Luxemburg – Reform or Revolution?

[steve colborn]

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. Actually, pgb, history has in fact proved that the position of The Socialist Party is totally correct. For years, the so-called left wing, have pushed for and supported, every reform of Capitalism going, to the detriment, I may add, of actually pushing the need to get rid of Capitalism and instituting a sane alternative. That is, if in fact these groups were anything other than pressure groups in the first place. But, the reforms fought for, over 60 or 70 years have, in the last 2 decades and with growing rapidity in the last 10 years, been ripped away from the working class. The effort of these reformist campaigns, in toto, rendered totally poiintless and meaningless, when if this effort had been put into revolutionarly action, to bring about an alternative, who knows how far along the road to an alternative goal we may have been? You may say that this is all moot, that it is speculation, what is not speculation, is that these reforms have proved ephemeral, many have already been removed or reduced in effectiveness, whilst others await their time, on the chopping block of Capitalist cuts and austerity measures. The Capitalists are not bothered about arguments that even though Capitalism is going through one of its periodic crisis, the UK is still the fifth richest country in the world, and that the world in totality, can produce enough to provide for the needs of everyone on the planet, they have the control of the media, to make sure that this argument does not reach a wider audience.Bearing all this in mind, it is time for rational, sane thinking people, to realise that reformism has failed, as The Socialist Party have always said it would. To also realise that the effort put into reforming Capitalism, will be better used in the persuance of a "revolutionary" alternative. Only a mental defective would continue to smash their head off a brick wall, when there is a door we can use for societal change. That what is needed, is to find the key to unlocking this door. The key? a mass, class conscious movement, of the majority, in the interests of the majority. A democratic change, that will be in the interests of "all" mankind and by relation, in the interest of the planet that should and will belong to us all.So forget your failed reformist nonsense and embrace sense and rationality for a change. For it is you and your reformist ilk who have, in actuality, been proved by history, to be wrong.By the way pgb, this post is meant in a fraternal way, to get, or attempt to get yourself and others to think logically and in your own class interests. Be well and may the New Year bring a renewed vigour in the efforts to rid ourselves of this insane, discredited system. It is not meant to be personally confrontational nor antagonistic. Stevie C.

[pgb]

Thanks for your response Steve.  I don't agree with what you say, but I shall take it on board.  best wishes for 2014 too.

[steve colborn]

I really, really appreciate this post. It reminds me of a time, 30+ years ago, when comrades in the old Seaham Branch, took me under their wing, so to speak and opened my mind to possibilities I was striving towards and with their help attained. It was a case of a striving mind being given the information to reach a goal I had, all unaware, been reaching for. I am not arrogant enough to place you in the category I, personally, was in. However the friendly way you have responded above, was the way I was treated by them. My best wishes for the future, to you and yours. May your efforts in the future, help all workers reach the goal we need to reach, getting rid of the obscenity that Capitalism most assuredly is.Be well.

[Anonymous]

Raya Dunayeskaya wrote a book on Rosa Luxembourg, and Peter Hudis, and Kevin Anderson have  written several articles and compilation on Luxembourg too.Rosa was ambivalent because she ended up supporting the uprising of the Spartacists, she did support the theory of spontaneity but at the same she supported the theory of the vanguard. She sufffered of the same political disease of all leftwingers: Political ambivalence http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1415-a-land-of-boundless-possibilities-peter-hudis-on-rosa-luxemburg http://www.amazon.com/Rosa-Luxemburg-Reader-Peter-Hudis/dp/158367103X http://www.amazon.com/Luxemburg-Womens-Liberation-Philosophy-Revolution/dp/0252061896

[ALB]

mcolome1 wrote:

Rosa was ambivalent because she ended up supporting the uprising of the Spartacists

She did support it, yes, but I thought this was because she respected a party decision which she had spoken against, i.e she thought that the uprising was ill-advised but loyally went along with the majority decision. I think she was also outvoted on her view that the Spartacist League should take part in the elections to the Reichstag. In other words, she realised that the Spartacist uprising, being that of a comparatively small minority, was likely to fail. She was right, but it cost her her life.

