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Title: Capitalism and Socialism Author: Maurice Brinton Date: December 1968 Language: en Topics: socialism; libertarian socialism; capitalism; anti-capitalism; criticism and critique; critique of the left; Marxism; authoritarian left; workers’ self-management Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/brinton/1968/12/capitalism-socialism.htm Notes: Published in Solidarity, V, 6
What is basically wrong with capitalism? Ask a number of socialists and
you will get a number of different answers. These will depend on their
vision of what socialism might be like and on their ideas as to what
political action is all about. Revolutionary libertarian socialists see
these things very differently from the trad “left”. This article is not
an attempt to counterpoise two conceptions of socialism and political
action. It is an attempt to stress a facet of socialist thought that is
in danger of being forgotten.
When one scratches beneath the surface, “progressive” capitalists,
liberals, Labour reformists, “communist” macro-bureaucrats and
Trotskyist mini-bureaucrats all see the evils of capitalism in much the
same way. They all see them as primarily economic ills, flowing from a
particular pattern of ownership of the means of production. When
Khrushchev equated socialism with “more goulash for everyone” he was
voicing a widespread view. Innumerable quotations could be found to
substantiate this assertion.
If you don’t believe that traditional socialists think in this way, try
suggesting to one of them that modern capitalism is beginning to solve
some economic problems. He will immediately denounce you as having
“given up the struggle for socialism”. He cannot grasp that slumps were
a feature of societies that state capitalism had not sufficiently
permeated and that they are not intrinsic features of capitalist
society. “No economic crisis” is, for the traditional socialist,
tantamount to “no crisis”. It is synonymous with “capitalism has solved
its problems”. The traditional socialist feels insecure, as a socialist,
if told that capitalism can solve this kind of problem, because for him
this is the problem, par excellence, affecting capitalist society.
The traditional “left” today has a crude vision of man, of his
aspirations and his needs, a vision moulded by the rotten society in
which we live. It has a narrow concept of class consciousness. For them
class consciousness is primarily an awareness of “non-ownership”. They
see the “social problem” being solved as the majority of the population
gain access to material wealth. All would be well, they say or imply, if
as a result of their capture of state power (and of their particular
brand of planning) the masses could only be ensured a higher level of
consumption. “Socialism” is equated with full bellies. The filling of
these bellies is seen as the fundamental task of the socialist
revolution.
Intimately related to this concept of man as essentially a producing and
consuming machine is the whole traditional “left” critique of
laissez-faire capitalism. Many on the “left” continue to think we live
under this kind of capitalism and continue to criticize it because it is
inefficient (in the domain of production). The whole of John Strachey’s
writings prior to World War II were dominated by these conceptions. His
Why You Should Be a Socialist sold nearly a million copies — and yet the
ideas of freedom or self-management do not appear in it, as part of the
socialist objective. Many of the leaders of today’s “left” graduated at
his school, including the so-called revolutionaries. Even the usual
vision of communism, “from each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs”, usually relates, in the minds of “Marxists”, to
the division of the cake and not at all to the relations of man with man
and between man and his environment.
For the traditional socialist “raising the standard of living” is the
main purpose of social change. Capitalism allegedly cannot any longer
develop production. (Anyone ever caught in a traffic jam, or in a
working class shopping area on a Saturday afternoon, will find this a
strange proposition.) It seems to be of secondary importance to this
kind of socialist that under modern capitalism people are brutalized at
work, manipulated in consumption and in leisure, their intellectual
capacity stunted or their taste corrupted by a commercial culture. One
must be “soft”, it is implied, if one considers the systematic
destruction of human beings to be worth a big song and dance. Those who
talk of socialist objectives as being freedom in production (as well as
out of it) are dismissed as “Utopians”.
Were it not that misrepresentation is now an established way of life on
the “left”, it would seem unnecessary to stress that as long as millions
of the world’s population have insufficient food and clothing, the
satisfaction of basic material needs must be an essential part of the
socialist programme (and in fact of any social programme whatsoever,
which does not extol the virtues of poverty.) The point is that by
concentrating entirely on this aspect of the critique of capitalism the
propaganda of the traditional “left” deprives itself of one of the most
telling weapons of socialist criticism, namely an exposure of what
capitalism does to people, particularly in countries where basic needs
have by and large been met. And whether Guevarist or Maoist friends like
it or not, it is in these countries, where there is a proletariat, that
the socialist future of mankind will be decided.
This particular emphasis in the propaganda of the traditional
organizations is not accidental. When they talk of increasing production
in order to increase consumption, reformists and bureaucrats of one kind
or another feel on fairly safe ground. Despite the nonsense talked by
many “Marxists” about “stagnation of the productive forces”,
bureaucratic capitalism (of both the Eastern and Western types) can
develop the means of production, has done so and is still doing so on a
gigantic scale. It can provide (and historically has provided) a gradual
increase in the standard of living — at the cost of intensified
exploitation during the working day. It can provide a fairly steady
level of employment. So can a well-run gaol. But on the ground of the
subjection of man to institutions which are not of his choice, the
socialist critiques of capitalism and bureaucratic society retain all
their validity. In fact, their validity increases as modern society
simultaneously solves the problem of mass poverty and becomes
increasingly bureaucratic and totalitarian.
