Another brand of utopian socialism?

"The Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was originally published in 1848. Today, the Manifesto is considered to be one of the foundational texts of Marxism. Nominally, the Manifesto was the program of a small revolutionary group in Germany, known as the Communist League. In reality, it's not really a "program" in the strict sense of that term, but rather a summary of Marxist theory. It deals with the development of capitalism, the inevitability of socialism, and the differences between Marxism and other forms of socialism current at the time. It's still the best introduction to Marxist thought. It's also much shorter than "Anti-Dühring", "The Poverty of Philosophy", and other important texts by Marx or Engels. Not to mention "Das Kapital"!

What are we to make of "The Communist Manifesto" 160 years later? The present reviewer, while not an uncritical supporter of capitalism, nevertheless believes that history has proven Marxism wrong.

[SOME FAILED PREDICTIONS OF LESSER IMPORTANCE]

It's relatively common to attack the Manifesto for failed predictions. Since Marx and Engels had a deterministic view of the course of history, this kind of criticism is hardly surprising. However, some of the oft-quoted failed predictions are really of lesser importance.

In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels predict that Western Europe and North America, i.e. the advanced industrialized nations, will turn socialist before the rest of the world. In reality, the opposite happened: Russia was the first nation where a successful socialist revolution was carried out, and that nation was relatively backward. China, Vietnam, Laos or Albania were even more backward. So was Burma. Still, I don't see this objection as particularly important. In his famous correspondence with Vera Zasulich, Marx did predict a revolution in Russia ahead of Western Europe and North America. At the time, Russia was more backward than during the time of Lenin! True, Marx did believe that such a revolution would ultimately fail, unless aided by revolutions in Western Europe. But then, it could be argued that the Russian Revolution of 1917 *did* fail precisely for this reason... After all, it didn't create a Marxist utopia!

Further, the Manifesto describes a future situation in which the working class is completely impoverished, a small group of capitalists own virtually all of the economy in the form of monopolistic cartels, while the middle strata and the petty bourgeoisie have all but disappeared. Thus, there are essentially only two classes facing each other. The revolution becomes a fact when the great mass of poor workers overthrows the small gang of rich capitalists.

This simple class structure doesn't exist anywhere in the world. True, the working class has become larger at the global level, but so have the middle classes and even the lumpenproletariat. This is the situation in India, China, Brazil and similar nations. In the Western nations, on the other hand, the working class have been shrinking in size. These nations are dominated by a vast middle class. Marx and Engels were right about the monopolistic cartels, but it should be noted that ownership of these cartels is a criss-crossing network of everything from capitalists and state institutions to middle class shareholders. Thus, the class structure both globally and in the West presents a more complicated picture than that imagined by the Manifesto.

These objections, however, aren't very important either. In other contexts, Marx and Engels seem to have recognized the rise of the middle classes. They connected the phenomenon to state interventionism with its vast government bureaucracy, and predicted that *this* situation would make society ripe for a socialist revolution, presumably assuming that the workers would be impoverished anyway. This sounds eerily like the situation known in Sweden as "a two-thirds society", in which two thirds of the population are a relatively well off middle class, while one third is excluded from the regular labour market and the welfare systems, hence forming a kind of neo-proletariat. Some have argued that the Western European welfare states will approach this situation, as the welfare systems get progressively more difficult to finance.

[THE CENTRALIZED PLANNED ECONOMY]

Marx and Engels believed that a centralized, planned economy would develop the productive forces more swiftly and efficiently than capitalism. A more serious objection to their political program would therefore be that economic planning have been tried out and found wanting. Obviously, the Soviet Union had less economic growth than the United States. True, with a few exceptions, all centralized planned economies were established in relatively backward nations. Marx and Engels *didn't* expect such nations to develop the productive forces faster than capitalism - that too is made clear in Marx' correspondence with Zasulich. They wouldn't have been surprised by the lower growth figures in the Soviet Union as compared to advanced capitalist nations such as the US or Japan. Their point was that a centralized planned economy in an *advanced* nation would lead to enormous economic growth, by taking over the productive capacity created by capitalism. Since Western Europe and North America never became socialist, it's difficult to empirically test their theory. However, there are some examples where roughly similar nations, one capitalist and the other having a command economy, could be compared. West Germany was certainly better off than East Germany, and post-war Austria was better off than Czechoslovakia. There's even an example where a socialist nation originally had a *higher* economic growth than a neighbouring capitalist nation: North Korea vs. South Korea. But North Korean economic growth began stalling around 1974, while South Korea developed into one of the most successful East Asian economies. During the 1990's, South Korea threw away more food than North Korea produced! Thus, it would seem that there is enough empirical evidence for the claim that centralized state planning isn't as efficient as predicted by Marx and Engels. There are a few apparent anomalies, such as Libya, which actually was the most prosperous nation in Africa under Gaddafi, when it had a socialist economy. However, Libya has oil - a commodity that tends to enrich whoever controls it, regardless of political system or philosophy!

