Luxemburg – Reform or Revolution?
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What you seem to be saying in effect, pgb, is that Lenin was essentially right when he said that the working class is only capable of developing a trade union consciousness. Agreed that that is all it has done so far but socialists must hold that they are capable of more. Otherwise we'd have to resign ourselves to trade unionism or Labourite type politics (or go fishing or live our life without bothering about politics).
I think perhaps it was the sense of the imminence or at least the inevitability of socialism that suffused socialism in the late 19th/early 20th century that might be part of the approach of socialists at the time. The question wasn't if socialism was going to emerge but when. The strategic debate was around how to bring it about more quickly. If it was imminent and/or inevitable then reforms in the meantime, as 'stepping stones', make sense. The SPGB marked itself out by its argument that socialism was not inevitable but required a majority of socialists. Support for reforms from this perspective does not make sense or may even confuse matters and thus prolong capitalism. Hyndman wrote an article in which he argues the SDF to be on a middle path between anarchist 'impossibilism' and opportunist Labourism and that “Everywhere, in all civilized countries, it is obvious that Socialism is the power of the near future”. http://www.marxists.org/archive/hyndman/1903/05/impossibilism.htm I think that this attitude could be argued to be the mainstream socialist view with the early SPGB outside of it because of its insistence that socialism could not emerge without a conscious socialist majority. However much reforms might be welcome for the immediate improvement of working class standards of living, a programme of reforms would be counter-productive as it would divert attention from the immediate aim of 'making' class conscious socialists or even support the claims of revisionists that socialism might evolve within capitalism.
pgb wrote:Where I do disagree is with your views about the state and political action, as distinct from strictly economic (TU) action. Your picture of political action is so far away from my experience of politics in a modern (liberal democratic) capitalist state that I wonder am I on another planet. Why do you insist that pushing for reforms means "cap in hand supplication to the capitalist state"? That isn't even fair to those 19th century Chartists who pushed for democratic reforms (with the active support of one K Marx)! Why do you call legislation that enforces workers rights to eg. free medical and health care or occupational safety "a mere scrap of white paper etc"? Are you seriously suggesting that the legal entrenchment of a right is of no consequence for workers? In my part of the world these reforms were introduced via political parties and pressure groups and did not represent merely a "ratification of what happened on the ground". Your post hoc propter hoc fallacy doesn't fit. Making the propagation of ideas a principal role for a revolutionary socialist party today is fine. But it is a long way from what Luxemburg and other Marxists believed in and practised. For them, the propagation of socialist ideas was meaningful only in the context of an active working class movement. The lesson here for me is that socialists must actively engage in the political and economic struggles of the working class if their propagation of ideas is to be more than what you call “abstract propagandism”. Does the SPGB do that? But what if there is no working class movement to speak of? What if after a century and a half there is not the slightest evidence that the working class is “essentially” or even potentially a revolutionary class? Anyway, thank you for the opportunity to give my views on Rosa Luxemburg. It forced me to read again her pamphlet which I first looked at more than fifty years ago.Hi PGBMy post was accidentally deleted by the moderator and I don't have a copy which is a bit of a bummer but never mind. I think since we agree on some things it might be more useful and pertinent to turn to those matters on which we don't appear to agree – like the above First of all, to make myself clear, by reformism i mean legislative enactments or decrees undertaken by the state in the political domain which are fundamentally concerned with issues that pertain to the economic domain . Capitalism is defined in essentially economic terms and so to be consistent and faithful to the meaning of the term, reformism has to be seen as having as its focus the economic field or domain. It is capitalism that reformism seeks to reform, after all. For that reason, I don't regard political reforms as strictly an example of reformism. The chartist movement that you cite was not a reformist movement in this sense. The 6 basic reforms embodied in the People's Charter were political reforms, not economic reforms – that is, the focus of such reforms was on the political field and has to do with such matters as the basic right to vote – universal suffrage. I support such a right and the struggle to get it. I believe that is the position of the the SPGB as well. Yoy cannot effectively propagandise for socialism without a modicum of democratic rights in place Where I part company with you is on the question of economic reforms – reformism, properly speaking. To clarify things, I don't say that certain economic reforms are not beneficial to workers. Free medical care which you mention is a case in point. But you seem to have this rather naive idealistic view of such reforms if you think they were introduced essentially with the welfare of the workers in mind, The Beveridge Report in the UK which published in 1942 and which roughed out the basic outlines of the welfare state established after the Second World war made it abundantly clear what is was all about. In 1943, the millionaire industrialist and Tory supporter, Samuel Courtauld commenting on the Report: said this "Social security of this nature will be about the most profitable long term investment the country could make. It will not undermine the morale of the nation's workers; it will ultimately lead to higher efficiency among them and a lowering of production costsThe point is that while some reforms may benefits workers, in order for them to be implemented they have also to benefit the capitalist class in some way as well. The capitalist class after all has to foot the bill for it through taxation which ultimately is a deduction from profits, not wages, as Marx argued. Thus, if there is not something in it for the capitalists too a reform is unlikely ever to see the light of day. Reforms that have been implemented that don't sufficiently suit the interests of the capitalist class (or some fraction within it) can be circumvented, watered down or simply ignored That is why I reject your suggestion that a post hoc propter hoc fallacy doesn't fit the situation. I think it fits it very well and the example of the welfare state is a case in point, The subsequent erosion of many of the founding principles of the welfare state further supports my characterisation