[Anonymous]

Rosa Luxembourg is not the only one who has died following the so called party, or group decision, or the conspirative theory of a minority, and she is not the only one who have been also outvoted.Manolo Tavares Justo, the Palmeros. and several others members of different groups have been killed by the repressive forces of the state, and knowing that the decision was totally incorrect they followed through.Alive, she could have made better contributions that being dead, because,  in certain aspects she made more contributions to the cause of socialism than Lenin and the Bolshevik, probably, she did a much better job  in regard to the national question than to the question of reformism and anti-revisionism

[robbo203]

pgb wrote:

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).

Well, yes, I can see that you didn't "see the point" judging by the little red herring you offer here. I wasn't actually intent on uttering a "truism" in the sense you mean – that   "free hospital care comes at a cost" – or trying to get you to acknowledge the blindingly obvious. Of course even in socialism –  in any society – there will be opportunity costs involved in the provision of health care.  My point was a rather different one and hinged precisely on the distinction between the social wage and the money wage which comprise the two basic components of the workers' standard of living. I thought I had made it clear what that point was but obviously didn't in your case.    So as they say, if you don't at first succeed, try again.What I was trying to get you to see is that these two things – the social wage and the money wage – stand in inverse relationship to each other which is precisely what the labour theory of value would lead us to expect. In other words and all things being equal, an increase in the social wage will tend to result in a fall in the money wage. That is actually what I meant when I said  "free hospital care comes at a cost", not that it costs something  (in terms of resouces) to provide hospital care.  To put it simply. the more things that workers get for free – including, literally, that free lunch at their workplace –  the smaller will be their wage packet at the end of the day. This is because the direct costs to the worker of producing and reproducing his/her labour power have fallen which will then have the effect of pulling down wage levels.  This works the other way too.  If things that were once free are no longer free then the consequence of that will be to push up the money wage to cover the increased direct cost to the worker of producing and reproducing his or her labour power.  But as I said this is not something that just happens automatically through the market process.  It is mediated by class struggle and influenced by the "respective powers of the combatants" (Marx) engaged in that struggleOnce you  understand this point we can then go on to look at your point about the "decommodification" of goods and services such as health care provision and schooling which you suggests expresses the "values of socialism".  I can sort of sympathise with what you are trying to get at here there but I still think you' ve got all this seriously wrong.  It reminds me of the supermarket slogan "buy one and get one free". Now you wouldn't cite that as instance of "decommodification", would you?  Or perhaps you would. Perhaps you really do believe  that the supermarket is blazing a trail to a commodityless socialist future by offering us one free bottle of gherkins for every other one we buy.   A sort embryonic growth of socialism within the womb of capitalism  nicely packaged and located somewhere along the second aisle next to the baked beans that unfortunately  remain stubbornly capitalist and completely commodified. I dunno. You tell me.In any event, I disagree strongly with you on this point that the free provision of public goods is somehow, in and of  itself, consonant with the expression of "socialists values".  There is no necessary connection at all and I would remind you once again that it was ultra-conservatives like Otto von Bismarck who pioneered the idea of state welfare. Read again my earlier posts which provide relevant quotes that back up this point. This notion thoughtlessly  peddled by some on the Left – including, it seems, your good self  – that the  limited process of "decommodification" in the sphere of consumption as represented by the free provision of public goods is a good thing in that it somehow embodies what they, and  you , chose to call "socialist values",  is utterly naive and simplistic.  