Socialism in the 21st Century
 The way forward for
anti-capitalism
Chapter six
How could socialism work?
[Previous] [Next]
In the 300 years or so of its existence
capitalism has transformed the planet over and over again. Rail,
electricity, the internal combustion engine, flight, space travel,
telephones and electronic computers, the list is endless.
The world economy is 17 times the size it was a
century ago. In 1900 there were only a few thousand cars worldwide. Now
there are 501 million.
Engineers built the first electronic computers in
the early 1940s. In 1949, Popular Mechanics magazine predicted that
"computers in the future may have only
1,000 tubes and weigh only one and a half tonnes".
Today the smallest laptop can process more data
than the most powerful computers in the world 50 years ago.
Despite this, all the technology developed by
capitalism has not provided clean water for 1.2 billion people or food for
the 841 million who are seriously malnourished. Nor has it prevented the
Aids epidemic rampaging through Africa.
Upwards of 28 million Africans
have the HIV virus and only 30,000 of them can get treatment. Capitalism
is capable of spending billions on developing weaponry that is used to
bomb the poor of Afghanistan into the rubble, but it cannot solve poverty,
hunger or disease.
And capitalism is threatening the very future
existence of the planet. Scientists predict that, as a result of global
warming, sea levels are likely to rise by up to one metre this century.
This would devastate the inhabitants of the flood plains of Bangladesh and
Egypt, and worldwide hundreds of millions of the very poor would be
displaced.
Even these figures are probably conservative as they are based
on estimates made in the 1980s. The latest surveys indicate that the
situation could be more severe as they report that Arctic sea ice has
thinned by 40% in the last three decades.
Capitalism has enormously developed the
productive forces but it is controlled by the unplanned and blind play of
those very productive forces. It is a system where the only driving force
is the need to maximise profits.
'Wondrous' machine guided by its appetites
William Greider begins his book on modern
capitalism by describing the system:
"A wondrous new machine, strong
and supple, a machine that reaps as it destroys… Now imagine that there
are skilful hands on board, but no one is at the wheel. In fact, this
machine has no wheel or any internal governor to control the speed and
direction. It is sustained by its own forward motion, guided mainly by its
own appetites."
Under capitalism it is the blind forces of
profiteering that are in the driving seat. Governments bow down before the
rule of capital unless they are prepared to challenge it. Nowhere is this
clearer than on the issue of the environment. Every so often the world’s
leaders come together to plan how to ‘save the planet’. They come up
with targets to limit damage to the environment.
The largest and most powerful economy on earth,
the US, always manages to get the targets lowered. For example, scientists
agree that releases of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases need to
be cut by at least 60%. Yet all that has been agreed by governments
internationally is a minimal reduction to the levels of 1990. Even this
modest goal is hedged about with ways of bending the rules. For example,
countries are allocated targets for carbon emissions.
Russia has far lower carbon emissions than its
target figure. This has nothing to do with measures to help the
environment but is purely because of the catastrophic collapse of the
Russian economy since the fall of Stalinism in the former Soviet Union a
decade ago. Under the rules, Russia is able to sell its resulting ‘carbon
credits’ to other countries – which then use them to count towards
reaching their own target!
Even with these attempts to create a system where
the rich countries can buy fictional claims of having done their
environmental duty, the US – which produces one quarter of the world's
greenhouse gases – has refused to sign up. All previous experience shows
that even these paltry targets will never be met under capitalism.
Capitalism is incapable of fully harnessing the
science and technology it has brought into being. It is incapable of
providing for the needs of humanity or of protecting our fragile planet.
By contrast, a socialist society would be able to harness the enormous
potential of human talent and technique in order to build a society and
economy which could meet the needs of all.
That does not mean that every problem could be
immediately overcome as a result of a socialist government abolishing the
rule of capital. Far from it. Removing the profit motive would only be the
beginning of building a new society. It is not possible to create
socialism in one country surrounded by a world capitalist market,
particularly an economically underdeveloped one, as the example of Russia
in the last century shows.
The leaders of the Russian revolution in 1917 –
Lenin, Leon Trotsky and the Bolshevik party – saw the overthrow of
capitalism in Russia as the prelude to an international transformation of
society. They understood that, economically, Russia was not ready for
socialism, but the world was. For them the success or failure of the
Soviet Union depended on the working class of other countries successfully
overthrowing capitalism.