of such legal enactments as a mere "a mere scrap of white paper etc"? Am I "seriously suggesting that the legal entrenchment of a right is of no consequence for workers"? Well, let me throw the question back to you – does the fact that a right is legally entrenched means that it is inviolable ? What can be given with one hand under capitalism can be taken away with another. It is not a question of whether a right is of no consequence but rather of whether they can hold onto it The point I was trying to make is that it is the power of the workers organised in the industrial field that counts far more than some white paper being debated by a bunch of parliamentarians. But even this power that workers possess is limited and conditioned by the state of the economy. Economic recession not only undermines the bargaining position of workers vis a vis their employers but as we have seen, can mean the wholesale watering down and abandonment of many reforms expediently introduced by the state in more prosperous times. You say from the way I describe things you wonder whether you are on another planet. Well on this planet, PGB, in case you hadn't noticed , workers living standards and workers rights are being rolled back in many parts of the world right now despite the legal entrenchment of reforms you place so much confidence in Your position seems to be that what is called the "social wage" is something quite separate from the actual wages workers receive and that there is, somehow, no connection between them. The Marxian law of value would assert otherwise. There is no such thing as a free lunch is capitalism. What we get for free – like medical care under the NHS – we pay for in other ways – notably in terms of relatively lower wage levels. Employers don't have to pay their workers as much as they might have to if medical care was not available for free to the workers. Of course there is nothing automatic about this and workers will still have to struggle for that increased wage to cover the costs of such things as medical care Finally you say socialists must engage in the political and economic struggles of the working class if their propagation of ideas is to be more than what you call “abstract propagandism". Well, this is far too sweeping a statement to be considered acceptable. What struggles are You talking about.?I can agree wholeheartedly with the idea of socialists – at least in their individual capacity – participating in economic struggles against the employers, But political struggles? This seems to me to be code for reformist struggles and allow me to point out again this is dead end. We are never ever going to move forward and onwards to a new kind of society as long as we are being constantly sucked backed into the unending business of wanting to patch up and improve existing capitalist society. You are inviting us to get on a treadmill that is simply going to go nowhere What you are advocating is in effect no different from what Bernstein was advocating even if you may passionately declare your commitment to the goal of socialism and see reforms as a mean of awakening workers to a revolutionary consciousness,. So did the the Marxist faction in the SDP but Bernstein was really only telling them the unpalatable truth of what lay at the end of line of a policy of pressing for reforms.. It doesn't awaken workers to a revolutionary consciousness; it deadens them to that. Capitalism was not transformed. What or rather who was transformed were those who imagined that by engaging with capitalism through a process of reformism they could move society to the point where capitalism could be transcended and socialism introduced. With the benefit of hindsight we now know that was an utterly forlorn hope Let me reiterate again – I'm not saying some reforms might not be of benefit to workers however transient and fragile these benefits turn out to be. I'm saying that even so socialists shouldn't be drawn into the business of proactively advocating or pursuing reforms which is what I strongly suspect you mean by "political struggles". You have to draw line somewhere and there is absolutely no getting round this simple fact. Either you want to end capitalism or you want to mend capitalism. You cant possibly do both
Here's the review from the Socialist Standard in 1939 of the first English translation of her pamphlet:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1930s/1939/no-415-march-1939/reform-or-revolution-rosa-luxemburgThe quotes given here bring out that she did distinguish between "legislative reform" (the term used repeatedly in chapter VIII as the alternative offered to "revolution") and trade unionism.Incidentally, in the original German she did not use the word "reformism", despite the translator (an SPGB sympathiser in the US) giving the title of chapter V as "The Consequences of Social Reformism and General Nature of Revisionism". The original does not contain the words in italics. Presumably the word was not in use at the time in its current sense, another reason why she cannot be said to have described trade union activity as reformist.
Hi Robbo:All you seem to be saying re reforms having to "benefit the capitalist class in some way" is that any reform has to operate within the structural constraints of a capitalist economy which sets limits to what is realistic and realisable. But what is the significance, apart from saying what is common knowledge – that there are limits to the scope of reforms within a capitalist system (or any system)? I am not aware that workers and TU' s who fought for reforms were unaware of this. Not the ones that I know of anyway. Saying that reforms are functional for capitalism doesn't mean that workers' interests have been "betrayed" or that workers who fought for them exhibited "false consciousness" or whatever. I think if I asked most workers here how do they feel about, say, free hospital care, they'd say they support it. And if I then said but capitalists benefit from it too, they'd probably say "so what"? I mean if it works, why does it matter if a capitalist approves or not? I won't go into your argument about capitalists paying for the capitalist state through taxes again. It's a uniquely SPGB shibboleth. I certainly wouldn't be asserting the Marxian law of value! It's a no-no as a theory of wage determination in a modern capitalist economy. Your reference to the Beveridge report suggests that the origin of Britain's Welfare State can be explained by the functional need for it, i.e. by the political action of capitalists (like Courtauld). I know little about the origins of Britain's Welfare State, but what I have read suggests quite the opposite, eg: "It was the growing strength of labour organisation that caused the shift leftward in public opinion that brought the Labour Party to power and thus was responsible for the passage of the welfare state reforms of the late 1940s" (J Stephens, The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism, 1979). When I put this up against your description of the political/legislative process, eg "some white paper being debated by a bunch of parliamentarians", "a mere scrap of paper", and workers