To the contrary, I question completely the claim that this kind of supermarket "get-something-for-nothing" approach  to the provision of goods and services has anything necessarily to do with socialist values at all. It could just as easily accommodate itself to a bourgeois egoistic outlook and bind workers over all the more more solidly to the capitalist social order.   Lenin's labour aristocracy theory got it all wrong, I reckon. It is not the elite of the labour force that are bribed out of the superprofits made in the third world, to promote reformism and reject revolution  It is the working class in general that is bribed or seduced into the supporting the existing social order  through the provision of free health care and the like. The subtext is that if capitalism can provide us with such things for zilch it must surely have our welfare at heart and so we should be eternally grateful and not try to rock the boatThe illusion of a system of universal benefits is that we live in a universe in which our interests are all the same.  This also has distinct nationalist overtones: "we" are meant to be proud of "our" national health service  which is supposedly the "envy of the world".  I might finally add that it is not for no reason that the whole area of "public goods" has been subjected to "tragedy of the commons"  or "free rider" type of analysis by bourgeois commentators; they presume the existence of a capitalist market and competing economic actors which will of course undermine integrity of these so called public goods and for good reason since the provision of such public goods in no way alters the fundamentally capitalist nature of the society we live inI would suggest to you that if you are looking to some kind of "prefigurative"  form that encapsulates or embodies what you call socialist values then this is to be found not in the sphere of consumption but rather in the sphere of production – human activity. It is the decommodification of human labour that really holds far more significance, potentially at least,  as far as "values of socialism" is concerned – that is to say, in the extent and nature of what is called the non market "grey "economy  – rather than in  the passive consumption of  so called free goods and services as such which, as I say,  can just as easily be conditioned  or appropriated by a non-socialist,  or even virulently anti "socialist",  ethos and always come with strings attached.  But  I guess all this is the subject of another thread and we ought really  to focus instead on the immediate matter at hand: reformismOne final point – you  do finally seem to agree that the provision of public goods must be in the interests of capital and that this "puts limits" on the extent of such provisioning. The case of the welfare state demonstrates this. It simply would not have materialised  had not significant sections of the capitalist class sanctioned it and seen that it was in their own class interests .  It was not imposed on a reluctant capitalist class by an idealistically driven , well meaning labour government presumably embodying the "values of socialism" from your point of view and the quotes I provided completely destroy this kind of mythic view you seem to harbour concerning of the role of that obnoxious anti-working class capitalist entity  that is the Labour Party.  The point is that things are different now compared to back then .  Then it suited the capitalist class very well to decommodify some things like health care because the benefits in terms of lowered costs and increased efficiency outweighed the disadvantages .  Today it is you who is are swimming against the tide as far as capitalism is concerned in that what we are seeing  is not the "decommodification" of goods and services but rather a clear trend in the opposite direction: the increasingly commodification of more and more aspects of our lives and a withering of the provision of public goods. What was once in the interests of capital is not quite to the same extent anymore. As they say,  "he who pays the piper plays the tune". You cannot operate a capitalist system of production except in the interests of capital. The form in which these interests express themselves is historically contingent and subject to changing conditions. The funding crisis in the NHS, prescription charges  and the development of an internal market are all part of an unfolding story in which the underlying narrative is what best serves the interests of British capitalism or  (any other national capitalism)  in the current circumstances

