Socialism v capitalism

[aeolium]

You will understand that I have no desire to live in your utopia.

I think you have misread my post and quite misunderstood it. I was not advocating such a complete overthrow and am opposed to utopian programmes for society. Perhaps you should reread what I have written.

[Serial_Apologist]

[apologies for the delayed response - I was away most of Sunday and all of yesterday]

I'm not sure that the complexity comes about entirely as a result of conscious design but also because of the nature of increasingly interrelated and mobile societies, and the high degree of organisation needed to sustain modern life - unlike that of prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies. I'm also not that clear as to what you mean by "working-class" these days when, in Europe for instance, manufacturing industry only occupies around 10% of all employment (compare that with Marx's time) - where is the dividing-line between "worker" and "bourgeois" drawn? Are teachers or people who work in the tourist industry - plenty of the latter move across national borders - part of the working class?

It's worth remembering that Marx correctly predicted what he called the "proletarianisation" of professions such as teachers, as witness their unionisation. Increasing the productivity of labour would expand the size of the working class.

As to complexity, he and others believed that socialism would represent a simplification of life - far from being a reversion to pre-capitalist modes of production it would utilise the technology developed by capitalism to facilitate this.

But ultimately I think the failure of Marx's prescription for realising his utopian vision lies precisely in the model he provided for revolutionary transition to the final phase of communism. It requires the concentration of enormous power and all-reaching control in the state which is to supervise and intervene in almost every aspect of human life. For a state to acquire such power, securing its control over a considerable period of time, and then freely to divest itself of that power so that the final communist phase, the "free association", can pertain, seems hugely improbable to me. Yet actual failures in the way such states have developed, where the revolutionary leaders have sought to implement the transitional model, have not persuaded Marxist thinkers that there might be something flawed in the transitional model, that the model is more likely to produce the dystopian societies that actually came about than Marx's free association.

Oh yes they have!

Without hopefully being thought to be nit-picking, we have to be careful with terminology. Communism is way off in the future, beyond the establishment of socialism on a world scale. It probably didn't help that former Bolshevik-inspired/sympathetic parties worldwide elected to rename themselves communist parties after the inauguration of the Third International; that was a gift to those eager to bring revolutionary regimes down.

Over and above this, I think the idea of the achievable utopian vision - whether from rationalist or theocratic principles - is deeply flawed. I agree with Isaiah Berlin on this, and particularly what he wrote in his last essay: " it seems as if the doctrine that all kinds of monstrous cruelties must be permitted, because without these the ideal state of affairs cannot be attained - all the justifications of broken eggs for the sake of the ultimate omelette, all the brutalities, sacrifices, brainwashing, all those revolutions, everything that has made [the twentieth] century perhaps the most appalling of any since the days of old, at any rate in the West - all this is for nothing, for the perfect universe is not merely unattainable but inconceivable, and everything done to bring it about is founded on an enormous intellectual fallacy."

And not helped either by Trotsky's published debates with the liberal American philosopher Dewey in which he (Trotsky) reiterated his own adherence to the principle of ends justifying means.

Among the many things that led me away from far left politics in the early 1980s - some of them personal/familial - was marginalisation of any vision as to what a socialist society would look like, how it would be run, how people's motivations would change. The usual reason for this, probably occasioned by hyperactivity being the order of the day, was "Wait until it happens - we have more important and urgent matters to be addressed". I had ideas of my own about writing stories, influenced by Huxley's "Island", but unfortunately gave up on these when it was obvious my imagination and technological know-how were both sadly lacking. How much easier it wold have been to have written another "A Very British Coup"!

I only added democratic to distinguish the idea from the socialism of those states where there wasn't any democratic element at all. Even here I would say I support certain principles underlying the idea, such as the principles behind the domestic policies of the post-war Labour government and in Scandinavia. I don't think capitalism can be completely overthrown without extreme violence and authoritarian policies, or massive global natural catastrophe (and the latter might be more likely than the former).

I still feel it could be, and it will have to happen, but - notwithstanding the supposed lessons of Chile 1974 - not by the revolutionary models I once believed in.

[aeolium]

Thanks for those thoughts, S_A - I have some sympathy with what you say here. Despite my scepticism about utopian visions, I could feel no affinity for a philosophy based purely on self-interest as capitalism seems to be. And the Internationale is still the best anthem imo

Huxley's Island: it's ages since I read it and I remember it as being, like most of Huxley's books, a kind of extended essay or exploration of ideas. Wasn't there a character (a young boy?) who was resistant to the island society which Huxley had postulated as a model for living? Dawn and the Darkest Hour, by the anarchist George Woodcock, is a marvellous biography of Huxley. This old Monitor interview of Huxley by John Lehmann is a melancholy reminder of an age when it was still possible to discuss ideas, and ideas in books, on TV.

Although it is a terrible age of prolonged economic recession, I'm hopeful that there has been a significant change in the way capitalism is now being perceived, that the kind of turbo-capitalism which operated from the late 1970s to 2008 has been widely discredited and is unlikely to return, that people are exploring different ways of communal interaction and cooperation. What I never found attractive in the communist model was that it seemed so centralising, whereas I would prefer decentralised forms (perhaps like the ones Huxley was exploring in Island).

[Serial_Apologist]

This morning's Start he Week, using Tony Juniper's somewhat overtitled but promising new book What Has Nature Ever Done For Us? How Money Really Does Grow On Trees (Profile) as a launch pad related imo to the thread topic, brought the kind of cheer to the heart that, in the discussion's joined-up thinking, offers some hope for the future.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ptbwt

Steered positively by Ms McElvoy, standing in for Andrew Marr, all including the Tory politician fed positive contributions into a thoroughly inclusive discussion that touched on issues others have been raising largely unheard outside specialist audiences and disciplines now for several decades, highlighting their pertinence for now, with author William Fiennes at around 27 minutes in echoing my own views precisely.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

you might enjoy this thoughtful little piece too S_A