Socialism still the only road

a An Reabhloid - for a Workers Republic - Page 6

SOCIALISM - STILL THE

ONLY WAY FORWARD

There is one burning question that emerges from the collapse of the USSR and that overshadows all the important strategic and tactical issues, the twists and tums of the bureaucrats and the human needs of their victims. Is Socialism possible? |s it even desirable?

The question underpins the debates of working people in every sector of the world. In the non-capitalist economies can workers resist the currents for capitalist restoration? Can they organise in their own interests or will they merely serve as cannon fodder for various sectors of the bureaucracy? Is there a revolutionary solution to the human agony of the Third world? Is the “moderation” of the ANC in South Africa and the PLO leadership in the Middle East the only possible optionin abad situation? To what extent can workers in the advanced capitalist societies fight privatisation and recession? Can one even imagine an anti-imperialist victory in Ireland if the world domination of imperialism is determined for all time?

NEW WORLD ORDER?

The voices of imperialism have no doubts about the answers to these questions.

On the political front George Bush talks of a “New World order” and of the 21st century as “an American century”. With its military might the one world superpower will serve as the gendarme of the new order and ensure capitalist rule in every corner of the globe.

Philosophical underpinning for this vision comes from the right-wing guru of the hour, Francis Fukuyama. A revised version of an essay entitled “The end of History?" has just been republished in book form - the main change in its contents being that the question mark has now been removed. Fukuyama’s basic argument is that liberal democracy has seen off socialism as its last competitor and that this was an inexorable outcome of historical development. It's impossible to talk any longer of historical development because history has reached its fulfilment in the consumer society of the U.S.A.

The kindest thing that can be said about these arquments is that they are deeply unconvincing. George Bush is struggling to be nominated for a second term as President of the world's biggest debtor nation while overseeing the middle of a world recession. As one pro-capitalist economic observer put it: “How thoughtless of capitalism to celebrate the demise of communism with a crisis of its own”.

Fukuyama's assertion that third world countries are on the same tram-line as the advanced capitalist countries and will eventually catch up is contradicted in the real world, where a proportion of the capitalist world’s wealth is made up of interest payments that have effectively halved the average income of people in many third world countries. His assertion thal we are entering atimeless era of capitalist stability is badly out of tune with sharply increasing rivalry bu lween the imperialist powers, the failure of the leading Group of Seven powers to come up with a coherent plan, or significant resources, for a successful capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe and the endemic failure of the GATT trade talks to produce a unified strategy for managing the world market and avoiding trade wars.

In practice the capitalist bornbast does not impress workers. The hungry in the Third World are kept hungry by rapacious IMF [International Monetary Fund} “reforms. Eastern European workers have dreams of affluence but very little experience of the market reforms is enough to provoke a powertul response.

Redundancies, privatisation and a continuing degradation of the social fabric are the lot of many workers in the advanced capitalist countries, market socialists There are voices in the debate much more dangerous than the triumphalism of the capitalists. The Stalinists remain a poweriul current within the workers movement. For decades they have supported despotism and called it socialism. Their practice of continually accommodating to the right means that they are no barrier to capitalist attacks, rather, ably supported by Social Democracy, they are powerful voices within the workers movement, echoing the capitalist attacks and urging the ditching of all the main tenets of socialism. These voices of “New realism”, “new consensus” and “new agenda” haven't even the saving grace of anything original to say. Mostly they repeat classical attacks on Marxism, hoary with age. We need to look

An Reabhloid - for a Workers Republic - Page 7 Countries must cul wages to stay compelitive on the at these again to refute them effectively.

One of the Key concepts of Marxism is that of “abundance". Marx saw the various forms of class society in human history as arising from a generalised inability of the means of production to meet the needs of the whole population. In these conditions of scarcity society divided into ruling classes which expropriated the means of production to meet their own needs and -exploited classes driven into penury as the fruits of their labour were taken from them.

Capitalism marked a new stage in human society. By constantly revolutionising the means of production it provided the possibility of abundance - a level of production that would need the needs of the whole population. It also created a new class - the proletariat or working class - that had no real stake in existing propertly relations because they had been stripped of everything but their labour power. Workers had an historical role as the gravediggers of capitalism. The revolutionary overthrow of this society would see a transitional society in which workers ruled - Socialism - and then the withering away of the state and of classes themselves to create a classless society - Communism. Abundance Marx himself stressed that this whole process depended on an abundance of goods to meet people's needs. In a pungent phrase he warned that failure to achieve this would lead to a retum of “the same old shit”. Today's critics arque that abundance is impossible and that therefore Socialism is impossible. Abundance is impossible because of population pressure.

