By Makoye Aman.
The
issue of revolution looms large in the minds of socialists.
The
bewildering array of radical groups, most of whom proclaim their allegiance to
revolution as the central feature which defines their existence as radicals,
gives the impression of them all being fellow travelers on a common journey.
But
what is meant by revolution? Do the Spartacus’s want the same thing as the
syndicalists? Does the Socialist Workers Party want the same thing as Syriza?
The
Ultra-Orthodox
If
we examined the fine detail of each group’s doctrines of revolution, we would
likely find that there are almost as many interpretations of revolution as
there are groups. So, in a bid to illuminate the fundamental differences
between the various conceptions, we are going to dispense with the more nuanced
shades that are also a factor in perpetuating the existence of so many radical
socialist parties.
In
this article we will outline three basic types of revolution, which although
not mutually exclusive, do carry their own logic in terms of informing their
adherents of their strategic orientation. Before we plunge in, however, we
should say that we won’t be addressing that favourite of
Anarchist vs Marxist debates: direct democracy vs. party rule.
Mention
of Kronstadt is strictly verboten
The
three types of revolution are: insurrection against the
capitalist state, socialistion of production, and communisation of
consumption. Note that a group may support any one, two, or three of the above
and call itself revolutionary. Let’s first take insurrection against the
capitalist state.
The
Rupture
The
addition of qualifier “against the capitalist state” when discussing
insurrection is important because it refers to one of the great schisms in the
socialist movement, that which is personified by the split between Lenin and
Kautsky. For the latter, the revolutions of 1918 essentially dealt with the
issue of insurrection against the undemocratic regimes. The issue is slightly
complicated by the interlude of fascism, a virulent and highly destructive
episode to be sure, but not one, in the advanced capitalist states at least,
that has had much by the way of longevity.
For
Lenin, and those following in his footsteps, the revolutions of 1918 were
a failure and have yet to be completed. Revolutionary
Anarchists also populate this camp and the differences between them and
Leninists is a difference that is mostly internal to this type
of revolution. As neither Leninists nor Anarchists like to be identified as
belonging to the other’s camp, we designate them as insurrectionists. To
say that they are insurrectionists is not to say that they are storing guns in
bunkers and plotting a coup d’etat. For the most part insurrectionists think
in mass terms, of, for example, a prolonged series of street
insurrections of the type that brought down the eastern bloc or, for any
youngsters reading this, of Cairo in 2011.
Buonarotti,
an insurrectionary of the very old school
Such
an insurrection, if followed through to its end, as in 1917, and not headed
off, as in, say, the revolutions of 1848, eliminates the coercive force that
prevents the working class from freeing itself from its subordinate role. And,
in a mirror image at the opposite end of society, the smashing of the
capitalist state leaves the capitalists unable to defend themselves.
That
doesn’t mean that it’ll be plain sailing after breaking up the old state
apparatus. All insurrectionaries accept that the capitalists will reorganise
and fight back but they expect it to free up, to an enormous extent, the
possibilities for future action. The central point, then, is that in order to
progress towards socialism the coercive force that prevents progress being made
on other fronts must be dealt with.
The
Socialisers
Lenin’s
primary opponents within the socialist movement, the Marxist Centre (roughly
referring to Kautsky, Adler, Bauer, Martov etc and the later Eurocommunist
parties, though they would likely deny the similarity to the renegade), accepts
the legitimacy of the current state. They may have criticisms — even a lot of
criticisms — of its democratic shortcomings, e.g. the continuing power of an
unaccountable security apparatus, but they are not proposing an insurrection with
the explicit aim of smashing it. They advocate democraticisation through
reform.
Therefore,
while some elements of that lineage may call for a civic revolution and accept
a modicum of civil disobedience, it’s more a rhetorical device and quite a
different conception to that of the insurrectionary rupture as proposed by
Leninists and Anarchists. Their revolution is more akin to that of the
industrial revolution or the women’s revolution of the 20th century. Such
revolutions brought extremely deep and far reaching change but they are of
different kind to the sharp blows of the French and Russian revolutions.
