps to save the environment on the basis of “free market” principles.
Democratic planning of the economy would eliminate the profit motive behind externalizing the costs of pollution. Instead, efficiency, environmental sustainability and meeting the basic needs of all would form the core principles of economic decision-making. Instead of inadequate measures like energy-efficient light bulbs and recycling-awareness programs, a socialist economy could invest in completely overhauling the way everything is produced, utilizing all the latest green technologies for maximum sustainability and creating millions of jobs in the process.
How would a socialist democracy work?
As most of us currently experience it, “democracy” boils down to voting once every couple years for which wealthy career politician will make all the decisions for us. Of course, there’s nothing democratic about this at all, especially when the whole process is corrupted by corporate money.
In contrast, socialist democracy would take place day to day, week to week, in every workplace, school and community. Workers would rotate management tasks, and elected managers would be subject to recall and replacement whenever the workers saw fit. All decisions could be overturned by majority vote.
School curriculum and policy would be jointly agreed upon by parents, teachers and students, rather than imposed by distant administrators and bureaucrats. Neighborhood assemblies would decide who is and is not empowered with policing authority and instruct elected officers how to prioritize their efforts.
All investment and economic decisions should be made democratically. Workplace and neighborhood assemblies would elect representatives to massively expanded local and regional councils, which in turn would elect national representatives. Elected representatives should have no special privileges or pay above their electorate, and they should be subject to instant recall.
In order to facilitate this process of democratic decision-making, there should be space roped off in regular work and school schedules for decision-making meetings and discussions. With the increased wealth created, the work-week could be shortened without loss of pay to allow people time and energy to become engaged politically, and to pursue their other life goals outside work and school.
Wouldn’t a bureaucratic elite just take over?
Undoubtedly, in the first stages of a socialist society, a struggle against careerists and corruption within the system would be necessary. The poisonous ideological baggage inherited from centuries of class rule would not just fade away overnight. However, by establishing public ownership of society’s productive resources, eliminating privileges, and creating bottom-up structures of democratic management and control, the obstacles to prevent aspiring bureaucrats seizing power would be immense.
The main example driving fear of a bureaucratic takeover is Stalin seizing power in the Soviet Union only a few years after Russia’s working-class revolution in 1917. This tragic degeneration of the Russian Revolution is something Marxists have grappled with in numerous books. The basic conclusion supported by a serious historical analysis is that this degeneration was neither natural nor inevitable, but the result of particular circumstances.
Russia was among the poorest countries in the world at the time of its revolution, and it was even further devastated when the deposed capitalist rulers, backed by 21 foreign armies, tried to violently retake power from the democratic workers’ movement, resulting in a bloody civil war. Though revolutions took place elsewhere across Europe, most notably Germany, they were all defeated, leaving Russia poor, broken and alone.
This was not a healthy ground upon which socialism could be built. The whole basis of socialism is having enough to go around, but Russia didn’t have that. In this context, the democratic structures in the Soviets (workers’ assemblies) ceased to function. Who wants to go to political meetings when you’re worried about where your next meal is going to come from?
It was this vacuum of workers’ power from below, fueled by the isolation and economic starvation of the country, that spawned the bureaucratization of Russian society and the rise of Stalin as this bureaucracy’s dictatorial figurehead. Even then, it was not a natural progression. Stalin had to jail, murder, exile, or otherwise force into submission literally millions of people whose only crime was adherence to the democratic principles of the 1917 revolution.
This experience shows the importance of building the fight for socialism as a global movement. Because of imperialist plundering of resources around the world, some countries may lack a stable economic basis for socialism, and will need to trade with and get help from the richer countries. If Russia had been joined by a successful revolution in even one other country, such as Germany, history would have turned out very differently.
Wouldn’t it be easier to reform capitalism?
Unfortunately, contrary to official accounts, the history of capitalism is not one of consistent progress towards ever loftier heights of democracy and prosperity. Rather, every serious reform has required mass struggle, often shaking the system to its core.
Reforms are not granted out of the kind hearts of well-meaning politicians, but are concessions grudgingly granted to appease or distract rising movements of working people hungry for real change. Whether we’re talking about civil rights, the weekend off, or the right to organize a union, every one of these required an all-out fight against the profit-driven logic of capitalism, where countless innocents were murdered by elites desperate to put down their struggles.
Under capitalism, even these partial reforms are not permanent, not a foothold or new baseline to work from. As we have seen in the last few decades, the capitalists and their politicians will roll back reforms as soon as they think they can get away with it.
Social programs that people fought tooth and nail for in the past are being dismantled or undermined via budget cuts. After almost destroying unions in the private sector already – where less than 7% of workers in the US are in a union – corporate politicians in state after state are now going after the public sector, where over a third of workers are still unionized.
A stable basis for ongoing reforms will require working people to take political power out of the hands of the capitalists and wield it themselves – that is, overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. There’s no way around it; the fight for reforms and the struggle for socialist transformation are one and the same.