This is even truer today, given the increased
integration of the world economy, than it was in 1917, even for the
economically more advanced countries like Britain. Nonetheless, there is
an enormous amount that could be achieved by a socialist government in the
immediate period after it came to power, as part of a transition from
capitalism to socialism. Just cutting the working week to a maximum of 35
hours without loss of pay, or providing free, high-quality childcare for
all who wanted it, would transform the lives of millions of people.
Socialist democracy
A socialist economy would have to be a planned
economy. This would involve bringing all of the big corporations, which
control around 80% of the British economy, into democratic public
ownership, under working-class control.
Of course, it would not mean bringing small
businesses, such as the local shops, many of which are forced out of
business by the multinationals, into public ownership. Nor would it mean,
as opponents of socialism claim, taking away personal ‘private property’.
On the contrary, socialists are in favour of everyone having the right to
a decent home and the other conveniences of modern life.
A genuine socialist government would not be
dictatorial. On the contrary, it would extend and deepen democracy
enormously. This would be much more far-reaching than the parliamentary
democracies of capitalism where we simply get to vote every few years for
MPs who do whatever they like once elected. Instead, everyone would get to
take part in deciding how society and the economy would be run.
Nationally, regionally and locally – at every
level - elected representatives would be accountable and subject to
instant recall. Therefore, if the people who had elected them did not like
what their representative did, they could make them stand for immediate
re-election and, if they wished, replace them with someone else.
Elected representatives would also only receive
the average wage. Today MPs are a privileged section of society. Their
lives are remote from those of ordinary people. This is no accident. From
the earliest days of the Labour Party, the ruling class tried to buy-off
socialist MPs.
Its method is usually subtler than brown
envelopes of cash: it is a high salary, a very comfortable lifestyle and
the drip, drip of ceaseless flattery about how 'sensible' and 'wise' it is
to be 'moderate' and 'realistic'. The result has been that countless
numbers of MPs have decided that the best way to emancipate the working
class is one by one – starting with themselves.
That is why members of the Socialist Party who
become MPs will only take the average wage of a skilled worker. In the
1980s, three MPs (Dave Nellist, Terry Fields and Pat Wall) were elected as
Labour MPs on the policies of Militant (the Socialist Party’s
predecessor). All took a worker’s wage. Today Joe Higgins, a TD (MP) in
the Irish parliament, and a member of our sister organisation in Ireland,
takes a worker’s wage and has been described by the tabloid press as
"the red that money can’t buy". A socialist government would
ensure that no elected representatives received financial privileges as a
result of their position but, instead, lived the same lifestyle as those
they represented.
Democratic public ownership of major industry
There is another crucial sense in which democracy
would be far fuller in a socialist society. Under capitalism most of the
important decisions are not taken in Westminster or local council
chambers, they are taken in the boardrooms of the big corporations. By
contrast, a socialist government would bring major industry into
democratic public ownership.
It would be necessary to draw up a plan,
involving the whole of society, on what industry needed to produce. At
every level, in communities and workplaces, committees would be set up and
would elect representatives to regional and national government – again
on the basis of recall at anytime if they disagreed with their decisions.
Everybody would be able to participate in real decision-making about how
best to run society.
Many people will argue that this is utopian, that
people would not be bothered to participate in such bodies. Yet in every
mass struggle - from the Paris Commune of 1871 onwards - the embryos of
this type of structure have come into existence. In Britain during the
struggle to defeat the poll tax, when 18 million refused to pay the
iniquitous tax, hundreds of thousands of people took part in meetings to
plan the campaign. While the anti-poll tax unions were only temporary
bodies, organised to fight against a single Tory attack, they nonetheless
give a glimpse of working people’s capacity to organise.
Even today, thousands of working-class people
attend their tenants’ associations and other community meetings. And
organisations in a workers’ state would be completely different to the
toothless bodies that working-class people are currently allowed to take
part in - the committees would actually have the power to say how the
economy and society is organised.
In addition, for a planned economy to work, it
would be vital that the working class had the time to take part in the
running of society. Therefore, measures such as a shorter working week and
decent, affordable childcare would be a prerequisite for society to
develop towards socialism.
Too complicated?
Another argument against a planned economy is
that society is now too complicated to be planned. Some people argue that,
in the past, when the majority of people's aspirations were more limited,
it may have been possible to plan an economy. But that today, when people
want washing machines, videos and fashionable clothes, they claim planning
just would not work.