going "cap in hand to the capitalist state" maybe you can understand why I was struck by the lack of realism, and why your propter hoc fallacy simply didn't work for me.You say that legal rights are not inviolable. Of course not. But that's no way of answering the only question that matters: have legal rights been done away with? Well, in my world there is the usual catalogue of liberal democratic rights such as the right of assembly, the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to strike, etc. and in fact none have been taken away. There have been attempts to whittle them away from time to time, and attempts to whittle them back again, and there are inequalities of access to these rights, but no evidence so far that they have been seriously undermined let alone taken away. I could say the same about welfare state provisions such as medical and health care, etc. I have just made a mental list of reforms in my time and I don't find any that have been done away with. Workers fought hard to get them and keep them! You say I haven't noticed that workers rights are being rolled back in many parts of the world right now – well, sorry, I haven't noticed it here. What has been rolled back is workers' share of national income and their real wages, though not here so much as in the US though even there I haven't noticed a significant rollback of rights as such. Our fundamental disagreement is that I believe in the importance of political struggles and you don't because you regard all or most political struggles as "reformism". You ask for examples. OK, some of great importance to me, and in which I have taken a part, would be: political campaigns to defend free public schools against the threat of funding cuts in favour of private sector schools. A really major issue here at the moment. Another is defending the public broadcaster (ABC) against privatisation. Another is supporting asylum seekers arriving here as so-called "illegal" migrants. Another is to legislate for rights of indigenous (aboriginal) workers. These are all "reformist" political struggles, right? I'm not expecting that on my own I am going to awaken my fellow worker-activists to a revolutionary consciousness, but it should raise their level of political efficacy, and that is surely important in making socialists. Why should I regard this as "mending" capitalism or lead me to a "dead end"? Reformist politics hasn't led workers to a dead end. If anything, it's empowered them.
pgb wrote:I won't go into your argument about capitalists paying for the capitalist state through taxes again. It's a uniquely SPGB shibboleth.Actually, it's not…
Marx wrote:If all taxes which bear on the working class were abolished root and branch, the necessary consequence would be the reduction of wages by the whole amount of taxes which goes into them . Either the employers' profit would rise as a direct consequence by the same quantity, or else no more than an alteration in the form of tax-collecting would have taken place. Instead of the present system, whereby the capitalist also advances, as part of the wage, the taxes which the worker has to pay, he [ the capitalist ] would no longer pay them in this roundabout way, but directly to the State.Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality, Collected Works, Vol 6 Lawrence and Wishart, 1976, p329
I know they are a strange bed-fellow but UKIP also accepts that:
Quote:Every attempt to tax wages sets in motion a “shifting” process whereby the tax finishes up as a corporate impost anywaySee their proposed tax policy here (scroll down to point 1.3):http://www.ukip.org/issues-2/policy-pages/tax
But, surely, pgb, after a century of activism by millions in the labour movement we might expect some increase in socialist class consciousness through the political strategy you advocate. The reverse is true. A century ago it looked as if socialism might be on the near horizon. Today the left is in long term decline. In the long run your approach has been successful as ours. The SPGB said back then that without a primary comittment to socialism, the labour movement would succumb to to the liberalism it sought to influence. It did. But it did not argue against its members being active in the class struggle outside of the socialist political party, in trades unions and elsewhere. They were and are. It hasn't happened yet, or even looked likely, but without a majority of socialists, there can be no socialism. The realisation of the limitation of reforms to qualitatively change capitalism has to be a part of that process if it is to occur. A move beyond defensive measures.
Demanding more crumbs will not bring about freedom and has nothing to do with socialism.It really isn't as complicated as the 'left' make it out to be. The choice is simple; 'better' wage slavery or freedom with no wage slavery at all.Some might argue that the activities and misinformation of the so called 'left wing' has done more damage to the cause of socialism than the entire capitalist propaganda machine put together.
Well pgb, one has seen what has happened over the last few years, to the reforms that workers have "wrestled" from the Capitalists. Capitalism, going through one of its regular slumps, is withdrawing the "perks" garnered by workers in what is laughingly called, "the good times". Indeed that slime ball Cameron, and his ventriliquist dummy Osbourne, have now stated that we, (OMG this is so funny), by that they mean workers, not the wealthy, must prepare ourselves for permanent austerity. The fifth richest country in the world, it's government, have used this, the latest of the crisis of Capitalism, as an excuse for a crackdown. Turning one section of workers against another and actually getting "workers" support for their inhumane benefits crackdown.This is the ultimate end for "all reforms" screwed out of our masters. It is the reason that the SPGB and anyone else with merely a modicum of intelligence and understanding of Capitalism see reforms for what they are. A method to redistribute "our" misery. Methods which should be given the short shrift, they so richly deserve. When all is said and done, reforms leave the cause of all our problems, essentially untouched, and the world still in the hands of a tiny minority of parasites, Capitalism and the capitalists.Its really quite ingenious. Con the majority into believing that a few reforms can get rid of the nasty elements of Capitalism and they will not be interested in getting rid of this obscene social system ergo, they will not work towards a truly democratic and fair society. This is the fact, a fact that people like you, pgb, prove every day, by your insistence that reforms can get rid of this systems nasty bits and presumably you also think that if enough reforms are enacted, get rid of Capitalism itself! History disproves this and continues to disprove this, time after time.You have 2 choices, either believe the reformist fairy story and leave Capitalism intact, or work with likeminded workers and work to get rid of Capitalism and all its intendent horrors. So whats it to be, get class aware and conscious or continue to be gulled! the choice is yours. Stevie C.