This doesn't mean that all state intervention or planning is "wrong". Quite the contrary. Roosevelt's New Deal and War Production Board worked eminently well, and so did Charles de Gaulle's dirigisme in France. Another obvious example is China, a nation that combines market relations with state ownership of banks and major industries, thereby avoiding the finance crisis. Today, China is one of the strongest economies in the world! West Germany, Austria and South Korea were, of course, mixed economies rather than strictly neo-liberal ones. In the super-rich Gulf States, regarded as "capitalist", the state owns and controls oil production. Add to this OPEC, hardly a neo-liberal think-tank. Still, a mixed or dirigiste economy isn't the same thing as the command economy of really existing socialism.

How important this objection is to Marxism, obviously depends on how we chose to interpret Marx' and Engels' call for a centralized planned economy. In the Manifesto, they do call for overall centralization and planning, including "industrial armies" and the abolition of private property in land. On the other hand, they also talk about gradual changes and specific local conditions, which make it possible to reconcile Marxism even with dirigisme or a mixed economy, if these are seen as "transitional" measures. Indeed, many Marxist groups consider China and its successful state capitalism to be a form of socialism. However, if the Manifesto is interpreted literally, it would seem that a centralized planned economy cannot develop the productive forces in the way imagined by the authors of the Manifesto, not even in the advanced nations.

[SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY]

Marx and Engels believed that a planned economy was compatible with a massive extension of democracy, a kind of workers' democracy organized along the lines of the Paris Commune.

Working class insurrections are often organized in a way that could be styled "workers' democracy". Ironically, many modern examples come from workers' protests or uprisings against Communist regimes. The workers' councils in Hungary 1956 or the strike committees and independent labour unions in Poland 1980-81 come to mind. Of course, workers' democracy also flourishes during insurrectionary protests against capitalism or non-Communist dictatorship: the Paris Commune 1871, the Russian soviets 1905 and 1917, Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991, etc.

But are there any examples of really existing socialist nations with workers' democracy? None I can think of. Soviet Russia fairly quickly developed into a one-party state. It was certainly a single-party state by 1921, when the Bolshevik Party also prohibited internal factions. All other socialist nations were de facto one-party states already from the start. A centralized planned economy seems to be incompatible with both parliamentary democracy and workers' democracy. Lenin wanted the Bolshevik Party to control the bureaucracy, but since the party was itself becoming bureaucratic and fusing with the state apparatus it was supposed to control, this didn't stop bureaucratization. No really existing socialist nation has managed to solve this problem. Some point to Sandinista Nicaragua, which was indeed a democracy (despite the rabid slanders of Reagan and the loony right). But please note that Nicaragua had a mixed economy, not a planned one! In other words, Nicaragua wasn't "really existing socialist" to begin with. A dirigiste economy is compatible with parliamentary or presidential democray (South Korea is an example), but "really existing socialism" doesn't seem to be.

It's difficult to see how *this* problem could be solved if an advanced Western nation would become socialist. Indeed, there is a certain naivety in Marx and Engels on this point. Did they really believe that one can first strengthen the state by giving it complete control over the economy (essentially over everything) and then expect the state to peacefully "die away" when World History so orders? Did they really believe that a state looking like the Paris Commune could run a centralized national economy?

[THE REVOLUTIONARY CLASS]

My main objection to the Communist Manifesto is the idea that the working class is a revolutionary class, indeed *the* revolutionary class. Nobody denies that workers can be "revolutionary" in the sense that they can rebel against a government or even "the system". Gallifet, Noske or Andropov wouldn't deny it. The slaves of Antiquity or the peasants of the Middle Ages were also "revolutionary" in this sense. But is the modern, industrial proletariat a revolutionary class in the specifically Marxist sense? Marx and Engels believed that the opposition between capital and labour would lead to an inevitable confrontation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, with the proletariat taking power by creating a radically democratic state along the lines of the Paris Commune. This state would then own and manage the entire economy by setting up a centralized, planned economy. In this manner, all of humanity would ultimately be liberated from class society, etc. etc. Is the working class revolutionary in *this* sense?

History belies this idea.