Yet modern technology would, in reality, make
planning far easier than it was in the past. In Russia, following the
revolution in 1917 - when working-class people took power for the first
time - an attempt was made to build a new society in a situation of
extreme economic and cultural backwardness.
The Russian peoples faced a desperate situation.
Many of the most active socialists had been killed fighting the civil war.
At the same time, illiteracy was widespread and most workers lacked
administrative skills. This meant that in many cases, the soviets (workers’
councils) had no choice but to keep on the specialists and administrators
of the old absolutist regime, even at the cost of bribing them with
privileges. In the town of Vyatka in 1918, for example, no fewer than
4,476 out of 4,766 officials were the same individuals who had previously
served the tsar.
The economy of the Soviet Union had been
devastated. It was under attack from imperialist armies and was isolated
as the world’s only workers’ state. Under these conditions, the system
did degenerate and a hideous bureaucracy developed. The economy was,
therefore, a mangled distortion of a planned economy. Decisions, far from
being taken by society as a whole, were taken by a few privileged
bureaucrats at the top.
Nonetheless, up until the early 1970s the
nationalised economies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe produced
impressive advances, especially in heavy industries, though consumer goods
were generally in short supply and of poor quality. Despite their many
shortcomings, however, they also provided basic education, healthcare, and
other social amenities to the majority of the population. For the Soviet
Union, which in 1917 was an extremely economically backward country
(something like India today) these were major advances unparalleled in any
capitalist country.
The restoration of capitalism in the former
Soviet Union has been an unmitigated disaster. The economy has collapsed
by 50% and life expectancy has fallen in ten years to the same level it
was in the 1950s. The human suffering that has resulted from the
reintroduction of capitalism is immense.
One small glimpse of it was given by an interview
the journalist Robert Fisk conducted with a young Russian woman, Natasha.
She was desperate for money and had, like tens of thousands of others,
become involved in international prostitution. Fisk suggested to her that
she and her friends were victims of "the worst side of men".
Natasha disagreed:
"They were victims of the collapse of the Soviet
Union, she said, a way of life – free schooling, free universities, free
apartments – that had been taken from them."
Whilst there was widespread dissatisfaction in
the Soviet Union because of the nightmare of Stalinism, at least it
provided the basics. In a negative sense, the reintroduction of capitalism
has shown how much better a planned economy (even a fatally distorted one)
was in providing a far higher standard of living for ordinary people than
capitalism has been able to do.
Capitalism today has provided the tools which
could enormously aid the genuine, democratic planning of an economy.
Firstly, there is a far higher level of education amongst working class
people than there was at the beginning of the last century. And capitalism
has developed all kinds of technology that could be used to assist in
planning. We have the internet, market research, supermarket loyalty cards
that record the shopping habits of every customer, and so on. Big business
uses this technology to find out what it can sell. Could it not be used
rationally instead to find out what people need and want?
In any case, big businesses themselves do plan.
Capitalism is an anarchic and blind system. But the big corporations use
their own international structures to try and maximise their profits. All
the car companies fix the prices of components in their profit-and-loss
columns in order to cook the books. Ford uses a huge internet programme to
procure the cheapest possible components worldwide.
The multinationals use extensive planning to
avoid paying taxes. One study of 200 US corporations found that
"the
average multinational firm with subsidiaries in more than five regions
uses income shifting to reduce its taxes to 51.6% of what they would
otherwise be".
Similarly, BMW claimed in 1993 that 95% of its profit
was made overseas. From 1988-92, BMW reduced its taxes from 545 million
deutschmarks to 31 million in this way (from around £200m to £11m).
The general trend of capitalism, with its
increasing monopolisation, is towards internal planning. However, under
capitalism this process will never be finished. A blind system based on
profit and competition will never be able to plan beyond a certain limit.
But a socialist government would strengthen and develop the methods of
planning currently used to maximise profit and avoid taxes in order to
plan society for the benefit of all.
Doesn’t the collapse of the Soviet Union
show that planning doesn’t work?
Leon Trotsky was one of the leaders of the
Russian revolution. He went on to lead a heroic fight against the
Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union. As far back as 1936, Trotsky
put forward two alternatives for the Soviet Union:
"A successful
uprising of the Russian working class, a political revolution and the
restoration of democracy, or the return of capitalism with calamitous
consequences for the mass of the population."
