Socialism by “Divine Intervention”?
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As I understand, the SPGB has been hobbling along for well over a century on one “leg”- that is the leg of political change, (a simile used by Daniel De Leon for advocating a ‘pure and simple’ political approach to establishing socialism) contesting the political offices of the state in order to “clear the decks” for the advent of socialism . The SPGB has not formulated a way that the unity of the working class can be achieved, marshaled to take, hold, and operate the means of production in support of a plurality at the polls, for the benefit of society while setting up and conducting that democratic “administration of things” (Marx). Political activity is essential to remove capitalist politicians and the political state, and to “legitimize” the desire for a revolutionary transformation of society, but socialists per se are not going to run industry. So far, what I have garnered from the SPGB’s vague position is something akin to “miraculous conception” to achieve a socialist society.
Neither the concept of Socialist Industrial Unionism, an idea that evolved before, during and emerging with the IWW of 1905, – nor class conscious unionism, came to fruition in any significant way. The SLP spent a century trying to promote the concept – ‘walking with both legs’, to no avail. It was smothered by the expediency of craft unionism – business unionism – “a fair days wage for fair days work” – the Gompers mantra. De Leon was fond of using another simile: a captain who does not know what port he is headed for no port is the right port. The SPGB’s vague allusions to socialist society “from each according to their ability to each according to their need” leaves us groping in the late 19th century. How do you get there, and once there, how does it all come together? Deciding later, is a cop-out.
“The SPGB’s vague allusions to socialist society “from each according to their ability to each according to their need” leaves us groping in the late 19th century.”
Not sure what you really mean but that aspiration may have been formulated in the 19th C but today we can witness that it is now achievable and feasible with the developments in technology, robotics, automation and artificial intelligence. We can if we wish have a society of abundance and that is taking into account keeping it ecologically sustainable
Is it a cop-out for an organisation of 400 to not provide an agenda for the billions in the working class to follow other than some generalised guidelines?
We are as disappointed as you that we are no nearer accomplishing a socialist society than De Leon or our own founding members who optimistically expected socialism to be built within a short time-frame.
Why hasn’t it?
Well, we had some workers taking some wrong turnings…labourism and bolshevism, both leading down the reformist path.
But surely, some might ask, having made such errors, workers have now corrected their ideas. Sadly, no and again we can speculate why – the power of the media and also decades where capitalism appeared to solve social problems…the NHS, raising many workers to the “middle” classes with their own house , own car and holidays abroad. We would be wrong to think workers did not perceive those advances as signs of progress. But it has stalled…as predicted…and it is being reversed…as predicted.
There has also been the counter ideologies confronting socialism. Nationalism and religion. Both still deeply entrenched in the consciousness of our fellow-workers. They have ebbed and waned in influence but when crises have risen, populist politicians have used them to stoke their support. mostly on irrational fears.
But let’s be positive. The Socialist Party would like to think it has a role to play in the coming social revolution. Perhaps, we will, but not on the present evidence. We in the Socialist Party are no better or cleverer than anyone else. None of us as individuals know more than a little or can contribute more than a little. But collectively we can exert some influence and sway a few fellow-workers.
But in these turbulent times the unthinkable is now thinkable. Positions are shifting. The political focus has shifted from individualism to collective well-being. Much of the Welfare States social safety-nets have been found wanting. Not understanding the essentials of capitalist production, most fail to understand socialism, or even the need for it. But there are a growing number who now know that no palliatives or tinkering with reforms of any kind will remove the detrimental effects of the present system. They are imagining a different world, fairer, kinder and greener without us in the Socialist Party.
The best thing we can do in the Socialist Party is to recognise our limitations that for the time being, all we can be is a like-minded educational club, keeping alive an idea.
But also never to forget William Morris words
“One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman: two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.”
In the first twenty or so years of the last century when industrial unionism was a big issue, the SPGB never denied that the working class, when it had become socialist, would need to organise both politically ( to gain control of the political power vested in the state ) and economically (to keep production going both during and immediately after the socialist revolution).
The difference between us and De Leon and the SLP was over three questions.
1. Which was the more important. We said political (because that’s where ultimate social control of lay). The SLP said economic (as that’s where the workers’ economic power was). We replied that working class economic power was an illusion — the employers could always starve the workers back to work especially if they had the backing of the state, and to try to “take and hold” the means of production while the capitalist class controlled the state was a recipe for disaster.
2. Who were to be the members of the socialist economic organisation. The SLP implied anybody. We said that this would mean it would include non-socialists and, in that case, how could then it be an instrument for socialism. If, on the other hand, it was to be composed only of socialists it would not have many more members than the socialist political party and so be ineffective even as an organisation to extract better wages and conditions from employers.
3. When should it be formed? The SLP said now even though only a small minority of workers were socialists. Hence the dilemma outlined above that they faced: either it would include non-socialists or it would be small and ineffective. We said that the workers would form it when large numbers of them had become socialists and that it wasn’t just idle speculation and even undemocratic for a tiny number of socialists to lay down what it should be. In the meantime socialists should join existing unions as the best way to protect wages and conditions. I think that the SLP soon abandoned its position of trying to form a revolutionary socialist union to rival the existing pure and simple unions (“dual unionism”) and in practice now adopt the same practice as us of joining existing unions. I could be wrong as maybe they don’t join any union, i.e. take up the anti-union position that we are always falsely accused of.
I think that ‘divine intervention’ or ‘miraculous conception’ describes perfectly Marx’s position.