It will probably be objected that some offbeat trends in the “Marxist”
movement do indulge in this wider kind of critique and in a sense this
is true. Yet whatever the institutions criticized, their critique
usually hinges, ultimately, on the notion of the unequal distribution of
wealth. It consists in variations on the theme of the corrupting
influence of money. When they talk for instance of the sexual problem or
of the family, they talk of the economic barriers to sexual
emancipation, of hunger pushing women to prostitution, of the poor young
girl sold to the wealthy man, of the domestic tragedies resulting from
poverty. When they denounce what capitalism does to culture they will do
so in terms of the obstacles that economic needs puts in the way of
talent, or they will talk of the venality of artists. All this is
undoubtedly of great importance. But it is only the surface of the
problem. Those socialists who can only speak in these terms see man in
much less than his full stature. They see him as the bourgeoisie does,
as a consumer (of food, of wealth, of culture, etc.). The essential,
however, for man is to fulfil himself. Socialism must give man an
opportunity to create, not only in the economic field but in all fields
of human endeavour. Let the cynics smile and pretend that all this is
petty-bourgeois utopianism. “The problem”, Marx said, “is to organize
the world in such a manner that man experiences in it the truly human,
becomes accustomed to experience himself as a man, to assert his true
individuality”.
Conflicts in class society do not simply result from inequalities of
distribution, or flow from a given division of the surplus value, itself
the result of a given pattern of ownership of the means of production.
Exploitation does not only result in a limitation of consumption for the
many and financial enrichment for the few. This is but one aspect of the
problem. Equally important are the attempts by both private and
bureaucratic capitalism to limit — and finally to suppress altogether —
the human role of man in the productive process. Man is increasingly
expropriated from the very management of his own acts. He is
increasingly alienated during all his activities, whether individual or
collective. By subjecting man to the machine — and through the machine
to an abstract and hostile will — class society deprives man of the real
purpose of human endeavour, which is the constant, conscious
transformation of the world around him. That men resist this process
(and that their resistance implicitly raises the question of
self-management) is as much a driving force in the class struggle as the
conflict over the distribution of the surplus. Marx doubtless had these
ideas in mind when he wrote that the proletariat “regards its
independence and sense of personal dignity as more essential than its
daily bread”.
Class society profoundly inhibits the natural tendency of man to fulfil
himself in the objects of his activity. In every country of the world
this state of affairs is experienced day after day by the working class
as an absolute misfortune, as a permanent mutilation. It results in a
constant struggle at the most fundamental level of production: that of
conscious, willing participation. The producers utterly reject (and
quite rightly so) a system of production which is imposed upon them from
above and in which they are mere cogs. Their inventiveness, their
creative ability, their ingenuity, their initiative may be shown in
their own lives, but are certainly not shown in production. In the
factory these aptitudes may be used, but to quite different and
“non-productive” ends! They manifest themselves in a resistance to
production. This results in a constant and fantastic waste compared with
which the wastage resulting from capitalist crises or capitalist wars is
really quite trivial!
Alienation in capitalist society is not simply economic. It manifests
itself in many other ways. The conflict in production does not “create”
or “determine” secondary conflicts in other fields. Class domination
manifests itself in all fields, at one and the same time. Its effects
could not otherwise be understood. Exploitation, for instance, can only
occur if the producers are expropriated from the management of
production. But this presupposes that they are partly expropriated at
least from the capacities of management — in other words from culture.
And this cultural expropriation in turn reinforces those in command of
the productive machine. Similarly a society in which relations between
people are based on domination will maintain authoritarian attitudes in
relation to sex and to education, attitudes creating deep inhibitions,
frustrations and much unhappiness. The conflicts engendered by class
society take place in every one of us. A social structure containing
deep antagonisms reproduces these antagonisms in variable degrees in
each of the individuals comprising it.
There is a profound dialectical interrelationship between the social
structure of a society and the attitudes and behaviour of its members.
“The dominant ideas of each epoch are the ideas of its ruling class”,
whatever modern sociologists may think. Class society can only exist to
the extent that it succeeds in imposing a widespread acceptance of its
norms. From his earliest days man is subjected to constant pressures
designed to mould his views in relation to work, to culture, to leisure,
to thought itself. These pressures tend to deprive him of the natural
enjoyment of his activity and even to make him accept this deprivation
as something intrinsically good. In the past this job was assisted by
religion. Today the same role is played by “socialist” and “communist”
ideologies. But man is not infinitely malleable. This is why the
bureaucratic project will come unstuck. Its objectives are in conflict
with fundamental human aspirations.
We mention all this only to underline the essential identity of
relations of domination — whether they manifest themselves in the
capitalist factory, in the patriarchal family, in the authoritarian
upbringing of children or in “aristocratic” cultural traditions. We also
mention these facts to show that the socialist revolution will have to
take all these fields within its compass, and immediately, not in some
far distant future. The revolution must of course start with the
overthrow of the exploiting class and with the institution of workers’
management of production. But it will immediately have to tackle the
reconstruction of social life in all its aspects. If it does not, it
will surely die.