He went on to explain:
"The fall of the present dictatorship, if it were not replaced by a
new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with
a catastrophic decline of industry and culture."
As we have explained, the regimes in the former
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were not genuinely socialist, but a
grotesque caricature. This meant that their collapse was inevitable and
could only have been prevented if the bureaucracy had been overthrown and
replaced by genuine workers’ democracy. To work efficiently a planned
economy must be based on workers’ democracy. Economic planning in Russia
and Eastern Europe took the form of central command from above by
bureaucratic ministries and managers acting on the orders of the
privileged ruling caste. There was not a trace of democracy at any level.
In the early decades of the Soviet Union’s
existence, and despite the lack of democracy, the economy took huge
strides forward. During the 1970s and 1980s, however, it became clear that
the outdated, rigid framework of the Stalinist system could not cope
either with technological change or the social demands of a much more
developed society.
Even as the Soviet Union (under its 'leader'
Leonid Brezhnev) appeared to reach the pinnacle of its influence as a
superpower, degenerative processes were eating away at the foundations.
Sections of the bureaucracy, moreover, sensing impending collapse and
fearful of losing their material privileges, were ready to abandon ‘socialism’
and stake their future on a transition to capitalism.
In the 1980s, workers' struggles shook Poland,
followed by a mood of mass opposition in East Germany, Hungary, the former
Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. This triggered a political avalanche
throughout Eastern Europe. Initially, the sweeping mass movements had
features of political revolution: workers demanded democratisation of the
factories, economic planning and the state. Such was the deep revulsion
against the grotesque Stalinist model of ‘socialism’, however, that
progressive demands for democratic advances towards genuine socialism were
soon engulfed by a counter-revolutionary tide in favour of ‘the market’
- that is, capitalism.
The capitalists worldwide have used the collapse
of Stalinism to try to discredit socialist ideas and to claw back many of
the gains working-class people made in the post-war period, during which
Stalinism acted as a certain counterweight to capitalism. The neo-liberal
offensive, the return of the naked, unashamed brutality of capitalism,
began in the 1980s but has accelerated massively since the Stalinist
system fell apart. The capitalists gained a propaganda victory from the
collapse of Stalinism. In the longer term, however, their over-confident
brutality in the following decade has gone a long way to undermine their
system and to encourage a new generation to see the need for an
alternative.
Socialism more than sharing out wealth
It is often argued that socialists simply want to
share out the wealth. This, it is asserted, would only mean increased
misery for the rich - as the wealth would not be enough to obliterate
poverty. But we are not interested in merely doing this. Of course, it
would be nice to take some of Bill Gates’s $36 billion (£24 billion),
but in order for socialism to work it would be necessary to do much more
than that.
Some of the immediate measures that could be
taken include:
1. Eliminating arms spending
The US has promised to rebuild Afghanistan after
bombing it to smithereens. Yet the $297 million (£200 million) it has
pledged in 2002 is equal to just seven hours of US defence spending. Arms
spending has accounted for $1 trillion a year worldwide since the end of
the cold war. This alone could provide $1,000 a year for every family on
the planet. Just 25% of the cost of president George W Bush’s Star Wars
programme would provide clean drinking water for the billion people who
are currently without it.
2. Sharing out work
Even at the end of the economic boom in the late
1990s there were still 35 million unemployed in the European Union. At the
same time, those in work are working longer hours than ever before. This
is madness: a socialist government would immediately share out the work
(see Chapter Three).
In addition, it would use modern technology to
limit the number of hours it was necessary to work. A socialist government
could immediately introduce a maximum 35-hour week, with no loss of pay.
Capitalism’s remorseless drive for profit means that new technology has
been used, not to shorten the working week, but to throw workers on the
scrap heap.
Greider explains:
"During the last generation the world’s
largest multinational corporations have grown sevenfold in sales. Yet
the worldwide employment of these global firms has remained virtually
flat since the early 1970s, hovering around 26 million people.
The major multinationals grew in sales from
$721 billion in 1971 to $5.2 trillion in 1991, claiming a steadily
growing share of commerce (one third of all manufacturing exports, three
quarters of commodity trade, four fifths of the trade in technology and
management services). Yet the human labour required for each unit of
their output is diminishing dramatically."
There is currently serious overcapacity in almost
every sector of the market. As the economist Will Hutton declared in The
Observer:
"We are living in a world of glut, we have too much of
everything from grain to cars."
