Has the Left Given Up on Ending Capitalism?
Is the age of left-wing revolutions over? Does this inevitably mean that the left has to accommodate itself to a capitalist economy and a capitalist world system? I firmly believe that the way forward to a more just society will be worked out incrementally by today’s left, especially by the left of that left who want to move society towards a new post-capitalist social system. But facts are facts, and right now the left is united around a set of sacrosanct principles that result in a refusal or incapacity to imagine practical ways of changing who is in power in society’s institutions.
We Are Afraid to Seek Power
Today’s left is walking away from any strategy to achieve a popular revolution (in whatever form, it surely cannot be a simple repeat of the past). It has not analyzed the history of past left-wing revolutions and their resultant regimes. It simply wants to forget about them and hope that the public we need to win to support our politics for a new society will do so too. But in the meantime the left has become de facto anti revolution, in part for fear of repeating the atrocities of a past that it does not choose to know or understand or, most important, draw both positive and negative lessons from.
What do I mean when I say that today’s left has become anti revolution to the point of being afraid to seek power in a way that displaces our current rulers from power? Let us start by defining what is meant by revolution. A radically progressive social change revolution requires a revolution in two senses (or, if you will, two stages), means and ends.
The ends achieved are what I will call ‘revolutionary in scope’ if they qualitatively transform social relations, if they create qualitatively new institutions operating on what Daniel Bell termed new axial operating principles. A society with both a post-capitalist economy and other qualitatively different private society institutions that systematically operated so as to foster equal conditions and opportunity for workers, women, racial minorities etc would mark the achievement of revolutionary ends, of a genuinely new and better social system.
The means are revolutionary if they do whatever is necessary to achieve control of the key institutions necessary to effect those changes. There can be no revolution without strategies and tactics and a detailed programme for taking power of, by and for ‘the people’ – where the people includes all social groups who are systematically oppressed on the basis of class, gender, ethnicity-race, sexuality etc -- and then using that institutional power to radically reform institutions that exploit or oppress people.
We Used to Agree On Our Goals, but Not Any More
This at least has been the position of one wing of the left ever since the French Revolution over two hundred years ago. The left has been united by its support for many systemic changes but has broadly labelled itself as fighting for a radical fulfillment of the promises of the French Revolution, of genuine ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’. More narrowly it has labelled itself as fighting for both socialism in the economy and democracy in politics, for social democracy or democratic socialism. In the early days at least, say as of 1900, the left was united around seeking the same revolutionary in scope ends. However, the left has been, and remains, divided over the means. There have been three main different means or strategy-tactics – revolutionary, reformist and anarchist.
Reduced to its essentials, the revolution strategy has been to organize a popular uprising in order to gain control of the institutions of political and military power (state power) and then to rely on that power ‘from above’ to lead the people in changing the economy and other private society (‘social’ or cultural) institutions ‘from below’.
Reformists have objected that this is an unacceptable ‘the ends justifies the means’ approach, because it uses undemocratic means. They have advocated a strategy of getting elected to being the government, and then relying on the political and military power that this at least legally confers, to lead in making changes, mostly therefore ‘from above’. Reformists have always been at best ambivalent about extraparliamentary social movements and protests outside the control of their party. Partly this has been due to a simple fear that undisciplined movements could undermine their chances of getting elected to government positions. But they have also feared the inherent revolutionary ‘power to the people’ logic of popular movements, at least those movements that directly challenged the power of rulers of economy, state or society led by the left of their left.
Some of Us Work Within the System, and Many of Us Withdraw
Anarchists have rejected both revolution and reform strategies because those strategies rely on taking control of the state, which is ultimately a coercive power that dictates change to people from the outside. They instead have a strategy of building new institutions of the future society from the ground up directly and immediately. Since this is not possible without challenging the power of those who control societal institutions, this has been a strategy of withdrawal into building a decentralized counter-culture of parallel self-governing institutions outside the existing ones. In Marxist language, they want to go straight to the ultimate goal of communism, the classless society. With a few honourable exceptions, anarchism has been marked by a relative absence of theory or concrete analysis of society and a prevalence of a ‘just do it’ belief in the wonders of spontaneity. Many anarchist self-governing communities have broken up when they became, or threatened to become, a turned inwards cult with an authoritarian charismatic leader. Those anarchists oriented outwards to social and political struggle have forsworn having a strategy for power other than opposing the existence of ‘power over’ in any and all institutions. They have often fallen ‘spontaneously’ into terrorism without necessarily planning to do so.