pgb wrote:

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.

No once again you are misunderstanding or downright misrepresenting what I am saying.  I do not say that specific welfare state provisions  cannot be in the interests of workers  or benefit them – I think, incidentally, the  distinction you  make between these two words is a totally spurious one  – but rather that they are implemented within the framework of a society that must necessarily operate  against the interests of those workers since it is fundamentally based on the systematic exploitation of them.  This is the point I was making and this is what I meant by the "paradox" in question.  It is hardly case of me having "fabricated"  such a thing out of my own "definitions and preconceptions" since such a paradox is logically implicit, or  inheres, in your perspective as well. After all , you have agreed that workers are indeed  systematically exploited under capitalism and thus by extension that capitalism cannot be operated in their interests.  By its very nature a system of exploitation can only operate in the interests of those who do the exploiting and not those who are exploited. So consequently you too must accept that there is "paradox" at work here in that any reforms implemented that might appear to work in the interests of workers are nevertheless implemented within a society that must systematically work against those interests.The point is that socialists want to get rid of this system of exploitation rather than perpetuate it or attempt to make it more palatable. Reformism – that is the advocacy of reforms – does not in a way threaten this system or seek to get rid and, insofar as its diverts energies away from the goal of overthrowing capitalism, it actually services to consolidate capitalism. This is the key point that you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge. You persist in saying that certain reforms can benefit workers when nobody is actually denying this. What has been said  instead is that such reforms can never be enough and can never solve the underlying problems that workers face under capitalism; they are palliatives Furthermore, even as mere palliatives they cannot be relied upon. There is no guarantee that the mere existence of a legislative enactment will even be acted upon in practice. As I said before reforms can be, and have been,  widely ignored or watered down and rendered ineffectual in practice. Not only that, one reform can directly compete with another in a bid to attract more funding from an obviously limited state budget.  So reformism as well as detracting from the need to fundamentally overthrow a rotten society  can be hugely divisive in pitting one reform lobby against another .Above all, reforms will only be introduced if that suit the interests  of the capitalist class (or significant sections of that class) to do that.  Any benefits that workers derive from reforms will be incidental to this primary purpose and used as means to further that purpose. This is the point that you consistently  ignore but it is actually rather  fundamental to a whole critique of reformism. How can the promotion of reforms which ultimately benefit the capitalist class lead in any way to the establishment of a society in which that class no longer even exists? You have nothing to say on the subject whatsoever  except to lamely profess to holding  "socialist values".  What good are socialists values without the commitment to work for socialism?  The reformism that you advocate is a black hole  into which  your socialist pretensions will simply disappear leaving only the empty rhetoric.

pgb wrote:

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.