This is the real lunacy of
capitalism. We have too much grain - which means more than can be sold at
a profit - yet in Africa 20 million people are starving.
A socialist government would harness technology
to lower the number of hours it is necessary to work. This would give
working-class people more time to participate in running society. Combined
with a massive programme of socially necessary projects - such as
increasing the numbers of teachers, doctors and nurses - unemployment
could be eliminated.
3. Ending competition and duplication
Private ownership of the means of production
results in constant duplication. Companies fiercely compete to produce a
certain product first and best. Socialism would eliminate this and thereby
save a huge amount of resources. There would also be no need for
marketing, on which capitalism spends $1 trillion a year.
This does not mean, as is commonly claimed, that
socialism would result in a lack of choice or poor quality goods: a
society where everyone dresses in a grey uniform. It would be possible to
have far more choice of the things which people desire to have a variety
of (such as clothes, music, holidays etc) than under capitalism. However,
society might choose not to have 200 brands of washing powder.
Meeting the needs of humanity and the environment
On the basis of these three measures alone it
would be possible to improve living conditions immeasurably in a very
short period of time. But the highest stage of socialism means more than
that, what Marx called a society of ‘superabundance’. This would be a
society that truly meets the needs of humanity. Given that we live in a
world 30% of which has no electricity, a world where 50% of humanity has
never made a phone call, it would take an enormous development of the
productive forces to create a society of superabundance.
But does this also suggest that socialism would
lead to the destruction of the environment? On the contrary, the fight for
socialism is given added urgency because it is the only way of rescuing
the world from environmental disaster. Capitalism, in its wanton chaos, is
destroying the planet.
That is not to say that socialism would return to
a more primitive society. Far from it. Socialism has to further develop
technology and science. Two thirds of the world's population live in
absolute poverty. Socialists are not interested in sharing out the misery,
we want a decent life for all. That requires utilising technological and
scientific innovations.
However, there does not have to be a
contradiction between this and safeguarding the planet. What is needed if
we are to save the world is long-term planning that would be able to
develop alternative technologies that did not harm the environment. This
could only be achieved on the basis of democratic socialism.
Capitalism operates purely on the basis of the
profit motive. To increase the price of products by claiming that they are
‘environmentally friendly’ is one thing, it is quite another to stop
environmental devastation. It will never be in the interests, or within
the capabilities, of any multinational to plan long term or to put the
general needs of humanity for an inhabitable world and safe food above the
narrow, short-term need to make a quick profit.
By contrast, a democratically run planned economy
would be able to take rational decisions on the basis of aiming to meet
the needs of humanity. It would decide what technology to develop and use,
what food to produce, and when and where to build, while taking into
consideration the need to protect and repair our planet for future
generations.
It is not possible or necessary here and now -
amid a society where profit is god and humanity is bent and distorted
under its endless dictates – to draw up a full or accurate picture of a
socialist society. Future generations, who will be more informed and
knowledgeable than us, will do that.
But looking objectively, instead of through the
dollar-tinted spectacles of big business, only an ingrained pessimist
could argue that the replacement of the anarchy of the market with a
society based on rational and democratic planning would not be a vast
improvement. We can only begin to visualise what science and technique
could achieve if they were turned away from making profits for the
warmongers and the drug companies and towards the common good.
Nor can we fully imagine how human relations
would be lifted onto a higher plane in a new society. But it is possible
to see that many of the nightmarish aspects of human relations today are
rooted in the society we live in. Any society based on vast inequality
will inevitably be divided and prejudiced. The capitalist class needs
divisions amongst those they oppress in order to maintain its rule.
For example, racism has been an integral part of
capitalism since its infancy when it was used to justify the slave trade.
Later, racism was adapted to justify the colonial powers carving up the
world between them. Today racism is still ingrained in capitalist society.
The increased wealth and privilege of a small minority of black and Asian
people is used to disguise the fact that we still live in a deeply unequal
society.
In the US, the average annual income for a black
American is 61% less per year than the average white income. This is the
same difference as it was in 1880! In Britain, on average, black and Asian
workers earn three quarters of the wage of their white counterparts. And
black people are five times as likely to be stopped by the police.