Marx saw the proletariat as the ‘divine’ subject who would create their world, for themselves, by themselves.
This ‘conscious activity’ by the vast majority of humanity would be a ‘miraculous conception’, something completely new and original, a social product of the theory and practice of workers themselves.
It’s nothing to do with a ‘science’ that an elite minority can ‘understand’ prior to workers themselves producing the ‘miracle’. And it’s certainly nothing to do with ‘matter’.
In fact, I’d argue that the ‘materialists’, including the archetype Lenin, have smothered any chance of the production of this ‘miracle’, by telling workers that ‘material conditions’ will ‘conceive’. In effect, whereas Marx replaced the ‘divine’ with the ‘mundane’ (ie. us), the ‘materialists’ re-instated the ‘divine’ in their ‘matter’.
Welcome back, LBird…Your nemesis Bijou was recently expressing concern about your silence and worried you may be victim of the virus. Happily you appear healthy enough.
The conflicting science and disputing experts being demonstrating in analysing the pandemic shows when it comes down to it, it will be how workers feel about the legitimacy or otherwise of their explanations whether to obey or disobey… they either stayed lockdowned…or voted with their feet to escape it
The SLP had the metaphor of the sword and shield strategy which they kept switching around so I don’t know what came first.
The shield of political action to protect the industrial action sword
Or industrial action to shield the vote when it was used as a weapon.
L Bid – Nemesis, never, sparring partner and occasional leg puller, perhaps. Mostly though just glad to hear your safe and well.
alan, BD, thanks for your kind words.
It’s a real shame that the issue encapsulated in this thread title hasn’t been discussed more comrade-ily over the last few years.
It’s a question that is politically and ideologically fundamental – who/what is the ‘creator’ of our world (and so, being its creator, can change it)?
God, Matter, or Humanity?
These three choices being the answers, respectively, of Idealists, Materialists and Marxists.
Again, the Divine, Nature, or us? Or, Spirit, Reality or Social Production?
The issue encapsulated in the thread is how and whether we can or do, intervene in the class struggle, for a revolutionary outcome.
Bernard’s use of ‘Divine’ is a metaphorical allusion to a perception of us ‘just waiting’. (For Godot or whatever.)
I think ALB and ALJO have summed up our historical materialist position.
Matthew Culbert wrote: “I think ALB and ALJO have summed up our historical materialist position.”
Yes, I think that they have.
The point is, Marx never claimed to be a ‘historical materialist’, which youse all claim to be ‘our position’.
‘Historical materialism’ was a term claimed by Engels, and his claims for the ‘matter versus humanity’ debate (of which I’ve alluded to, as 2 and 3 of our choices, above) are different to Marx’s.
Marx very clearly chose ‘Humanity’, not ‘Matter’, as the ‘creator’, within his theories.
Engels was very inconsistent, and is not a very good basis for even the claims of ‘historical materialism’ (ie. ‘your position’), because even he wrote that ‘matter’ was a social product, which all ‘materialists’ (whether of the ‘historical’ sort or not) dispute.
All ‘materialists’ claim that ‘matter’ precedes its creator (humanity), which is clearly an illogical argument to make. Thus, they must claim that ‘matter’ itself is the ‘creator’ of ‘humanity’ (and not humanity itself as its own ‘creator’, which was Marx’s ‘position’ – and mine).
As I said earlier, this is a fundamental question for any ‘Marxist’ to answer – and the answer must be ‘humanity’ (not ‘matter’), for Marx’s theories and concepts to make any sense.
For example, Marx employed a concept of ‘social production’, within which the ‘social producers’ were ‘active humanity’. On the contrary, ‘matter’ requires a ‘passive humanity’, which is the product of ‘matter’. Thus, ‘matter’ is ‘god’, the divine producer of humanity.
This is the political, philosophical and ideological question which ‘historical materialists’ must have an answer for, which allows for ‘democratic’ social production.
I’m yet to read or hear a convincing one, Matthew. Put simply, ‘matter’ is not a ‘democratic’ concept.
Some relevant thoughts from Engels, ‘Dialectics of Nature’ (CW 25, pp. 490-1):
“Natural scientists believe that they free themselves from philosophy by ignoring it or abusing it. They cannot, however, make any headway without thought, and for thought they need thought determinations. But they take these categories unreflectingly from the common consciousness of so-called educated persons, which is dominated by the relics of long obsolete philosophies or from the little bit of philosophy compulsorily listened to at the University (which is not only fragmentary, but also a medley of views of people belonging to the most varied. and usually the worst schools), or from uncritical and unsystematic reading of philosophical writings of all kinds. Hence they are no less in bondage to philosophy but unfortunately in most cases to the worst philosophy, and those who abuse philosophy most are slaves to precisely the worst vulgarized relics of the worst philosophies.
* * *
Natural scientists may adopt whatever attitude they please, they are still under the domination of philosophy. It is only a question whether they want to be dominated by a bad, fashionable philosophy or by a form of theoretical thought which rests on acquaintance with the history of thought and its achievements.
“Physics, beware of metaphysics!” is quite right, but in a different sense.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch07b.htm
Glad you are safe and well, L. Bird.
The issue encapsulated in the thread is how and whether we can or do, intervene in the class struggle, for a revolutionary outcome.
Bernard’s use of ‘Divine’ is a metaphorical allusion to a perception of us ‘just waiting’. (For Godot or whatever.)
I think ALB and ALJO have summed up our historical materialist position.
Marcos
That is what they did
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