The
second axes of revolution they support is the socialization of production. This
is likely to prove a little more controversial since most — but not all —
socialists are for the socialisation of production; it’s generally considered a
defining feature of being a socialist. But we want to look at it in
relation to other meanings of revolution — insurrection and communisation — and
its place in a hierarchy of strategic options rather than as a moral
proposition which one is for or against. We use the word hierarchy here to
indicate that a focus on one type of revolutionary activity tends to lower the
role of the others, though it does not, of course, exclude it.
The
insurrectionists usually consider socialisation of production on a significant
scale to be impossible before the capitalist state is smashed.
It is, after all, why they want to smash it. The aim of the socialisation of
production is to promote alternative social relations to the capitalist ones of
employer and wage-labourer and best exemplified by worker co-operatives.
Orthodox
Marxism before the great schism
The
Marxist centrists propose building up institutions capable of sustaining
co-operative relations so that when state power is achieved — legally! — a more
or less rapid process of socialization of production will ensue. In his later
work, Kautsky called this the social revolution and he
distinguished it from the political revolution which he viewed
as more or less accomplished.
There
are two aspects to this, the before and after of achieving state power. Unlike
the insurrectionaries, the Centrists aim to build up mass institutions
(co-operatives, a mass party capable of securing a parliamentary majority etc)
which make the process of socialisation much easier once governmental power is
achieved. Where the insurrectionaries aim to put a wrench in the wheel of the
reproduction of capitalist social relations by disrupting the state’s role in
it, the centrists aim to do so by creating institutions which not only practice
co-operative social relations but which, in doing so, demonstrate their
economic superiority to institutions organised on capitalist lines.
The
more surplus their socialised insitutions can garner, the more they can grow
and form a mutually supporting movement, e.g. profitable co-ops subsidize a
mass media which in turn helps the party gain a majority. As the workers’
organisations gain political and economic power, decisions regarding
investment, e.g., whether to build a nuclear power station or a nuclear bomb,
to build a railways or a motorway, become democratised.
Capital
allocation is no longer a private decision made by capitalists but a public one
made by democratic choice. Capitalism, therefore, is no longer the dominant
economic mode of production.
Socialisation
is important for insurrectionaries too, but it must wait until part one has
been completed. Until that point, the state will prevent the workers’
institutions attaining the power they need to effect a social transformation.
Once the state has been smashed, production will be progressively socialised
both in order to take steps towards socialism and to ensure that a capitalist
class does not reconstitute itself.
Generally,
insurrectionaries are a bit vague on this front, viewing too much detail as
veering close to prescribing blueprints for an unknowable future. Often they
simply say that the socialisation process will be one that emerges organically
from the masses transformed by the revolutionary process itself.
The
Communisers
There
is a third kind of revolution amongst the revolutionary left: the communisation
of consumption. Marx, in his ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’ mentions lower
and higher phases of communism. The lower phase is roughly what we have
described above as the socialisation of production.
Carlo
Caferio led the early Anarchist adoption of communism
Under
a socialised economy, ownership is held in common and investment is
democratically directed, but consumption is not organised in the same fashion.
One’s entitlement to consume the social product may still be tied to how much
worth one’s labour is deemed to have, e.g. a longer work day could entitle you
to a higher income.
For
some revolutionaries, such a state of affairs does not constitute a real
revolutionary overturn of capitalism at all. Production is still conducted with
an eye of accumulation, even if no longer privately controlled. A return to
fully fledged capitalism, as occurred when the Soviet Union collapsed, is, in
their view, an inevitable consequence of not starting the revolution from this
third, indispensable point: an equal entitlement for all in the share of the
social product.
Many
insurrectionaries and centrists support communism of consumption as a longterm
goal but do not see it as something to be implemented straight away or, in the
case of the insurrectionaries, in the immediate aftermath of a successful
destruction of state power.