Internationally, direct colonial rule may have
ended but imperialism still dictates to the poor countries of the world
via the multinationals and their agencies – the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Capitalism is more than happy to adapt the
ideology of racism to its own ends whether that it is to justify the
nightmare of poverty that is Africa under capitalism, or to distract
workers in Britain from the real reasons that our public services are
crumbling.
Discrimination against women is also embedded in
the structure of capitalism. In Britain the position of women has improved
dramatically compared to two generations ago. Nonetheless, although women
now make up over 50% of the workforce, on average they still earn only 72%
of male wages. Even though most women work they still tend to bear the
brunt of domestic tasks. Even when women work full time they spend an
average of eight hours a week more than their partner cooking and
shopping.
It is not ‘natural’ or 'inevitable' that
women earn less and carry the majority of the domestic load. What is
considered 'normal' is determined by the society we live in. The
oppression of women is rooted in class society. The way that capitalism is
organised and structured – in particular the role that the family has
played and still plays as an economic and social unit – perpetuates and
reinforces women’s oppression.
When ordinary people talk about ‘family’ they
mean real individuals – parents, children, partners. However, under
capitalism the family is also a social and economic unit based on the
dependence of the ‘non-productive’ members of the household on an
individual wage earner (traditionally the man). The family plays an
ideological and an economic role. It is used to discipline and socialise
young people, and to prepare them for their given role in capitalist
society. It is also used to reinforce the idea of bearing personal
responsibility for society’s ills.
When Thatcher said that "there is no such
thing as society", only the family and individuals, she also said
that the family was a "building block". In doing so she summed
up the attitude of capitalism to the family. Thatcher believed that it was
the duty of the family to bear the burden of looking after children, the
sick and the elderly. Conveniently, this meant that she could cut back on
the social services that had previously partially played that role.
A greater part of the burden was then dumped on
individual families, primarily on women. Thatcher was trying to return to
the conditions of Victorian capitalism when no welfare state existed.
Today, women, largely as a result of their increased role in the
workplace, are in a far stronger position than in the Victorian era. At
the same time, the Tories and now New Labour have cut the welfare state to
the bone leaving an increasing burden on working-class people, especially
women.
It would be naive to suggest that a socialist
government could just sweep aside sexism or racism and other prejudices,
all deeply ingrained in this society. However, it could very quickly take
economic measures – such as decent wages and jobs for all, free
high-quality childcare, free universal education, good housing, widely
available inexpensive high-quality restaurants and other measures –
which would enormously ease the situation.
Longer term, the change in economic relations,
the abolition of class divisions and the construction of a society based
on democratic involvement and co-operation would also change social
relations. Society would move away from hierarchies and the oppression and
abuse of one group by another. Human relations would be freed from all the
muck of capitalism.
Of course, there would be a transitional period
where the new society still had to deal with the problems it inherited
from the old. Nonetheless, many problems could be overcome quite quickly
on the basis of the massively increased resources a democratic planned
economy would provide. In the longer term, the highest stage of socialism
would mean the development of a society free from all the divisions and
oppression created by class society.
That does not mean that a socialist society would
be monolithic or without controversy. Discussion and debate would be on a
far higher level. Passionate arguments would undoubtedly take place. But
they would be between parties and groupings with a common starting point
– the betterment of humanity as a whole.
This would be incomparable with capitalist
society where political debate is restricted to a few at the top who spend
most of their time disguising, supporting and justifying the indecent
wealth and power of a tiny minority. It is possible to imagine a debate in
a socialist society – which could be about, for example, the best method
of energy production to meet the needs of humanity and the environment
(wind or solar power, nuclear fusion or some other) – which could
increase the understanding of the whole of society and lead to the best
way forward being hammered out.
Capitalists’ brutal record
The capitalists try to argue that a socialist
government could only come to power by force. This is a red herring. It is
they who have the most brutal record of violence imaginable, stopping at
nothing to overturn democratic elections if they threaten the rule of
capital. Thatcher has openly stated that she believes that General
Pinochet's bloody coup in Chile in 1973, with the murder of tens of
thousands of innocent people, was justified because of the threat of
'communism'.
Time and time again the capitalists have been
prepared to use violence to protect their rule. Nevertheless, this
resistance could be nullified by mobilising the mass of working-class
people in support of a socialist government. The working class is
potentially by far the most powerful force in society.