The world's population is growing so rapidly that resources could never catch up. In any case it would be impossible because people’s needs are limitless e.g. if you satisfy a need for clothing people then become fashion conscious and need new and more elaborate clothes. These sorts of criticisms - along with another old chestnut - that human nature is simply too individualist, greedy and agaressive for any socialist society to work can be seen as “classical” criticisms. They go back to the beginnings of Marxism and even before.

As will be seen, they are easily disposed off,

PLANNING

More serious are the criticisms of planning. They claim the authority of reality - of the practice of “actually existing socialism” as it was in the USSR and Eastern Europe and its collapse. The failures of Stalinism are depicted as the failures of the whole Socialist project, The basic argument is as follows: Planning can't be democratic because of the sheer complexity of a modern industrial society. Not only are there numberless products, but each unit of production depends on other units for its inputs and as customers for its outputs. Workers control at an area or factory level would mean anarchy as each makes decisions which For a Workers 17/19 April 1992 Ulster Peoples College Republic An Reabhloid Easter School

—— ‘An Reabhloid - for a Workers Republic - Page 8 Suit it alone, So aplanned society must be a dictatorial society, with all the details of economic life decided at the centre.

Yet this is also an impossibility. Needs can't be determined in advance. Attempting to do so lead to immense waste. Goods that nobody wants rot in warehouses. A sprawling bureaucracy grows. The problems are especially acute in consumer goods because of the difficulty in setting planning goals linked to quality and personal taste. Shoddy, uniform consumer goods and overall scarcity lead to a gradual decay. This is accentuated by the comparison with market economies where ‘the invisible hand" of the market decides afterthe factwhich goods meet people's needs and forces adjustment to production. Producers of goods which are in demand will thrive while those who produce goods that are not wanted will go bust. This sort of analysis leads directly to the proposals of “Market Socialism”. The proponents of these schemes admit that unrestrained capitalism leads to much human misery. The solution is a combination of two systems. The major industries should be under state control and run by a bureaucracy. Smaller firms would be privately owned and complete in the market place.

Democracy would be a standard parliamentary democracy. Would such a system be socialist? The Did Trotsky help the rise of Stalinism? In 1990 Joe Slovo, until recently General Secretary of the South Afican Communist Party (SACP),published his well known pamphlet “Has Socialism Failed?’ which heavily criticised the Stalinist legacy of the official communist movement. Left wing critics of Slovo pointed out that he failed in his pamphlet to situate the rise of Stalinisminthe victory of the bureaucratic caste which usurped power in the 1921s. In his subsequent article,/Socialist aspirations and realities’ Slovo rejoined the debate. He insisted that the roots of Stalinism lies deep in Leninism, especially the notion ofthe vanguard party and the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Slovo claims that ‘the foundation for the institutionalised separation of socialism and democracy, both in the party and in society ,was laid inideological practices which preceded the emergence of an economically poviees stratum’, The foremost guilty arty of these ‘ideological practices is | singled out as Leon Trotsky.

‘Among the oppasitionists who poured a great deal of concrete into the foundations of Stalinism was Leon i Each country competes in driving worker's wages down market socialists shrug their shoulders. “Is the glass half empty or half full?" they reply.

THE DEFENCE OF MARXISM

The task of refuting these attack is made easier by the public defence of Marxism that Ernest Mandel, leader of the Fourth International, has undertaken. One Trotsky." Finally he traces the roots of Stalinism back to the concept expounded by Marx of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.

It is questionable whether the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat ever had validity in the concept of long term socialist aspirations.

In an article written in the SAC journal ‘African Communist’ veteran South African Trotskyist Charlie Van Geldren replied to Slovu Put briefly Joe Slovo sees the privileged bureaucracy as important to the reproduction of Stalinism, not its main source. | would argue that on the contrary,the rise of Stalinism went hand in hand with the rise of the bureaucracy and that theoretically,Stalinism is nothing other than the ideology of the privileged bureaucracy.

Charlie explained the rise of the bureaucracy as resulting from the revolution having succeeded first ina backward country which was subsequently isolated by the defeat of other revolutions in the west,notably Germany.

The terrible civil war in which the “whites” were supported by 14 capitalist powers killed the working class vanguard which was the social basis for the soviet democracy. In its place a new layer of administrative party bureaucrats, many former Mensheviks or old Czarist officials, took over the exercise of power without any democratic check. 2

An Reabhlioid - for a Workers Republic - Page 9 SSS a a target has been a recent book by a member of the market socialist camp called Alex Nove - The economics of feasible socialism revisited. We won't follow the ins and outs of this debate directly, but we will draw on Mandel’s argument and on his authority.