Saying that it is not easy in practice to separate  the economic domain and the political domain does not mean they cannot be analytically distinguished. In fact there is a rather neat example of this in Marx's letter to Bolte in 1871 in which he states: “The attempt in a particular factory or even in a particular trade to force a shorter working day out of individual capitalists by strikes, etc. is a purely economic movement. On the other hand, the movement to force through an eight-hour, etc., law, is a political movement". Trade unions, of course, frequently cross the line between the economic and political domains by lobbying for particular pieces of legislation or by explicitly supporting certain political parties and even providing funds for them. Nevertheless for the purposes of analytical clarity you have to make such distinction even if these different domains  represent only "ideal types"Reformism, Ive  argued, needs to be understood as political action undertaken in the political domian in the form of legislative enactments of decrees which have as their focus issues arising fundamentally within the economic domain .  Capitalism being an essentially economic system, it then follows that reformism – the  attempt to reform capitalism –  must have as its focus the economic domain since it is precisely in that domain that capitalism is fundamentally constituted.  That is to say,  capitalism is basically defined as a system of ECONOMIC  relations based on private ownership of the means of production . It is the attempt to work with and through this system  of economic relationships to achieve certain economic ends  that is meant by "reforming" capitalism. I see no substantive difference between this and "mending" capitalism. Mending capitalism can also suggest something "positive" and regulation of the financial sector can also be construed as "benefiting" the workers by mitigating the damaging prospects of "financial instability" – to use your example –  which would directly affect them.  In either case it is not the direct benefit to the workers that is the primary concern of the reform in question  and you need to separate the rhetoric surrounding a reform from the practical consequence of such a reform. Of course politicians will always try to sell a reform to the electorate on the grounds that it benefits them. Nevertheless, their  primary concern has to be the interests of capital –  what is "best for business – since it is the capitalist class that hasin the end  to fund the reform in question. Any benefits that the reform offers the workers is incidental and conditional upon the interests of capital being served.  Go back to my previous post and the quote from Courtauld which amply illustrates this very point . State welfare measures, he is saying , which benefits  workers also make them more productive.  This is a well worn theme. The canny slave owner of past ages knew well enough that a better fed slave made for a more productive slave.Not all reforms are strictly reformist. Some are but many are not.  You mention education. Well, some educational reforms  are clearly reformist e,g, education funding   but others are not e,g.determination of the contents of school curricula such as the way in which history is taught in schools. In the latter case the focus of such reforms is the ideological domain  (and obliquely also  perhaps the political domain) rather than the economic domain as such.The case against reformism is that capitalism cannot be reformed  – not that reforms cannot be attempted – and in saying that capitalism cannot be reformed we are referring to its essential as nature as an economic system – how it operates in economic terms.  Looked at it in this way we can begin to see how the distinction between the economic domain and the political or ideological domains makes intuitive sense – even if in practice there  will be a blurring of such a distinctionPolitical reforms – like universal suffrage and freedom of expression – are different in nature to economic reforms.  This difference becomes apparent when we look at the kind of impediments of constraints that are brought bear on each.  So for example  a  piece of legislation that  permits a free press to function and to voice criticism of the government is of course a reform that can be realised and has been realised. It is perfectly compatible with the existence of a capitalist system of society.  With economic reforms that have as their focus the economic domain we find a find a different set of circumstances applying where such reforms  are seriously constrained by the workings out of the immanent laws of the capitalist economy itself as Marx put it.  So for example there is in  capitalism  a built in tendency for the economy to move through distinct cycles of boom and bust.  The capitalist trade cycle is thus an ineradicable aspect of capitalism that can be reformed out of existence  and the practicality of economic reforms such as government spending is closely conditoned by to this fact. and the need to ensure profitability.  That is why in economically straightened times you will see government spending being cut back – retrenchment. Governments cannot risk killing the goose that lays their golden eggs through excessive taxation – namely the profits accruing to capitalist businesses.  But if we look again at political reforms we see that there is no intrinsic reason why for example a capitalist society cannot function on a more or less  indefinite basis with the trappings of a liberal bourgeois democracy.  Overt political dictatorships  are an eradicable aspect of capitalist society in a way that the capitalist trade cycle is not.  This is what I mean by the kind of structural constraints confronting different kinds of reforms providing grounds for making an analytical distinction between these different kinds of domainsThis connects incidentally with  the materialist conception of history and the base-superstructure model it employs. It would be crudely reductionist to claim that society's superstructure – its dominant ideology and political institutions etc – merely reflect its economic base.  Rather the former exercise a degree of autonomy in  its own right in these base -superstructure interactions. When we turn to consider what constitutes the (economic) base in this model, however,  we see an important difference.  The whole point of a Marxist critique of capitalism surely is that capitalism is not subject to conscious control and regulation but is governed by forces – "laws" if you prefer –   beyond the power of governments to direct. It is the economy itself that appears to be autonomous rather than the subjective will of human beings in respect of what happens in the material base of society. No one for example consciously wills  that a recession should come about yet a recession happens. Why ?  Because what happens in the economy  is subject to abstract economic forces beyond our ability to control. If we could control them then there would be no such  thing as an economic recession since how could it possibly  benefit the capitalist class to  inflict a recession upon themselves when the inner dynamic of capitalism itself is all about growth and accumulation which economic competition obliges them to pursueSo that then is the grounds on which I claim that a distinction between the political or ideological domain., on the one hand,  and the economic domain, on the other makes good  intuitive sense and why I argue that not all reforms are necessarily reformist in the strict sense i.e.. they don't necessarily have as their focus the economic domain.  It is the futility of  pursuing reforms in the strictly reformist sense which is what I am arguing about but it is not to be inferred from that  that this  necessarily makes non reformist reforms worth pursuing either. That depends very much on circumstances on what a political movement to abolish capitalism requires in order to effectively function.  Such reforms would include basic democratic  rights  such as freedom of speech and assembly and obviously the right to vote.  These are the kind of reforms that I argue a socialist movement should pro-actively advocate and pursue.  Other kinds of non reformist reforms may only  serve as a distraction and a diversion of energies  that detract from the revolutionary goal of overthrowing capitalism

pgb wrote:

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?