If a socialist government mobilised that power in
support of its policies an entirely peaceful transformation of society
might be achievable. However, we are realistic. The ruling class will be
prepared to use whatever means at its disposal to maintain its power and
privileges. A socialist government could only defend itself if it
mobilised the active support of the working class. And it would only be by
demonstrating its power in practise that the working class could
successfully defend its democratically elected socialist government.
If a socialist government were successfully
established in Britain, would it come under attack from the rest of the
capitalist world, in particular the US? There is no doubt that the ruling
class of the US, the world’s only superpower, would feel threatened by a
socialist government and, if it thought it could get away with it, would
use its overwhelming military might to try and crush a workers’ state.
The ruling classes internationally are prepared
to use any means to hold on to power. In a rare moment of straight talking
one US strategic planner blurted out the real attitude of US imperialism
in 1948:
"We have 50% of the world’s wealth but
only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, our real job in the
coming period… is to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we
have to dispense with all sentimentality… we should cease thinking
about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation."
In a more recent moment of clarity, Thomas
Friedman of the New York Times accurately declared:
"The hidden hand
of the market will never work without the hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot
flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the
hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies
is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."
What could be clearer? The priority of the US
Army is not the protection of democracy, of the weak and the innocent; it
is the protection of US imperialism’s profits by any means necessary.
Nonetheless, it would be wrong to conclude that we are powerless before
the ‘hidden fist’ of US imperialism.
It is true that the US ruling class was able to
successfully use the horrific events of September 11 to temporarily win
the support of the majority of US workers for the war on Afghanistan. (Far
from being a war on terrorism, it has, in reality, meant the death of tens
of thousands of innocent Afghanis and has done nothing to bring genuine
democracy to the war ravaged country.)
However, it is one thing for imperialism to win
support for taking action against the reactionary, anti-democratic Taliban
regime. It would be an entirely different question to justify an attack on
a popular socialist government which was making open appeals to the US
working class for support.
After all, the US’s defeat in Vietnam in the
1970s was a result of a combination of two factors – the movement in
South Vietnam and the growing opposition to the war amongst the US working
class. And the peasant-based, guerrilla struggle in South Vietnam had far
less immediate resonance with workers in the US than a socialist
government in an industrialised country would have.
The power of imperialism is potentially more
limited today than it was almost a century ago when the Russian revolution
took place in October 1917. Russia was a poor country, devastated by war
and facing attack from 21 capitalist armies desperate to crush the
newly-born Soviet Union.
Yet the Soviet Red Army, poorly equipped, hungry
and tired, was able to declare victory in a little under three years. Why?
Primarily, because of the working-class support internationally. Inspired
by Russia, Europe was plunged into a series of revolutionary
movements.
A strike by Hungarian munitions workers in
January 1918 spread like wildfire to Vienna, Berlin and throughout
Germany, involving over two million workers. Their central demand was
peace. In Finland an independent workers’ republic was proclaimed. After
months of fighting it was crushed with the help of German troops.
Then on 4 November 1918 mutiny broke out at the
German naval base of Kiel, igniting the German revolution. Within days
every major city was in the hands of workers’ councils. Mass strikes and
a naval mutiny swept France. British soldiers mutinied, and the red flag
was hoisted over the Clyde in Scotland. Strikes involving four million
workers convulsed the USA in 1919.
These events, hardly mentioned in official
history books, are a graphic illustration of how a workers’ revolution
will always have an incalculable effect internationally, provoking howls
of outrage from big business and, at the same time, inspiring
working-class people to come to its defence and follow its example.
On the battlefields, the Red Army were dropping
thousands of leaflets appealing to the enemy troops. British and American
soldiers began to mutiny. On the Black Sea, French sailors flew the red
flag. The imperialists were compelled to withdraw their forces. For
genuine socialism to have developed as a result of 1917 it would have been
necessary for working-class people to have taken power in other countries.
The potential for this existed – revolutionary movements took place in
Germany, Hungary and other countries – but, tragically, they were
defeated.
Today any genuine socialist government would face
the same task, that of spreading the revolution internationally. However,
the problems which imperialism faced in 1917 would be magnified 100 times
today.
The main reason for the governments of Britain,
Germany, France, the US and other countries abandoning their assault on
the Soviet Union was a fear that their armies and populations were being
infected by the ‘socialist plague’. With modern communications it
would be far harder for the US or other capitalist governments to justify
to their own populations taking action against a democratically elected
socialist government.
Continued...
|
Socialist
news