pgb wrote:Your reference to the Beveridge report suggests that the origin of Britain's Welfare State can be explained by the functional need for it, i.e. by the political action of capitalists (like Courtauld). I know little about the origins of Britain's Welfare State, but what I have read suggests quite the opposite, eg: "It was the growing strength of labour organisation that caused the shift leftward in public opinion that brought the Labour Party to power and thus was responsible for the passage of the welfare state reforms of the late 1940s" (J Stephens, The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism, 1979). When I put this up against your description of the political/legislative process, eg "some white paper being debated by a bunch of parliamentarians", "a mere scrap of paper", and workers going "cap in hand to the capitalist state" maybe you can understand why I was struck by the lack of realism, and why your propter hoc fallacy simply didn't work for me.Interesting article here which gives a rather different perspective on the rise of the welfare state. In particular, thisIn 1908, when Asquith became prime minister, there were almost no models of state welfare anywhere on earth. The exception was Bismarck’s Prussia, which to the dismay of German Social Democrats had instituted compulsory health insurance in 1883. That created a sudden panic on the left. Karl Marx had died weeks before, so the socialist leader August Bebel consulted his friend Friedrich Engels, who insisted that socialists should vote against it, as they did. The first welfare state on earth was created against socialist opposition.By the new century Prussia was setting an example. Lloyd George and Churchill, as members of Asquith’s cabinet, went there to watch state welfare in action; Churchill, the more studious of the two, read published reports. In 1909 he collected his speeches in Liberalism and the Social Problem, where he made a case for seeing state welfare as an essential prop to a free economy. The Left had good reason to fear it, as he knew. Welfare promotes initiative, initiative promotes growth, and “where there is no hope, be sure there will be no thrift.”Welfare, what is more, had an imperial dimension. The Boer War had been won with a volunteer army, and the nation had been shocked to hear of the high incidence of ill health among recruits. An empire needs troops. There was nothing socialist about state welfare, and socialists were right to fear the specter of a national health service. They continued to fear it, and when years later the Beveridge report appeared, in December 1942, it proved a bestseller but was roundly condemned in a letter by Beatrice Webb, an old Fabian, as a disastrous idea—though fortunately, as she added, very unlikely to be acted on. In the event, Labour was the last of the three British parties to accept a National Health Service, and William Beveridge, whom I knew as a neighbor in his last years, was endlessly bitter about the derision that Labour leaders had once heaped on his ideas. (my bold)http://theamericanscholar.org/the-forgotten-churchill/#.UrU_sftFJSU
pgb wrote:Hi Robbo:All you seem to be saying re reforms having to "benefit the capitalist class in some way" is that any reform has to operate within the structural constraints of a capitalist economy which sets limits to what is realistic and realisable. But what is the significance, apart from saying what is common knowledge – that there are limits to the scope of reforms within a capitalist system (or any system)? I am not aware that workers and TU' s who fought for reforms were unaware of this. Not the ones that I know of anyway. Saying that reforms are functional for capitalism doesn't mean that workers' interests have been "betrayed" or that workers who fought for them exhibited "false consciousness" or whatever. I think if I asked most workers here how do they feel about, say, free hospital care, they'd say they support it. And if I then said but capitalists benefit from it too, they'd probably say "so what"? I mean if it works, why does it matter if a capitalist approves or not? I won't go into your argument about capitalists paying for the capitalist state through taxes again. It's a uniquely SPGB shibboleth. I certainly wouldn't be asserting the Marxian law of value! It's a no-no as a theory of wage determination in a modern capitalist economy.OK lets look this. You agree that reforms have to operate within the constraints of a capitalist economy and have to benefit the capitalists (in whose interests, obviously, the capitalist economy is operated) in order to stand a chance of being implemented and this is all "common knowledge". So far so good. But then you ask what does it matter that the capitalists approve of the fact that workers have access to a free hospital as long as the latter benefit. No doubt, they do benefit and as I said before it is not my argument that reforms cannot benefit workers. But once again and with all due respect, you have completely missed seeing the wood for the trees.I can't help noticing that you have failed to address my earlier point – that there is no such thing as a free lunch in capitalism. Free hospital care, while I'm sure it is desirable, inevitably comes at a cost. It means the capitalists are able to get away with paying workers lower money wages as a result. The social wage and the money wage thus stand in inverse relation to each other as different components of the workers standard of living that is determined by other factors – what it costs to produce and reproduce the labour power of workers under current conditions, the efficacy of trade union organisation, the general state of the economy etc etc . This is what the Marxian law of value allows us to see. Now I realise you don't care much for Marxian economics. That's fair enough. Its entirely your prerogative. But, in this instance I think it would profit you to be a little less sweeping in your knee jerk condemnation and consider what it has to say. That fact that there is no free lunch in capitalism and that free hospital care comes at a cost for workers is precisely an instance of the structural constraints of a capitalist economy – which you agree exist – setting limits to what is "realistic and realisable". Realism tells us that workers are not going to to handed something on a plate that is supposedly free without it costing them in some other way. After all they have to fight tooth and nail for a wage increase, so its pretty reasonable to assume there is a quid pro quo involved in them getting free hospital careWorkers can derive some benefit from reforms. How these reforms are often transient and fragile, dependent on the state of the economy, and will only be implemented if they are functional to an economic system that by its very nature must operate in the interest of capital – as you seemingly admit – and therefore against the interests of workers. That is the paradox which strangely you don't seem to see or want to see You are trying to patch and improve a system that cannot be run in the interests of workers but instead must necessarily be based on the systematic exploitation of those workers – unless of course you reject that aspect of Marxian economics as well as being inapplicable to a "modern capitalist economy" Whats more, and this is the really depressing thing about your whole political stance, is that you offer us absolutely no idea whatsoever of an exit route from capitalism. Apparently, according to you, we workers must focus on pushing for reforms on the pretext that this advances in some nebulous fashion our "class empowerment". Empowerment to do what? You don't explain. If capitalism cannot operate in the interests of workers, if capitalism depends instead on the systematic exploitation of workers, then what you are recommending is the perpetual continuation of a system in which we are enslaved and to that extent remain forever powerless.What I don't get from you is any notion of how we are going to move onwards and forwards as a class. How are we going to get rid of capitalism in your view? What is it you are trying to tell us? That bit by bit as we struggle for reforms capitalism will be progressively transformed into something else and then once we reach the point where the problems afflicting workers have been sufficiently addressed then perhaps we can finally turn to address and act upon the question of the socialist reorganisation of society. This is utterly naive, PGB, and you must surely see this. You must surely see that you cannot pretend to both want to mend the system and end it and that it has to be one or the other. Reformism is never going to remove the problems that workers face and if you believe it can then to be scrupulously honest and consistent, you should admit that you do not see any point therefore in embracing socialism. You would be better advised to embrace your political soul mate, Eduard Bernstein