In Western Europe, the working class has been integrated into the system by reformist labour unions, Social Democratic parties and welfare states. While it's true that this situation might change in the future, as the welfare state deteriorates, it shows that it's possible to buy off the working class in the metropolitan nations. Due to their favoured position in the international division of labour, the Western nations might conceivably attempt such a policy again. Or they might create a "two-thirds society" where a large middle class is bought off, isolating the working class. The working class can also be integrated into the system by using nationalism. The Protestant working class in Northern Ireland doesn't feel any particular sympathy with the Catholic ditto. Quite the contrary - the largest labour conflict in Northern Ireland, the general strike of 1974, was organized by Protestant extremists against a proposed power-sharing agreement with the Catholic Republic of Ireland. It was successful. The Israeli working class isn't very likely to unite with the Palestinians, indeed, the whole point of Labour Zionism was to create a kind of socialist or labourite Jewish state in Palestine. Marx and Engels weren't unfamiliar with a "bribed" working class, of course. They castigated the British workers for being bought off by colonialism. However, they seem to have regarded such examples as temporary rather than as structural features of the system.

[THE REVOLUTIONARY CLASS, CONTINUED]

Worse, with the possible exception of the Russian revolution, no socialist revolutions have been carried out by the working class! The Chinese revolution was based on the peasantry and led by a group of middle class intellectuals and military cadre. East Europe became socialist in large part due to the Soviet Armed Forces. In Syria, Libya or Burma, the socialist revolutions were carried out by military coups. In Cuba, the revolutionaries didn't have much of a base at all, simply stepping in during a power vacuum. Even the Russian example is problematic. The Bolshevik party did have a strong base of support among the workers in Petrograd and Moscow, but the party itself consisted of professional revolutionaries. Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were hardly "workers". Also, the Bolsheviks had lost most of their working class support already by 1920-21, proven by Menshevik and SR successes in elections to the soviets, and the Petrograd general strike. There simply aren't any examples of successful working-class insurrections creating a society of the kind envisioned by Marx and Engels. Yet, there have certainly been many uprisings dominated by workers.

Thus, the "imperialist" nations succeeded in bribing their working classes into relative passivity. Most or all socialist revolutions (i.e. revolutions establishing a centralized planned economy) were carried out by non-proletarian strata. And all working class uprisings were defeated, just as Spartacus or Münzer had been in times past.

Whatever else the working class might be, it certainly isn't "the revolutionary class" in the Marxist sense.

It's also interesting to speculate about how a society would look like if the working class really did take it over. Judging by the working class insurrections mentioned earlier, and a few others, it would seem that such a society would be based on some kind of workers' self-management and direct democracy. In other words, a scenario more similar to anarcho-syndicalism than Marxism. The question, of course, is whether such a system is really viable in the modern world. Workers' self-management is probably possible only in relatively backward economies isolated from the world market. It's difficult to see how the different segments of a globalized, large-scale economy could be "self-managed". Of course, it's equally difficult to swallow the Marxist scenario - if interpreted literally- where the working class somehow takes over the globalized economy, running it as a democratic, world-wide planned economy.

[CONCLUDING REMARKS]

While the working class seems to have failed in its historical mission, it's patently obvious that the current, neo-liberal form of capitalism simply isn't feasible. Indeed, even right-wing governments attempt to regulate and control the economy as much as possible. Small wonder, since it would burst at the seams otherwise, leaving even more mayhem and destruction in its wake. Capitalism has stalled in terms of technological and scientific breakthroughs. Nuclear power plants or space programs are considered too expensive, while there is little headway in research concerning fusion power, etc. Instead, most profits are made through unproductive speculation or sheer plunder. It's therefore not clear whether the system really "develops the productive forces" anymore, except through a kind of endocannibalism.

From this, I draw the conclusion that a new system really is necessary, although lacking the "dialectical" foresight of a Marx and Engels, I can't predict what such a system might be or who will bring it about. A fair guess is that it will become a new form of state-directed mixed economy, since some form of dirigisme is the most successful economic policy today (witness China). Ironically, Marx and Engels weren't entirely unaware of such systems either. In the Communist Manifesto, they actually attack "bourgeois socialism" and "petty-bourgeois socialism", which seem to have been the closest equivalents to modern technocratic dirigisme or Social Democracy.

Of course, even the future of such a system is uncertain due to "peak oil", climate change, etc. This reveals another problem with Marxism: its almost complete lack of an ecological perspective. To Marx and Engels, the classless society would be based on super-abundance brought about by superior technology, two ideas that seem almost literally utopian today. Thus, even if the society envisioned by Marx would actually work (or "work"), it might collapse anyway after a relatively brief historical time period, due to complete resource depletion. Somehow, this is the final irony of Marxism - it would be wrong, even if right!

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed that their thinking was scientific. A large part of "The Communist Manifesto" is a criticism of other socialists, which they consider utopian. History suggests that Marxism too was just another brand of utopian socialism. A real alternative to capitalism still awaits its manifesto.