Actually it strikes me that your position here is actually  the "dogmatic apriori one",  not mine.  And what strikes me even more is the complete unrealism of so much of what you have to say.  Marxism lacks a serious political theory, you say,  "because "politics" is regarded as ("essentially") a matter of something else ("economics")."    Really? But hang on here! So much of politics IS  a matter of economics when you think about.  Politicians are forever bleating on about how "we must make Brtiain more competitive" whether the banks need to be rescued, how we must restain wage demands etc etc  Politics has very much as it focus precisely the economic domain (which is what I mean by reformism) After all , what the hell do you think your earlier comments about limits being put on that the provision of public goods  being  a "focus of political contestation" , amount to ?  Ironically you yourself explicitly  locate such  "political contestation" in an economic environment of austerity  –  (eg.the  current austerity budget cuts in the UK). Your thinking on this matter seems  very muddled..And once again you confuse political reforms and economic reforms, My reference to workers going cap in hand to governments to lobby for reforms applied to the latter not the former. As I said before the question of  basic democratic reforms is different  from that of economic reforms (reformism properly speaking) since without a modicum of democratic rights – like the franchise or freedom of speech – it would be very difficult for a socialist organisation to even function. Yes that is an " instrumentalist" view of democratic rights but that doesn't preclude such rights having an intrinsic worth in themselves, does it now?  I can quite conceive of the right to free speech having value in itself while insisting that it is of crucial importance to the existence of a socialist political party.  It is only because we are talking in this context of what stance a socialist political party needs to  take that I emphasised the instrumentalist aspect of rights. You view is a little  too black or white I think.On the question of the right to privacy being a  quintessential bourgeois right  well I think this is a little naive, frankly and smacks precisely of the kind dogmatic a priori propositions of the kind you say is  " usually found amongst the fringe left"   . It is actually about the power of the capitalist state to intrude into the lives of its subjects ultimately for the purposes of exerting social control on its own terms. If it is "bourgeois" of me to see something sinister behind the efforts of the NSA to tap into phone conversions and email correspondence of individuals then I plead guilty to succumbing such bourgeois sentiments.  Am I to take it  that you regard the prospect  of the capitalist state being able to enhance and extend its control over its subject, to curb dissent  and engender a sense of paranoia and fear in the population as a matter of complete indifference?  I would be shocked if you didIncidentally your point about the Federal court judge ruling that the NSA program was unconstitutional and Orwellian rather bears out my point that that the existence of a paper commitment to some principle is no guarantee to it being flouted in practice.  As for political reforms so also for economic reforms You say " some rights are whittled away and whittled back, some services and entitlements are reduced , but they have not been wholly questioned".  But they don't have to be "wholly questioned" . it is enough that they can be "whittled away and whittled back" to prove my point. That point rather undermines  the whole Bernsteinian-cum-Fabian  paradigm of a progressive irresistible  trend at work   bringing about a fundamental change in society through incremental reforms. .

pgb wrote:

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.

This is confusing. You don't deny that workers are exploited  but you do 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.  So I take it then that you regard the fact that workers are exploited as being merely a trivial matter not worthy to be placed at the "heart of a socialist political strategy" .  The fact that the exploitation of  wage labour is the source of surplus value out of which capital is  accumulated and that it is the relentless accumulation of capital that defines capitalism and gives rise to the very issues that reformist try to grapple  with – all of this seemingly counts for very little in your book. The mind boggles as to what exactly you think ought to constitute the "heart of a socialist political strategy" in your view if not the desire to get rid of the system that exploits the workers. Of course the objective fact of exploitation is often not matched by the subjective realisation that we are exploited as workers. You are not telling us anything new here.  But you yourself have agreed that workers are objectively exploited and therefore you are obliged to logically accept  what follows from this  – that those who think otherwise are mistaken. Its either that or you are mistaken in thinking the workers are objectively exploited  You cant be both right!The subjective perceptions of workers  are moulded by precisely  the kind of assumptions that underlie a reformist mode of  thinking such as the idea that that state is some kind of neutral  body that hovers over society and strives to work evenhandedly in the interests of everyone.  Similarly the mistaken idea that workers share the burden  of taxation underpins the idea that we live of a stakeholder society in which everyone has a stake and ought therefore to contribute financially  to its upkeep and running 

pgb wrote:

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.