pgb wrote:Your reference to the Beveridge report suggests that the origin of Britain's Welfare State can be explained by the functional need for it, i.e. by the political action of capitalists (like Courtauld). I know little about the origins of Britain's Welfare State, but what I have read suggests quite the opposite, eg: "It was the growing strength of labour organisation that caused the shift leftward in public opinion that brought the Labour Party to power and thus was responsible for the passage of the welfare state reforms of the late 1940s" (J Stephens, The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism, 1979). When I put this up against your description of the political/legislative process, eg "some white paper being debated by a bunch of parliamentarians", "a mere scrap of paper", and workers going "cap in hand to the capitalist state" maybe you can understand why I was struck by the lack of realism, and why your propter hoc fallacy simply didn't work for me.Well, look, let me once again point out to you that I have never denied that reforms like the welfare state can have some benefit to workers albeit within the framework of a system that systematically works against their interests. The perception by workers who are overwhelmingly still reform-minded that the welfare state is of benefit to them can of course provide grounds for them thinking that the welfare state is something worth politically struggling for. But in no way does this alter the fact that the British ruling class (and the so called "Labour" party which presided over the setting up of the welfare state) considered the welfare state to be highly beneficial to the interests of capital at the time. Without the endorsement of the capitalist class and people like Courtauld the welfare state would not have come about. Its as simple as that. What you are doing is committing the time honoured error of confusing function and agency. Its like the Leftists who naively think the Bolshevik revolution was a "proletarian revolution" because it was carried out overwhelmingly by proletarians. It wasn't. Rather it was a (state)capitalist revolution carried out by proletarians on behalf of their future masters and enslavers – the pseudo communist party . And, yes, at the end of the day welfare state legislation is but a scrap of paper put together by a bunch of parliamentarians the implementation of which is basically contingent upon the needs of capital and the state of the economy. You may deny this till you are blue in the face but I would suggest to you that workers at the sharp end of capitalism who face savage cuts in social welfare at a time when capitalism is in deep crisis have a better sense of "realism" than the cosy benevolent image of capitalism yielding magnanimously and graciously to the legitimate demands of workers that you seem to entertain
pgb wrote:You say that legal rights are not inviolable. Of course not. But that's no way of answering the only question that matters: have legal rights been done away with? Well, in my world there is the usual catalogue of liberal democratic rights such as the right of assembly, the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to strike, etc. and in fact none have been taken away. There have been attempts to whittle them away from time to time, and attempts to whittle them back again, and there are inequalities of access to these rights, but no evidence so far that they have been seriously undermined let alone taken away. I could say the same about welfare state provisions such as medical and health care, etc. I have just made a mental list of reforms in my time and I don't find any that have been done away with. Workers fought hard to get them and keep them! You say I haven't noticed that workers rights are being rolled back in many parts of the world right now – well, sorry, I haven't noticed it here. What has been rolled back is workers' share of national income and their real wages, though not here so much as in the US though even there I haven't noticed a significant rollback of rights as such.In the first place you are doing once again what I earlier upbraided you for doing – which is lumping together political reforms with economic reforms. Reformism as I explained to you has to do with the latter, not the former. Capitalism is something that is defined in essentially economic terms. Since reformism is the attempt to reform capitalism it then follows that for reformism to be called reformism at all , it has to have as its focus the economic domain and not the political domain. I dont have any quarrel with you about your "usual catalogue of liberal democratic rights such as the right of assembly, the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to strike etc". This is NOT what I am talking about and, yes, of course such "liberal democratic rights" are indispensable as a precondition for the existence of an effective socialist movement. Having said that, I am less sanguine than you about the solidity of such legal rights in the face of current developments. In Spain where I live there is draft bill before parliament at the moment which represents a serious clampdown on protest, whereby unauthorised demonstrators can be fined 60,000 euros. Similar legislation is being considered in the US, the UK and other parts of the world, I believe. Other examples that spring to mind that somewhat dent your complacent rose-tinted view of "liberal bourgeois democracy" is the whole saga of the spying scandal and murky goings on of such shady operators as the NSA. What ever happened to our "right to privacy", huh?Still, as I say, I am concerned here with economic reforms rather than political reforms. I guess in this context I take a somewhat wider view of what constitutes a "right" than you do with with your narrowly legalistic view of right. But even on your own terms I would question your claims. Welfare state provisions have not been undermined you say. Really? What about the shift from universal benefits to means-tested welfare that is happening in many parts of the world in the current financial climate Is this not an erosion of rights in your own terms?But, as I say, I take a wider somewhat view of rights than you do. To take the case of Spain again, since 2008, 350,000 families (which I guess must amount to more than a million people) have lost the right to live in their own home; they have had that right taken away from them by the scumbag banking mafiosi. Even when these poor buggers have lost everything they are still indebted to the banks and still liable to pay the mortgage to the bank that now owns their property ( I think this is still the case but it might have changed recently). Then there's the so called "right to work". Ha! Here in Spain, its a joke. In Andalucia where I live unemployment has grown to above 30% and youth unemployment is 57%. And you still think our "rights" have not been rolled back recently, eh?