Socialism sounds great on paper, but is it realistic?
The only constant in history is uninterrupted change. From ancient slave states to the feudal landowner lordships to the global capitalist system of today, people have repeatedly overthrown old systems after they became a brake on progressive development. The truly unrealistic and utopian idea is that problems like war, poverty and environmental devastation will be solved on the basis of capitalism.
Though socialism is realistic, it’s not inevitable. Again and again, crisis-ridden capitalism has forced workers and the oppressed into revolutionary uprisings. Several have happened in the last year, most prominently in Egypt and Tunisia. But while many revolutions succeed in toppling governments, few have achieved system change. Capitalism will always find a way out on the backs of workers, youth and the poor if we fail to replace it with something better.
That’s where socialists come in: We take seriously the study of history, learning from both defeats and successes of revolutions and mass movements. We aim to spread these lessons widely so that future revolutions succeed in establishing socialism. That doesn’t just mean reading a lot of books. It means actively building and engaging with the movements that exist right now, boldly bringing in socialist ideas while learning from others in struggle, working out the way forward together.
If you agree with these ideas, consider joining the Socialist Party today.
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
The dangers of the lack of a political alternative
During these tough economic times as we start to feel the bite of the cuts and our living standards slip backwards. The lack of a alternative or a party standing up for people is very evident.
It took the trade unions months to call the first demonstration national demo in London on March 26th last year. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do so. They only started organising mass co-ordinated strike action after hard work and lobbying and mass pressure from below by ordinary rank-and-file members.
With the 3 main political parties lib dem, labour and tories all agreeing the need for cuts to some degree people will be left feeling who do we trust now ?
very understandable with no one taking a lead and showing leadership as my post on political leadership last night was about can lead to all sorts of dangers. Not least the idea that we cant affect things and a sense of desperation sets in. Last summers riots were a sign of this. Many young people in poor areas with little opportunities feeling attacked and threatened from every angle felt they had nothing to loose.
As Martin Luther King once said rioting is the voice of the voiceless. Countless generations have been ignored and pushed about, stop and searched as seen as a constant threat but now have even less opportunities with the cutting of EMA and trebling of tuitian fees for university.
Life is a struggle for people from these backgrounds ordinary working class backgrounds who have little hope in finding a job in their area or getting out of the situation they find themselves in.
Youth fight for jobs last year did interveen in these areas to try and offer a constructive programme for youth to get involved in and channel their anger into something constructive and this is helping but still far more needs to be done.
The lack of an alternative for people will also have an affect on peoples political views to the likes of the right and far right for example may find easy picking in areas where there is no alternative to the 3 capitalist parties and play on peoples fears of imigration and heighten those tensions. This could be very dangerous and has already been seen with the senseless murdering of innocent students in Norway last year and the rise of the neo-nazi's in germany.
All this is very worrying and makes the need for a new workers party and a lead to be taken by the unions to offer an alternative right away. They should be acting as the pillars of the communities where political leadership is lacking.
Many confused things will be running through peoples minds at this time but the longer we go on without that clear alternative being made, as socialist alternative the more likely people are to turn to less savoury methods of change which is something as socialists we would not want to see.
It took the trade unions months to call the first demonstration national demo in London on March 26th last year. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do so. They only started organising mass co-ordinated strike action after hard work and lobbying and mass pressure from below by ordinary rank-and-file members.
With the 3 main political parties lib dem, labour and tories all agreeing the need for cuts to some degree people will be left feeling who do we trust now ?
very understandable with no one taking a lead and showing leadership as my post on political leadership last night was about can lead to all sorts of dangers. Not least the idea that we cant affect things and a sense of desperation sets in. Last summers riots were a sign of this. Many young people in poor areas with little opportunities feeling attacked and threatened from every angle felt they had nothing to loose.
As Martin Luther King once said rioting is the voice of the voiceless. Countless generations have been ignored and pushed about, stop and searched as seen as a constant threat but now have even less opportunities with the cutting of EMA and trebling of tuitian fees for university.
Life is a struggle for people from these backgrounds ordinary working class backgrounds who have little hope in finding a job in their area or getting out of the situation they find themselves in.
Youth fight for jobs last year did interveen in these areas to try and offer a constructive programme for youth to get involved in and channel their anger into something constructive and this is helping but still far more needs to be done.
The lack of an alternative for people will also have an affect on peoples political views to the likes of the right and far right for example may find easy picking in areas where there is no alternative to the 3 capitalist parties and play on peoples fears of imigration and heighten those tensions. This could be very dangerous and has already been seen with the senseless murdering of innocent students in Norway last year and the rise of the neo-nazi's in germany.
All this is very worrying and makes the need for a new workers party and a lead to be taken by the unions to offer an alternative right away. They should be acting as the pillars of the communities where political leadership is lacking.
Many confused things will be running through peoples minds at this time but the longer we go on without that clear alternative being made, as socialist alternative the more likely people are to turn to less savoury methods of change which is something as socialists we would not want to see.
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