And
it might seem that the socialisation of production would facilitate the growth
of communisation. However, the proponents of the communisation tend to be
extremely skeptical that this will occur and instead view a thorough
communisation process as the only way to prevent the re-emergence of
capitalism.
One
of the most eloquent advocates of a specifically communist revolution
was Kropotkin. For him, the socialisation of production in itself was a
variation on the wages-system of capitalism and it would naturally lead to the
recreation of class society.
A
modern articulation of this view emerges more from the journal Endnotes:
[Communisation]
… a movement characterised by immediate communist measures (such as the free
distribution of goods) both for their own merit, and as a way of destroying the
material basis of the counter-revolution. If, after a revolution, the
bourgeoisie is expropriated but workers remain workers, producing in separate
enterprises, dependent on their relation to that workplace for their
subsistence, and exchanging with other enterprises… the capitalist content
remains, and sooner or later the distinct role or function of the capitalist
will reassert itself. By contrast, the revolution as a communising
movement would destroy – by ceasing to constitute and reproduce them – all
capitalist categories: exchange, money, commodities, the existence of separate
enterprises, the State and – most fundamentally – wage labour and the working
class itself.
Similarly,
Kropotkin supported the freedom of all to choose their levels of consumption
without reference to what they had contributed to society, irrespective of who
directed investment or who owned the means of production.
For
Kropotkin, and in sharp contrast to his contemporary Karl Kautsky, consumption was
the basis of political economy since it, in his view, determined how production
was to be conducted. For orthodox Marxists like Kautsky, production was
the key element which determined what was possible in terms of consumption and,
indeed, much else in human society.
Neither
the Anarcho-Communists nor the modern Communisers support the socialisation of
production as an end. If anything, the severity of their criticism of those who
do support it as a key waypoint indicates that they think that way of
conceptualising the route to socialism as inherently counter-productive, if not
outright counter-revolutionary.At the other end of the communisation pole, but
outside the scope of this essay, lie the lifestylist communisers, e.g.
hippies who eschew politics more or less altogether.
It
is not the point of this essay to pronounce one way or the other, although as
readers of this site will have realised, our sympathies lie with the Marxist
Centre. We would, however, like to finish by drawing attention to how these
categories of insurrectionary, socialisation, and communisation cut across the
traditional way of group radical leftists into Anarchist, Leninist, and
Marxist. Apart from their respective views of the role of the state and,
therefore, the party, a significant line divides the pre-World War Anarchists
and Marxists over the question of immediate adoption of communisation measures.
But the traditional division of Marxism / Anarchism doesn’t always capture the
views of their nominal adherents, especially as the years drift by. Take
Anarchism for example.
- Proudhon: anti-insurrectionary against all states, pro-socialisation of production and anti-communisation.
- Bakunin: pro-insurrectionary, pro-socialisation, and anti-communisation.
- Kropotkin: pro-insurrectionary, anti-socialisation, and pro-communisation.
On
the Marxist side, we have:
- Kautsky: pro-insurrectionary against the feudal states but anti-insurrectionary against the bourgeois democracies, pro-socialisation of production, and anti-communisation.
- Lenin: insurrectionary against all states, including bourgeois democracy, pro-socialisation and anti-communisation
- Gilles Dauve: insurrectionary, anti-socialisation and pro-communisation.
This
isn’t to argue that, say, Proudhon was identical to the post-1918 Kautsky;
their perception of the utility of the state was quite different. But it does
indicate that they were somewhat closer than is often thought. Certainly,
Bakunin and Lenin shared fundamental similarities, as Kautsky and the left
Mensheviks never tired of pointing out in a mixture of horror and glee.
And
for all the invective directed by Lenin against Kautsky after 1914, he shared,
with the possible exception of the euphoric years of 1917 and 1918, Kautsky’s
views on the necessity to make advances on the socialisation of production
before new vistas of social progress could be considered.
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