pgb wrote:Our fundamental disagreement is that I believe in the importance of political struggles and you don't because you regard all or most political struggles as "reformism". You ask for examples. OK, some of great importance to me, and in which I have taken a part, would be: political campaigns to defend free public schools against the threat of funding cuts in favour of private sector schools. A really major issue here at the moment. Another is defending the public broadcaster (ABC) against privatisation. Another is supporting asylum seekers arriving here as so-called "illegal" migrants. Another is to legislate for rights of indigenous (aboriginal) workers. These are all "reformist" political struggles, right? I'm not expecting that on my own I am going to awaken my fellow worker-activists to a revolutionary consciousness, but it should raise their level of political efficacy, and that is surely important in making socialists. Why should I regard this as "mending" capitalism or lead me to a "dead end"? Reformist politics hasn't led workers to a dead end. If anything, it's empowered them.No, once again, you are confusing things. Not all the reforms you cite are strictly reformist. Some are, some are not. Nevertheless, a political campaign that it is not strictly reformist is not necessarily one worth bothering with either. It too can be a pointless distraction. I mean, "defending public broadcasters against privatization" You serious? I couldn't care a toss if that obnoxious organ of capitalist propaganda, the BBC (no doubt the ABC as well) was privatised, frankly. It makes no difference to me either way and I'm certainly not going to get hot under the collar about it. So called public broadcasting like so called public ownership is a myth and I'm frankly astonished you could fall so easily for the salesman's patter peddling these pseudo "public" institutionsYou are quite right not to expect to awaken your fellow workers to a revolutionary consciousness through the reformist struggle and for the very good reason that it is never ever going to happen that way in any case. Revolutionary consciousness is necessarily predicated on the abandonment of a reformist consciousness. It is predicated on the desire to end capitalism rather than mend capitalism.You seem to have opted decisively for the latter but still you want to pretend to yourself that somehow is some nebulous way this is a precondition for the former. Raising political efficacy, you solemnly intone, is "surely important in making socialists" and "Reformist politics hasn't led workers to a dead end. If anything, it's empowered them." I don't know whether to laugh or weep at such arrant nonsense. I would claim the very opposite is true. Workers feel LESS empowered now and MORE threatened now than ever before in the face of massive structural forces over which they have no control. That is precisely why political apathy and cynicism about politics in general and politicians in particular is so pervasive. Trade union membership across the industrialised world has been in steep decline partly because the balance of power has shifted more and more in favour of employers in an era of so called "neoliberal austerity" but partly also because workers themselves see trade unions as no longer being able to do much for them. The changing nature of work itself has reinforced this sense of powerlessness with the shift towards temporary and part time contracts. There has been massive cultural shifts too which likewise point to a growing sense of powerless – the breakdown in traditional solidarities, the focus on consumer individualism and the drive to escapism so graphically represented by the explosion in drug abuse. Many people have simply given up on hoping things can get better, So they turn inwards. Rather than seeking to change the world, they seek release from a world they increasingly see cannot be changed. So much for raising their level of "political efficacy". If desperation drives them to a take up a political cause this is not a vindication of reformism but rather proof of the failure of reformism to prevent the very conditions against which individuals rebelThe very fact that today, unlike say a few decade earlier, there is a brooding pervasive sense of deep pessimism about the future seems to me to be a clear indication, not of empowerment, but of a loss of power. While I would hesitate to attribute this entirely to the cynical shenanigans of reformist politics which has become little more than an an empty ritual of self aggrandising professional politicians vying to outbid each other in the promotion of their empty promises, there is absolutely no question in my mind that the whole ideology of reformism has played a major role in bringing about this state of affairs. Above all, and this is the real killer for me, it has resulted in the virtual closing down and eclipse of any kind of genuine socialist alternative to this brutal hegemony of capitalism. In that sense the reformist politics you espouse have led us directly to this "dead end" and if you think otherwise then I respectfully suggest you are harbouring a serious delusion
pgb wrote:Reformist politics hasn't led workers to a dead end. If anything, it's empowered them.Talking of which, here's something from Luxemburg again Now I ask: can this model be applied to our situation? No. Precisely those people who prattle on about the economic power of the proletariat overlook the huge difference between our struggle and all previous class struggles. The assertion that the proletariat, in contrast to all previous classes, leads a class struggle not in order to institute the rule of one class, but to do away with the rule of any class, is no empty phrase. It has its basis in the fact that the proletariat creates no new form of property, but only extends the form of property created by the capitalist economy by turning it over to the possession of society. Thus, it is an illusion to believe that the proletariat could create economic power for itself within current bourgeois society; it can only take political power and then replace capitalist forms of property. Bernstein criticizes Marx and Engels for applying the schema of the great French Revolution to our situation. Yet he and other adherents of “economic power” apply the economic schema of the great French Revolution to the struggle of the proletariat. http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1899/10/11.htm
