Revolutionary Socialism, an Introduction
“The wrong people are in prison and the wrong people are free”
We have every right to be angry. We live in a world where the top one percent own as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the world’s population. We live in a world where billions live on $1 or $2 a day and 30 million children die of starvation and malnutrition every year; where clean water is an unobtainable luxury for billions while the grasping 1% sit on trillions of dollars in unused cash; where the most essential and hardest working people, those who pick our crops and care for our children, sweep our floors and serve our food , clean our bathrooms and care for our elderly are paid the lowest wages — -while those who speculate in stocks, make real estate deals and bankrupt our economy take lavish incomes that would make the robber barons and crowned heads of an earlier age blush in shame; where those who contribute the most get paid the least and those who contribute the least take the most; where the richest nation in the world has the highest incarceration rate in history; where Black and Latino men can be expected to be stopped by police just for their race.; where more Black men are in prison here than slaved on plantations in 1850; where capital is free to move anywhere it wants and people are controlled, restricted and jailed for trying to move across those imaginary lines on the map we call borders; where women are treated like sex objects to make a profit and are denied basic reproductive justice and freedom; where LGBTQ people are still bashed, fired and generally discriminated against just for their sexual orientation and gender identity. where most fundamentally, the 1% are willing to risk the destruction of the planet just to milk out the last dime of profit from fossil fuels — — in a world where clean energy is abundant and where we now have the technology to produce it.
As historian Howard Zinn put it “The wrong people are in prison and the wrong people are free”.
Capitalism has always been exploitive and oppressive. It has always threatened humanity. As German Revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg said , we face a choice of “socialism or barbarism”. In the light of the climate crisis and other capitalist induced environmental crises, we can now say the choice is “socialism or the threat of extinction.” In the words of the Global Justice movement, “Another World is Possible” . Now we can add, another system is necessary if we are to survive.
This essay will contend that these horrors flow not from human nature or the greedy few alone, but from the economic system itself. We need to fight not just the evils of capitalism, but capitalism itself. We need to replace it with socialism.
Reform Capitalism into Socialism?
“Capitalism is a tiger, not an onion!”
Why do we need to abolish capitalism instead of just reforming it? It is clear that capitalism is not just oppressive and exploitative but also ultimately in conflict with civilization and even human life.
Capitalism as currently constituted is a threat to human life. But couldn’t there be a kinder gentler capitalism? Of course throughout history , people have built mass movements that have challenged and even changed aspects of capitalism. The Civil Rights movement ended Jim Crow segregation in the South. Women won abortion rights and legal equal pay (although real equal pay is a long way off and abortion rights are under severe attack). Workers have won the right to unions and better pay, Social Security, unemployment compensation etc. We even have the Clean Air act to protect the environment.
So why can’t we just keep this up and gradually turn capitalism into its opposite? There are two problems with this approach which is called reformism, or Social Democracy:
The government under capitalism, whether a military dictatorship, or a formal democracy like the U.S. is dominated by capitalist interests. Each government and governmental apparatus have to compete in the world with every other one. In order to control their territory, they need a strong military apparatus. To build a strong military, they need a strong economy. In the capitalist world economy, this means that each government must favor capitalist interests — -i.e. the exploitation of workers, and dividing workers against each other by using oppression. This reality of the world competitive capitalist system is supplemented by many other measures by which the capitalist class rules the political system. It uses its position as the economically dominant class to become a political ruling class. These include bribery, campaign contributions, using economic power to bend legislatures to their will etc. Overturning Citizen’s United would be good, but would leave the basic pro-capitalist bias of the government intact.
Because of this dynamic, even when mass movements win reforms from the state, the capitalist class and its governments take back those gains whenever the mass movement recedes. We see this today — -the gains of the 30’s and the 60’s are under attack or have been eliminated — — welfare, Unemployment Compensation, Social Security, Affirmative Action etc.
Since the Great Recession started in 2008, austerity has ripped through every level of government at the local , state and national level across the world, whether these governments are called Social Democratic, Socialist or open capitalist governments like the U.S. After nearly 100 years of Social Democratic governments in Europe have not changed the fundamental drives of capitalism. Even the most solid Social Democratic states in Scandinavia, are cutting their social programs in the face of the world economic crisis.
But there is an even deeper reality to capitalism. It is a fundamentally competitive system. Each corporation must maximize profit to survive. It has to have money to buy the most modern machinery possible, to sell its goods as cheaply as possible. To do this, it has to cut corners on the environment, and pay workers as little as possible. The wealth of capitalism is accumulated by exploiting workers. Workers are not paid the full value of what they produce. Their unpaid labor is accumulated as profit. No laws or other changes in capitalism can alter this fundamental dynamic. It can be reformed on the surface — — but it cannot be reformed in a fundamental way. As the old saying goes, “You can peel an onion layer by layer, but you cannot declaw a live tiger claw by claw.” Capitalism is a tiger, not an onion.
What Kind of Revolution?
