“Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism”

[ALB]

How can people like him — in fact all left and council communists and other assorted libertarian communists — get away with this when after Marx wrote the passage they misquote or misinterpret he made it clear in a speech a year later that he thought that it might even be possible in some countries and in certain conditions for the working class to win political power by peaceful means:

“Someday the worker must seize political power in order to build up the new organization of labor; he must overthrow the old politics which sustain the old institutions, if he is not to lose Heaven on Earth, like the old Christians who neglected and despised politics.
But we have not asserted that the ways to achieve that goal are everywhere the same.
You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries — such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland — where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means.”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/09/08.htm

Of course this is Marx’s view and it doesn’t make it right just because he said so. But these people want to claim the authority of Marx for something they advocate but which he did not.

Why don’t they come out openly and say that Marx was wrong on this point?

[DJP]

For one thing the “use of parliament= reformist and extra parliamentary activiy= revolutionary” people have simplicity and romanticism on their side. The revolutionary use of parliament argument requires more explanation, especially since the “socialist” parties that have engaged in parliamentary activiy have tended to be reformist and leadership based.

[ZJW]

I was expecting to see a review of the Bernes book in the May SS. No.

But here in the Mattick-edited section of the May Brooklyn Rail, there are three reviews of it, along with a rejoinder to them by Bernes.

https://brooklynrail.org/section/field-notes/

I find useful to read his rejoinder first. (Partly out of fear of fatigue from reading ‘this kind of thing’.)

By the way, from his rejoinder it seems he was mistaken for something of an Impossiblist because he rejoinds (if there is such a word):

‘When I speak of the necessity of an immediate plan for common production for common use, I do not mean, as Frits Janssen argues, a “variation of the well-known view that the workers can only make a revolution when they are ‘conscious’…when they have studied piles of books” but rather an intensive and extensive network including “the vast majority” in the activity of planning and producing in common for common use.’

• This reply was modified 1 day, 20 hours ago by ZJW.

[ALB]

I don’t think that Janssen was accusing Bernes of adopting a position similar to ours as he goes on to say that those who hold the view he is criticising conclude that workers need leaders to tell them what the books mean. Actually, it is not clear who he is getting at since I don’t know any group that holds that position.

In any event, it is not our view that workers need to have studied piles of books to become a socialist. All someone needs to do is (of course) understand what socialism is and want it, and that capitalism cannot be reformed so as to work in the interests of the workers (which is something people could workout for themselves, though talking to others and reading a few pamphlets would help someone to come to his conclusion). No need to understand the materialist conception of history or the labour theory of value unless you want to.

Incidentally, the question of “workers councils” is dealt with briefly in this month’s Socialist Standard in a reply to a letter from someone who promotes the idea.

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