In the event, no anarchist movement or reformist party has ever come anywhere close to producing either anything that could be called a successful revolutionary process of institutional change or a full-scale socialist economy. All of the major socialist economy regimes in the twentieth century have come as the result of revolutions (popular uprisings and civil wars). All have been led by Marxist-Leninist vanguard parties (Soviet Union, China, Vietnam) or ended up as regimes based all (Cuba) or partly (North Korea, Cambodia) on Marxism-Leninism. None of the revolutions have been led by Trotskyists. All of the revolutionary movements and resulting regimes could be considered ‘Stalinist’, insofar as they retrospectively sided with Stalin and the Soviet Union against Trotskyist critics of the Soviet Union.
If Someone Asked Us Why Marxist States Failed, the Sad Truth is That We Could Not Give Them a Satisfactory Answer
For many decades, all of those regimes have been viewed by the vast majority of people as murderous police states. Their full-scale socialist economies have been visibly far less successful than rich country capitalist economies in producing wealth and high living standards, even for the average worker or peasant. Within the left itself, this has been the predominant view as well, at least since the end of the Long Sixties protest wave (i.e. by 1980). Especially since the ‘fall of communism’, the entire left, including the left of the left, has rejected Marxism-Leninism as a strategy for revolution and as a type of regime that results from that kind of revolution. This can be seen to be a good thing. But this rejection has not been based on any analysis made by the left itself that leads to the drawing of conclusions about what was good about that past, and what was wrong and should never be repeated.
Is this really as much of a problem as I am asserting? Is it not just ultimately something of interest only to those who want to develop an academic understanding of past left movements in past societies, neither of which still exist? Is it really necessary for progressive movements to understand the past in order to understand the present, and in order to develop strategies to change the present? After all, the rich capitalist societies of Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have been stable liberal democracies with constitutionally protected civil liberties and domestic peace for at least for at least the two generations since 1945. Isn’t the very idea of revolution out of date because it inevitably involves a popular uprising leading to civil war, and hence to sustained violence? Isn’t it possible to continue indefinitely with movements that maintain non-violence no matter what? Isn’t the age of revolution over, so studying that past in order to draw lessons is not all that relevant?
Do We Really Need to Bother Studying Left History? Surely Our Generation is Smarter and Won’t Repeat Past Mistakes
Only time will tell us the answer to these questions. It is possible to imagine that today’s left could change itself in major ways, that would end its current status as a marginal force with little real influence on social and political outcomes, without drawing lessons from the past. It is without question extremely desirable to have a left that then achieves the many radical changes needed in today’s society without a revolution, and hence without some kind of civil war violence. But both these wishes – for a spontaneous discovery of the new and true way to change the world, because our new generation won’t make the mistakes of the past; and for change without violence, because we don’t want violence – are what every new generation of progressives has always hoped could be true. As Jeff Goodwin (echoing Lenin) argued in his book No Other Way Out, left-wing revolutions are rare beasts because they require a confluence of three preconditions: social contradictions have sharpened to the point where fundamental social changes are necessary; the ruling classes are so badly divided that a sustained popular challenge to the rulers is possible; and all peaceful avenues of change are blocked. Maybe there is some other way that radical change can and will take place in future, where peaceful avenues of change are not blocked. Perhaps not. Time will tell.