Firstly we must stress that Marxists have a completely different method from out opponents. Marxism is a science. It bases itself on events inthe real world and attempts to identify the developments of society through the ebb an flow of the class struggle.

lf we base ourselves on the real world and set aside capitalist triumphalism over the decay of the stalinist bureaucracies there is one immediately evident fact.

Capitalism doesn't work and isn't working. It has never met the human needs of the mass of the Earth's people. The market has succeeded in raising the living standards of a tiny minority of the world’s population only in two historically brief periods - before the first workd war and atter the second. Even then the cost was the pauperisation of the majority of humanity.

The defenders of the market, when they claim that socialism can't meet the individual needs of people, don't go on to claim that the market can. As Ernest Mandel points out, by rejecting the concept of abundance they deny any possibility of a society that satisfies individual humanneed. Their arqument boils down to one that says that in a situation of generalised scarcity a chequebook is the best ration card.

The gurus of the market point to the bureaucratic waste in Eastern Europe. What about mass unemployment? The emigration boat? The cardboard cities of the homeless? What are we to make of the billions of speculative profit that appear and disappear on the world's stock exchanges and create black Mondays, grey Fridays and soon? American workers today face more than a hundred - billion dollar debt from the huge Savings and Loan scandal - their children and grandchildren are expected to pay for the speculative bubble built by their capitalist masters.

The idea that the market gives us choice Is not borne ES The decisive factor however was the political battle Inside the Bolshevik party between the Left Opposition led by Trotsky and the bureaucracy led by Stalin. The victory of Stalin was the victory of bureauc- Tacy over democracy and ‘socialism in one country’ over world revolution. So what about Trotsky mistakes? Trotskyists like myself have the answers to Joe Slovo on this. Firstly, Trotsky was wrong - dead wrong- on these issues, notwithstanding the difficult ¢ onditions of the time. Second, Trots the time in no way invalidate the stra § errors at e began by out by reality. There is plenty of evidence to prove the Marxist contention that capitalist markets evolve towards monopoly. For example, as the many old hardware stores are replaces by a few D.1.Y superstores, the multiplicity of goods is replaced by one or two standard styles and sizes. This lack of choice even extends to living produce. In supermarkets the endless variety of plant and animal produce is converted to the standard orange, apple, chicken and so on. This is not to say that choice does not exist, but it exists only for those able to pay for it in a limited luxury sector. In certain areas the market fails utterly. The U.S.

Medicare market is set to soak up 15% of GNP inthe next period, while many Americans receive no real health care - Cuba's infant mortality rate is far lower than that of the U.S. Against the standpoint of reality many of the classical arguments against socialism simply fade into the mist.

Human nature? There has been an endless number of human societies in history with many differentideas of human behaviour - the capitalist ideal of the ruthless individual is far from the norm. The population explosion? Uncontrolled population growth isn't an argument against socialism - its an argument against any .. with the result that workers everywhere no fonger earn enough ta buy what they produce! Trotsky and the oppositianists in 1923, against therule of the bureaucracy and for social democracy.

Charlie Van Geldren defends Lenin’s party: It is important to stress that the Bolshevik party itself.even during clandestinity, never had a monolithic internal life, or an all-powerful general secretary, but was full of free discussion,emporary factional grouping and internal political debate. He also defends the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat. It is not that scrapping the term itself is the problem but rather that what Slovo is proposing is scrapping the content. That is a state and society ruled by the working class where the poor and exploited have power. Behind the whole debate lies the necessity to retain this as the objective of political activity

An Reabhloid - for a Workers Republic - Page 10 form of society and even against our survival as a species. What we can say is that some population pressure is economic - in poor societies plenty of children mean that some will survive and parents will themselves have some supportin old age. Capitalism adds to this by sucking wealth from the Third world while at the same time linking with religious fanatics to oppose rational family planning.

The assertion that abundance is impossible because human needs are limitless is clearly false. Humans live for a limited time and can't have “limitless” needs.