Robbo wrote:I can't help noticing that you have failed to address my earlier point -that there is no such thing as a free lunch in capitalism. Free hospitalcare, while I'm sure it is desirable, inevitably comes at a cost. It meansthe capitalists are able to get away with paying workers lower money wages asa result. The social wage and the money wage thus stand in inverserelation to each other as different components of the workers standard ofliving that is determined by other factors – what it costs to produce andreproduce the labour power of workers under current conditions, the efficacyof trade union organisation, the general state of the economy etc etc .This is what the Marxian law of value allows us to see. Now I realise youdon't care much for Marxian economics. That's fair enough. Its entirely yourprerogative. But, in this instance I think it would profit you to be alittle less sweeping in your knee jerk condemnation and consider what it hasto say. Workers can derive some benefit from reforms. how transient and fragilethese reforms may be and dependent on the state of the economy, but thesesreforms will only be implemented if they are functional to an economicsystem that by its very nature must operate in the interest of capital – asyou seemingly admit – and therefore against the interests of workers.That is the paradox which strangely you don't seem to see or want to see.. If I failed to address your earlier point – that there is no such thing as a free lunch in capitalism – it's because I didn't see your point. Distinguishing between the money wage and the social wage didn't make it any clearer. Saying that "free hospital care comes at a cost" is a truism. In a socialist society "free" hospital care would come at a cost too. Were you suggesting that because it wasn't truly "free" therefore workers had been hoodwinked into getting it and supporting it, or duped by those awful "reformists"? With your single-minded focus on costs, you have missed what I think is an important reason why socialists should support such things as free public health provision. By being "free", medical care is "decommodified" – it is not available only through the market, but available by right, to all without distinction of wealth, class, race or whatever. I see that as supporting the values of socialism – production for need and equality of access to society's resources. If health care were a truly capitalist provision it would be a commodity accessible only through the market, and it would be provided only if it were profitable. Same argument applies to public schooling. Although nominal fees (as opposed to prices) may play a part in mediating the allocation of these public goods, the allocating mechanism is not sale, but simply rights to free use (usually supported by legal claims). Saying that the provision of public goods is in the interest of capital doesn't disturb this fact, but of course it puts limits on them which will always be a focus of political contestation (eg. current austerity budget cuts in the UK). Why shouldn't socialists join in this fight? Your position seems to be that since welfare state provisions are of interest to capitalists, therefore they cannot be in workers' interests even though you say workers can benefit from them. Therefore socialists cannot support political action to maintain or defend these provisions. This is only so because you have chosen to define the interests of workers (their "true interests") as being essentially antagonistic to the interests of capital. You should ask workers what they see as their interests. Your so-called "paradox" has been fabricated out of your own definitions and preconceptions. I have no idea why you say that I don't care much for Marxian economics, since the opposite is true. But I don't see it as the universal truth about everything in a capitalist society. I said that the LTV is a no-no as a theory of wage determination – which is a small part of Marxian economics. And I only said that because it's wrapped up in the SPGB view of taxation which I have argued against many times on the old WSM Forum and have no intention of getting involved in again. You are doing once again what I earlier upbraided you fordoing – which is lumping together political reforms with economicreforms. Reformism as I explained to you has to do with the latter, notthe former. Capitalism is something that is defined in essentially economicterms. Since reformism is the attempt to reform capitalism it then followsthat for reformism to be called reformism at all , it has to have as itsfocus the economic domain and not the political domain. Oh dear, being upbraided am I! Isn't it a bit of a conceit to expect me to accept your particular definition of reforms? I don’t think it’s a good definition. This is mainly for the reason that it's not easy to separate what's "economic" from what's "political", particularly in advanced capitalist economies today where institutions in civil society (schools, media etc) are so important because of their ideological function, but also (particularly in my part of the world) where a lot of key economic relationships are legitimated through institutions of the capitalist state (eg. industrial arbitration). What about education, which has both economic and political functions? The SPGB website includes education (and housing, child employment, work conditions and social security) as examples of "successful reforms which have made a difference to the lives of millions". You don't explain clearly what "reforming capitalism" actually entails. The word "reforming" to me suggests something positive, like welfare state provisions. Elsewhere you refer to "mending" capitalism and in context it suggests that mending is what reforming does. But I think mending capitalism should refer to those actions of governments which maintain and extend the capitalist economy, but which have no direct benefit to workers, like regulating the finance sector as part of a govt. action to avoid financial instability. That's mending, not reforming. You seem to run the two concepts together. So I'd agree that you can't both mend and end capitalism. But certainly you can want to end it and also pursue reforms. I don’t have any quarrel with you about your "usual catalogue of liberal democratic rightssuch as the right of assembly, the right to free speech, the right to vote,the right to strike etc". This is NOT what I am talking about and, yes, ofcourse such "liberal democratic rights" are indispensable as a preconditionfor the existence of an effective socialist movement. Having said that, Iam less sanguine than you about the solidity of such legal rights in theface of current developments. In Spain where I live there is draft billbefore parliament at the moment which represents as serious clampdown