If there is no exit route from capitalism then of course it would be difficult if not impossible to see how capitalism can be transcended at all. What you are saying, however, is  something slightly different  which is that you don't know of such an exit route and are therefore not offering one  . Fair enough.   But there is surely  a little more that can be said about the matter than than this  kind of non committal agnosticism you offer.  The establishment of socialism, presupposes  something more that just a commitment to what is vaguely called  "socialist values". It has to also entail , surely, a reasonably clear conception of what a socialist society is about and the conscious determination  to bring such a society into being.   You cant bring about socialism without knowing roughly what it means, can you?Despite what you say, that unavoidably involves the emergence of a revolutionary consciousness. Revolution is not, as you seem to think , about the duration or manner  (violent or peaceful) of the process of changing from one kind of society to another.  Whether is happens in week or a day or an entire epoch is besides the point even if that  might be an interesting matter to speculate upon.  Revolution is actually about the change itself from one mode of production to another. If you reject revolution as you say you  do then you reject  by implication  the need to change society from it current capitalist form. In short you support the retention of  capitalism. That is what is meant by rejecting revolution. 

pgb wrote:

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.

Sorry but this is  dangerously naive and complacent.  You don't seem to see that struggle , while it can indeed lead to empowerment and a sense of political efficacy,  also has the capacity to bring about the very opposite –  disempowerment and a severe loss of "political efficacy".  So much depends on the outcome of the struggle in question and the terms in which it conducted.The socialist analysis of reformism is that it is incapable of succeeding on its own terms and that that failure is built into the reformist project from the very outset. Capitalism cannot be run in the interests of workers and to promote the belief that it can is bound to lead to disappointment.. You have admitted yourself  that rights have been whittled away and welfare provisions cut back. It is not out  of a sense of "empowerment" that reformist politics has afforded workers that they still, despite everything, continue to press for reforms or vote for capitalist parties, but out a sense of desperation at their plight  resulting from the very failure of reformism to solve the problems that afflict them in the first placeIt is a sheer cop out to  just  say "Blame History" .  What the hell does that mean anyway?  You sound positively Hegelian in your idealism.  Your are substituting empty verbiage for concrete analysis.   Like that daft Fukuyama with his ridiculous  End of History thesis.  Do we blame "History" for the First World War or do we blame the imperialist struggle between nations over trade routes markets, resources and spheres of influence. If you don't learn from history then you are doomed to repeat itThis applies equally to failure of reformist politics to succeed in on it own terms . It has not as you claim left workers feeling more politically efficacious and empowered.  One or two minor battles  may have been won here and there but the war has been long last  Workers have not been empowered through the politics of reformism but on the contrary have been disempowered and left demoralised and disillusioned by the failure of reformism to deliver what it claimed it would.  I think you totally underestimate the extent to which this is the case and the way in which it has impact on workers.  The massive cynicism and political apathy that we see around us can be directly attributed to this failure.The "betrayals"of reformist politicians only play a part in this sorry saga insofar as the mechanics of reformist politics  requires one to place one's trust in these politicians who cannot possibly deliver on their promises.  You cannot be betrayed by those in whom  you refuse to put your trust and about whom you cultivate no illusions.  Socialists do not put their trust in politicians to sort out the problem of workers for the workers.The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself  With the best will in the world the politicians will still fail to operate capitalism in the interests workers.  This is why socialists do not talk in terms of "betrayal".  It presupposes an assumption which socialists do not holdThe real problem is not the politicians who are little more than puppets doing what the interests of capital bids them to do.  The real problem is that workers have bought into the illusion that things could be otherwise  and that capitalism could be induced though the implementation of reforms to work in their interests.  The fact  that it is demonstrably not working their interest, that society is becoming more and more starkly unequal , that workers themselves are experiencing  sometimes savage cuts to their own already meagre standard of living  to function in their own interests, that levels of stress and insecurity are rising relentless  – all of this cannot  but generate a sense of despondency and despair.   The whole strategy of refromism has had ramifications which have directly contributed to a significant sapping of the confidence of workers and in the larger scheme of things has significantly  increased their sense of powerlessness.