The majority of their needs concem food, clothing and shelter and under capitalism the majority of workers are trapped ina struggle for existence to achieve these basic needs. It should be clear also that there is a hierarchy of needs. Not all needs are felt with the same intensity. A shortage of food would lead to intense social struggle, but when food is abundant a shortage of caviar causes only mild upsel among gourmets. This is of crucial importance. If we are all overburdened by a mountain of wants and needs then Socialism is an impossibility or a utopian dream of the far future. lf we all have the basic human needs of food, shelter, and a decent life for ourselves and our children then Socialism could be instituted tomorrow,

LIBERATION FROM WANT

The potential productive forces even now under capitalism are sufficient to eradicate hunger fromthe world and provide a secure standard of living for all its people. For the super-rich of course this will mean a levelling down, but for the vast majority of humanity it will be the beginning of liberation from want and insecurity. It's worth reflecting here that even under capitalism certainthings are freely available. Wateris free [ignoring local taxes] because the cost of charging for it is greater than the income generated. Education and health care in most European countries is free because the market could not deliver and would add immense costs incollection and administration. Given the cost of European wine lakes and butter mountains the only thing that prevents basic foodstuffs, housing and transport from joining the list is the class rule of capitalism. But at the core of the market socialist's argumentisthe practice of “actually existing socialism”, the prison camp of the former USSR. Here Marxists have to tread warily, because we ourselves have much to leam. Where are we to look?

STARTING FROM REALITY

Marxists would look first at the actual historical conditions of this society: A revolution in what at the time was one of the most backward societies in the world, A civil war in which imperialist and White armies ravaged the land and effectively wiped out the working class activists who were effectively the backbone of the revolution. lsolation, a counter-revolution from within that wiped out the old Bolsheviks and lett Stalin's bureaucrats incontrol. Repudiation of internationalism by the theory of “Socialism in one country”.

Another war with 20 million dead. Unremitling pressure from imperialism, culminating in the “Star wars” project which effectively bled the Soviet bureaucracy dry, Surely these had some bearing?

The market socialist ignore details - planning was at fault. Marxists draw completely different lessons from the Soviet experience. We assert that socialism must be internationalist and tt must be democratic.

The internationalist araument speaks for itself. Stalin repudiated internationalism and betrayed many revolutions that would have provided a real and secure basis for the defence of the Soviet Union. Yet the USSR could not withdraw from the world or win the toleration of capital. Economic, political and military pressure continued to the day of its fall and beyond.

Fighting For Socialism An Reabhlioid Fighting For a Workers Republic Available From; Peoples Democracy, Conway Mill, Falls Rd Belfast 12° Four issues £5

An Reabhloid - for a Workers Republic - Page 11 Democracy lay at the centre of the internal decay of stalinism. The working of the bureaucratic plan involved a conflict of interest between worker and bureaucrat, The worker was also a consumer and hada direct interest in quality. Attempting to establish this could lead to the Gulag camps - so workers were demoralised and apathetic and their organisation atomised. The bureaucrat’s interest, his/her chances of promotion, rested on meeting the plan by whatever means, including widespread falsifying of results. He/ she could produce junk and yet meet planning targets.

In fact the less concerned the apparatchik was with quality or use the easier meeting the plan became.

The bureaucratic nomenciatura were insulated from the contradictions of this process by their own party shops and internal party economy.

In any case the bureaucrats had no choice. The totalitarian nature of their rule did not flow from planning, but from the need of a relatively small parasitic caste to stay in control of a massive working class which, given any opportunity to organise, would have swept them aside.

SEEDS OF REVOLUTION

The seeds of a real planned economy are already present withinthe chaos of capitalism. A majortrend of capitalist development has been a growing socialisation of labour. Workers are more highly educated, possess more skills, work in larger teams with a greater pool of skills and are more dependent on interconnections with other sectors of the workforce.

Al the same time the tendency to monopoly has led to a few companies dominating entire sectors of the world economy and co-ordination production over many countries. All of this involves a greater and greater level of capitalist planning [which fails at a global level because of the iundamentally anarchic nature of capitalist production and the final allocation of resources according to the market]. It is common now for car engines to be manufactured in one plant and installed in another. Whatever form of bookeep- New Agenda? Nothing could give a more classical illustration of “marketsocialists” building bridges towards capitalism than the split in the Workers Party. The Northern party would like to present themselves as the dogged revolutionaries keeping the faith as opposed to the careerists of the Democratic Left/ New Agenda group. In fact a look at the programmes of the two groups reveals very little difference and very little political justification for the split. It was a long time ago that the Workers Party applied the stalinist “stages” theory to the Irish situation and followed it's bitter logic to the end - urging a return to Stormont, supporting the imperialist forces, calling for working class restraint and “social partnership” in order to allow multinational development.

In fact the division is not political but between two sets of careerists. It’s between those who see their future as parliamentarians based on a right-wing social democracy and those who prefer the old Stalinist ideology as the best cover for a career as apologists for the British and guard dogs against republicanism. By a short nose the “Democratic left” win the prize for hypocrisy. The cries of astonishment following revelations about the continuing activities of the official IRA required acting ability of a high level.