onprotest, whereby unauthorised demonstrators can be fined 60,000 euros.Similar legislation is being considered in the US , the UK and other parts ofthe world, I believe. Other examples that spring to mind that somewhat dentyour rose-tinted view of "liberal bourgeois democracy" is whole saga of thespying scandal and murky goings on of such shady operators as the NSA. Whatever happened to our "right to privacy" ,huh?My comments on liberal democratic rights was a response to your insignificant remark that "rights are not inviolable” and your significant ones revealing the way you saw liberal democratic politics, eg. legislation being "scraps of paper", "workers going cap in hand, etc. etc." which I thought to be driven by dogmatic a priori propositions of the kind usually found amongst the fringe left . But revealing too, because they were part of a theory of the state and politics which I thought fairly poor – probably because Marxism has always lacked a serious political theory because "politics" is regarded as ("essentially") a matter of something else ("economics"). Also, I get a sense that for you, "rights" are useful only in an instrumental sense ("indispensable as a precondition for the existence of an effective socialist movement") and have no intrinsic worth as they have for me. It's ironic however that you should mention the "right" to privacy to shore up your claim to be a better sceptic then me with regard to the viability of "rights", since I originally intended to include it in my list but thought better of it and deleted it. This was because the right to privacy is the quintessential bourgeois right and I didn't want to be verbally slammed for mentioning it on a socialist website. Since you referred to the recent NSA cellphone spying program in the US as an example of a right to privacy it's worth mentioning that a Federal Court judge in the US recently ruled the scheme unconstitutional, a violation of the 4th Amendment. He called the program "Orwellian". As I said before, some rights are whittled away and whittled back, some services and entitlements are reduced , but they have not been wholly questioned, so I see them as part of the permanent landscape of a liberal democratic state. A fascist/military coup could change all that of course, but I don't see much evidence of that in western democratic states at present. Meanwhile, workers must fight to defend these rights. I am supporting Get-Up campaigns here for this purpose. Not much, I admit. What are you doing? You are trying to patch and improve a system that cannot be run in theinterests of workers but instead must necessarily be based on thesystematic exploitation of those workers – unless of course you reject thataspect of Marxian economics as well as being inapplicable to a "moderncapitalist economy" Whats more , and this is the really depressing thingabout your whole political stance, is that you offer us absolutely no ideawhatsoever of an exit route from capitalism. Apparently, according to you, weworkers must focus on pushing for reforms on the pretext that this advancesin some nebulous fashion our "class empowerment". Empowerment to do what? Youdon't explain. If capitalism cannot operate in the interests of workers, ifcapitalism depends instead on the systematic exploitation of workers, thenwhat you are recommending is the perpetual continuation of a system in whichwe are enslaved and to that extent remain forever powerless. No, I don't reject the notion that exploitation, strictly in the sense in which Marx used that term in his LTV, is applicable to a modern capitalist economy. But I reject the dogma that puts Marx's concept of exploitation at the heart of a socialist political strategy for advanced capitalist societies in the 21st century. Where the objective condition of exploitation exists the subjective experience of it rarely does, in my experience. Eg. a worker is highly exploited, but is convinced she/he has never had it so good and is not in the least exploited. No doubt you would say she is a victim of false consciousness. However, it's possible things are different in different capitalist societies. Eg: amongst rural labourers in Andalusia with its anarchist millenarian traditions. You are right that I am not offering an "exit route from capitalism" because I don't think there are "exit routes" from one mode of production to another. There are transitions over very long periods of historical time, therefore I don't envisage socialism as an emergent society "founded" in one decisive act built on the revolutionary consciousness of the working class who replace capitalism with socialism in an afternoon or a week, all over the world. You seem to believe that because I reject revolution therefore I see reforms as the way to go – that the steady advance of reforms eventually leads to socialism, somewhat like Bernstein's conception. I have never thought this. I support reforms where they advantage the working class. Whether eventually they lead cumulatively towards socialism I simply don't know (neither do you). But they can have a socialist character (as described before re public provision of free health care etc) and this I support. I am a socialist because I support the values of socialism : equality, fraternity, common ownership, freedom (self-realisation etc) and grass roots democracy. So where I see these things emerging I support them. Where they are threatened I defend them. In referring to "empowerment" I was referring to the experience of people engaged in a struggle to improve their working conditions or defending public goods or democratic rights which I have seen and participated in. It is a simple expression of what happens through participatory democracy: people engage in changing their conditions and through that process they change themselves : they develop a sense of political efficacy and self confidence and they learn how to organise themselves in fighting for a practical program. There is plenty of empirical evidence to support this. Reformist activity, even allowing for your restricted definition of reforms, surely can be a site for “empowerment” just as much as revolutionary activity IMO. You can’t accept this because you persist in believing that if reforms help maintain capitalism, therefore they cannot be in the of the interest of the working class. But history has proven you wrong. So if you want to blame someone for the failure of the workers to become a revolutionary class, don’t blame the insidious ideology of reformism, or betrayals by reformist politicians or the BBC or whatever. Blame History.
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