In the meantime, there are two features of today’s left that seem to be to be an obstacle to achieving a non-marginal left that can win mass popular support for revolutionary in scope changes (perhaps achieved in a series of peaceful ‘revolutions’, so that these alternatives are achieved in part by trial and error, and the changes are in small enough bits that people can overcome their fear of change from what they know). First, after several decades of postmodern skepticism, the left of the left is going back to saying that There is An Alternative, that the alternative is anti-capitalist and even socialist, but does not know what that means. Second, the left is so afraid of repeating Leninist revolutions that lead to Stalinist regimes (and of the experience of electing left governments that fail to change anything fundamental) that it has foresworn any attempt to replace the ruling classes in power in societal institutions. It has no new strategy for power to replace both the revolutionary and reformist variants of the old one of taking political-military power and using it to lead changes in all societal institutions.
Is Changing Who Owns the Economy Really Still Relevant?
Left radicals increasingly agree that real social change requires a post-capitalist economy, indeed a socialist one, as a foundation of changes in other institutions and in reigning cultural ideas. But there is no agreement on what that means. Does it simply mean a more generous welfare state but no change to ownership and control of the economy by private capital, i.e. socialist distribution combined with capitalist production? How is that really different from what we have now? Is the difference between left and right then just a matter of degree of generosity in redistribution of some of the capital wealth accumulated by private corporations? The left may understandably have come to this stance because statist solutions, both selective state ownership by elected reformist governments and wholesale public ownership instituted by revolutionary ones, have been discredited.
There are many problems with this wishful stance. More generous welfare state-ism might provide more chances for more individuals to rise to the top (because of free education and healthcare and generous welfare income). However, capitalism will continue to generate more and more inequality for the vast majority, both within countries and between rich and non-rich countries. It will do nothing to change the accelerating destruction of the planet and many species by a capitalism that needs even more priority given to economic growth in order to afford the more generous welfare state and still maximize profit. Most of all, leaving private capitalists in ownership and control of the economy means leaving them as the ruling class that also rules in all non-economic institutions, because all institutions must contribute to that ever increasing accumulation of private capital wealth. The left has a lot of thinking to do about what its vision is of an Alternative Society that will actually solve our most pressing social and economic problems. If changing ownership and control of the means of production is not (an essential part of) the answer, what is?
If We Fail to Remove the Ruling Elites from Power, then We Are Giving Up on the Possibility of an Abraham Lincoln-ian Democracy that is Of, By and For the People
Finally, today’s left has only taken the first step in rethinking past left-wing strategies. It has in practice rejected both electoral reformist and revolution strategies. Those strategies reduce to taking political and military power (control of the state apparatus) and using this leverage to lead in transforming the economy and the overall society. Today’s left wants no repeat of top down changes, especially not ones that are literally dictatorial. Fair enough as a first step. But coming to this conclusion alone is not reducing the amount of top down control in our society, because it is leaving capitalists and the rulers in all societal institutions in power.
Today’s left is afraid of being corrupted by power that is ‘power over’ to the point that it foreswears displacing the rulers from power. It seeks to change the world by building up a marginal counterculture of liberated individuals, and by periodically mobilizing that slowly expanding reservoir of liberated individuals to engage in nonviolent protest. Today’s left is in practice content with being a permanent pacifistic opposition that foreswears power inside any institutions that have ‘power over’. No matter how courageous the individuals are in sticking to non-violent protest, this amounts to a strategy of lobbying or petitioning those in power to make changes more in line with the values, beliefs and norms of the progressive counterculture. That is a good way to feel pure and good about oneself. It is not a very realistic way to change the world.
Is the age of revolution over? Is the age of radical reform governments dead too? For 70 years or more those of us living in rich countries or rich regions of non-rich countries have had the luxury of seemingly endless personal affluence and peace and civil liberty and electoral democracy. There has been no real urgency to rethink any strategy for actually taking power away from those who run things now, so that we can build new institutions with that power. But recently – with the 2008 financialization crisis, the spread and rise of racist nationalist proto-fascist movements and leaders who want to get rid of democracy, of economic wars that could become real military wars and the very real prospect that global warming and chemical poisoning will destroy Planet Earth – we may have to speed up the process of figuring out how to take power from the capitalists so that we can learn to live another way.