Peoples Democracy plans a full analysis of the decay of the Workers Party in future issues.

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‘An Reabhioid - for a Workers Republic - Page 12 ing takes place itis nonsense to talk of the engine plant “selling” to the body plant -outputis planned. Itdoesn't lead to the economic collapse of the car market or the collapse of parliamentary democracy.

All this takes place within a market economy, What it demonstrates is that planning has become more and more important for the continued functioning of capitalism, but it is also clear that its logical extension throughout the whole economy could only be achieved with capitalism's overthrow.

Of course planning in capitalist firms is extremely hierarchical, but we can see how planning might be democratised. At national and international level all that is needed is democratic decisions about allocation of resources - so much for education, health, industry. agriculture, the length of the working day and so on. This resource allocation can be refined at regional level and at the level of community and plant organisation of labour can be decided within this framework. Internationalism is essential. One can't plan ina sea of anarchy, faced withthreats and sabotage. We have seen the consequences of retreating behind the fantasy of socialism in one country. Democracy is essential because itis only then that a planned economy can become dynamic and allow the endless changes and shifts need to meet the shifting patterns of human need and development. This sortof society willonly be possible when the mass of working people swing into action. The task of Marxists is to learn the lessons of the past and prepare a secure foundation for further advance.

BRIDGE TO CAPITALISM

Applying Marxist methods to the present debate about socialism we can see that the question “Is Socialism possible?" is not some sort of idle or academic query.

The position taken by the market socialists has a particular purpose. The biggest “market socialist of them all was Gorbachev, and his project is in the dustbin of history. Market socialism is useful, not because it is possible, but because it serves as a bridge for those within the workers movement who want to cross over to capitalism. This bridge must be blown up and its architects exposed. That's a central task in the reconstruction of the socialist movement.

The capitalist trumpeting of the market is itself a victory of ideology over reality. Inthe era of the death agony of capitalism the picture of swashbuckling buccaneering entrepreneurs is the purest fantasy. The modem capitalist resembles an entrepreneur as much as a geriatric an Olympic athlete. IDB in the North of ireland produces a book weighing several pounds detailing all the grants, sweeteners and kickbacks needed to set the modem entrepreneur up in business. Stock exchange speculators suck millions fram the economy but have the nerve to look for their money back when things go wrong. In the 26 counties the total taken in in PAYE tax just matches the interest rate payments on the national debt - incurred largely as part of an industrial policy offering tax havens to multinational firms.

PUTTING THE ALTERNATIVE

These fake notions of the risk-taking capitalist entrepreneur and the free market serve a particular purpose. They present as strong and eternal a system in terminal decline while justifying increasingly desperate and savage altacks onthe working class and cuts in the :"social wage” of health, education and soon. For socialists dafending the possibility and desirability of socialism has precisely the opposite abjective. The paint is not just to defend the idea of socialism but to justify workers resisting attacks on their living standards and democraticrights. From such defensive struggles we seek to demonstrate the necessity of workers taking control thamselves and creating anewsociaty. Thiswillonly occur if they have confidence that an alternative to capitalism exists. This problem is quite clearly in evidence in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Having identified socialism with stalinism and understandably therefore rejected it, workers think that capitalism and the market the only "natural” way organising society and expect it to deliver the standard of living of the well-off in the West. However whenaver they suffer the concrete effects of ihe market such as rising prices and unemployment they have resisted.

Harmessing and organising this resistance for socialism will only be possible if workers have an alternative global view to that of the market. Similar problems exist in the industrialised capitalist countries. Defending workers living standards can only be achieved by breaking with the logic of capitalist profitability but generalising any challenge to the logic of capitalism can only be achieved ff there is seen to be an alternative.

Unfortunately workers will not believe us if our socialism is simply a promise about the future. Theoretical defences of socialism, no matter how convincing, will not be enough. In all the struggles of workers and the oppressed, no matter how small or partial, socialists must be the most consistent fighters and advocates of their rights. Above all we must show ourselves to be tha mast consistent defenders of democracy. The Stalinists, Social Democrats and many National Liberation movements have abandoned socialism and are happy to advocate the sham democracy of bourgeois parliaments and elections.

In many places only the revolutionary left remains to advocate socialism and democracy. Turning this small forea into the leadership of the working class will mean many af its organisations must break from the dogmas and undemocratic functioning of their own organisations and their palitical practice. Only absolute opennass and absence of political sactarianism in debate and action will demonstrate to workers that Marxism is not what existed In Eastern Europe and that itis still relavant. Are the militants and organisations defending Marxism capable of rising to the challange?

JOHN NORTH.