[Brian]

All this discussion relates to the here and now and has steared clear of the dynamics of social change.  What about the possibility of economic reforms being on offer when there's evidence of major challenges to capitalism?  Can we safely assume that given such circumstances and conditions the capitalists would be offering some major economic reforms, like for instance the Universal Basic Income?  If so what would our position be then?

[Anonymous]

There is not any reform able to challenge capitalism.  Most reforms given to the workers by the capitalists have been reversed. 

[Brian]

mcolome1 wrote:

There is not any reform able to challenge capitalism.  Most reforms given to the workers by the capitalists have been reversed. 

I'm not saying reforms challenge capitalism.  The type of challenging scenario I'm referring to is when there is clear evidence of the working class making headway on gaining a socialist consciousness.  There is not quite a majority but it seems to represent a political challenge.  What we have suggested could happen – in such circumstances and conditions – is the capitalists offering some major economic reforms to stall and distract the momentum for a working class majority.Given this state of affairs what would be our position if what was on offer is something like the universal basic income?  In short, with a change in the dynamics of class struggle the question of reform or revolution is made redundant and could possibly be turned into reform and revolution.

[steve colborn]

Nope, don't quite agree. I can never see a situation where we will be faced with a "reform and revolution" option. I can see a time when it could be, "behave or it's a bullet in the head" though. Stevie C.

[ALB]

steve colborn wrote:

I can see a time when it could be, "behave or it's a bullet in the head" though.

I can't. Modern capitalism could never function on that basis.

[steve colborn]

Plenty of people around the world would disagree, if they were still alive to do so. It may be as you say. The closer we get to an alternative society, the rules may indeed change! I haven't got a crystal ball nor do I want to presume or, assume.But a society that is prepared to let 10s of millions of under 5s die unnecessarily of easily preventable reasons, is not a society I, personally, want to take a chance with. Stevie C.

[Brian]

steve colborn wrote:

Nope, don't quite agree. I can never see a situation where we will be faced with a "reform and revolution" option. I can see a time when it could be, "behave or it's a bullet in the head" though. Stevie C.

How can you be so sure that reform and revolution will not be an option when class consciousness is so near the tipping point that a major concession may have unintended consequences and tip the balance in our favour?  We are well aware that a major obstacle to the socialist case is due to the fact that the 99% are literally locked into the effects of wage slavery to such an extent there is little time to think on an effective escape route from their bondage.  Indeed the best they can do is look for pallatives to ease the burden of financial survival.An unintended consequence of UBI – when the threat of financial survival is no longer an issue – could provide the space for socialists to gain a majority.I'm not saying that we should support UBI here and now.  But what I am saying is there may come a time, given the circumstances and conditions (when we are nearly there so to speak), and also the dynamics of class struggle, may well force us accept such a major reform.  Simply because its obvious in order to obtain that essential majority the workers need the space and time to come over to our side.  And UBI does seem to provide just that necessary ingredient.Obviously if such a situation should ever arise, we wont be standing still but making hay whilst the sun shines.Hope I've made the picture I'm projecting more clearer.

[alanjjohnstone]

Ex-member and now member of Left Unity puts the case for the UBI here.http://leftunity.org/whats-the-alternative/

[Author]

Posts