So, if it will take a revolution to get rid of capitalism, what kind of a revolution would that be? Marx examined capitalism and saw that workers were the class that was exploited and on whom capitalism relied for its profits. Workers had the power to cut off profits and bring the system to its knees. Workers not only had the power to overthrow capitalism, but they had the interest in doing so. Capitalism rests fundamentally on exploitation and cannot exist without it. However, it also relies on oppression of all workers. Workers in general are oppressed — -they are told what to do by their exploiters and their agents the whole work day. They are denied the right to democratically control their work lives. Their choices as consumers are limited by the capitalist need for profit. They are alienated from their work lives and from each other. Capitalism sees people as a means to an end and treats people as such. This then spreads over to alienated human relations throughout society. Besides this, workers who are specially oppressed — — women, racial minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ workers etc. are treated as less than full human beings based on these characteristics. All told, a vast majority of workers are specially oppressed.
This gives workers both the fundamental power and interest in overthrowing capitalism. Of course, this is countered by the power of capitalists over the “means of mental production”. It takes struggle and organization for workers to overcome capitalist conditioning. But over and over again workers have risen up and overthrown or nearly overthrown the system. In Russia in 1917, they actually created their own government and began to move toward socialism for a few years, before the counter-revolution led by Stalin.
What Is the Alternative to Capitalism?
“No need for greed or hunger — A brotherhood of Man!”
So, what was Marx’s alternative to capitalism? Marx looked at the history of working-class revolutions and came to some conclusions.: When workers were organized and conscious enough, they would eliminate the capitalist governmental structure and replace it with their own Workers’ State, democratically controlled by the vast majority. Once workers took revolutionary political power, they would use that power to transform the economy and take collective ownership and control over it. This would need to ultimately happen on an international scale. Everything couldn’t happen at once — — but workers would take control of the economy and shift its fundamental drive to human needs instead of profit. The market and competition would be replaced by democratic planning. Of course, one of the most fundamental human needs is the need for a healthy environment. This would mean a rapid shift from fossil fuels and nuclear power to clean energy etc. To be sure that the unity of the working class was not broken up, the workers’ government would need to take radical and immediate steps to dismantle institutional racism and sexism etc. Over time as the economy develops more and more and abundance increases, money will lose its importance and finally disappear along with economic class distinctions. .” The work week will be cut drastically as the waste activities of capitalism (Banking, real estate, stock market , advertising, arms production etc.) are eliminated.
Finally, in the higher stage of communism, the guiding principle of the society becomes “from each according to their ability — -to each according to their needs” Leisure will increase. Then people will be able to develop themselves in an all-round way. As Marx put it “The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Or as John Lennon described communism in “Imagine”:
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…
Stalin, Castro, Mao?
This vision has nothing in common with what have often been called socialist or communist societies — — Russia under Stalin, China under Mao or Cuba under the Castros and today. Marx’s vision was fundamentally democratic. The key was to remake the relations of production — -workers democracy at work and throughout society. This could only happen if the workers did it themselves. This is why Marx called socialism “the self-emancipation of the working class.” In the so-called socialist and communist societies, a new ruling class exploited the workers in order to compete with other capitalist states. They built military power and developed the economy to accumulate to have the basis for a strong military. Stalin started the process by leading a counter-revolution against the Russian workers’ state in the 1920’s. The later “communist “societies were modeled on Stalin’s. In all these states, not only exploitation, but oppression as well returned. A literary version of this overthrow of workers’ power and its replacement by Stalinism is laid out in Orwell’s Animal Farm.
For reasons outlined before, the Social Democratic parties have only modified capitalism. Now they have abandoned even the nominal goal of socialism. They have largely adopted neo-liberal policies.
Is Marx’s Vision Possible?
“Are workers organized enough to take power?”
But is Marx’s vision possible? It is for two reasons. Capitalism has developed the technology to provide for a society of abundance. With new technology that can provide clean energy, new organic farming techniques etc. , we could provide a decent living standard to everyone in the world, without destroying the earth. The other basic force for socialism is the working class itself — -the first class that produces collectively on a large scale and has the potential to provide for everyone.
If a workers’ revolution can lay the basis for a post-capitalist society, how can we contribute to this process?
As noted before, workers have made several attempts at socialist revolution over the last 150 years. In the earliest attempts, capitalism wasn’t developed enough to sustain a society of abundance. After Russia, the other revolutions never succeeded in smashing the capitalist state and replacing it with a workers’ state. The main reason they failed was the lack of a large enough revolutionary party. The capitalists are highly organized and have all the means of physical and mental means of production at their disposal. To defeat them, workers too will have to be highly organized.
The socialist revolution cannot be willed into existence. Capitalism is a crisis-ridden system. A deep economic, social and political crisis will create a situation where as Lenin put it “the ruling class can no longer rule in the old way and the oppressed classes are no longer willing to be ruled in the old way.”
When this happens, the question will be “Are the workers well enough organized to take power?” To be sure workers will be ready, we need to contribute as much as possible to building socialist organization today.
This is necessary, not just to be sure we are organized when the revolutionary crisis comes, but also because a clear understanding of our goals can help to provide the best strategies and tactics in movements today. For example, in the movements of today, Marxists argue for:
- No support to the Democratic Party
- Mass struggle as opposed to terrorism or supporting politicians
- The need to fight oppression now to unify the working class
- Support for all workers struggles against exploitation
- Rejection of any support to Imperialism — -support for self-determination of oppressed nations
- Founding every movement on democratic principles
To contribute the most to bringing about a socialist transformation, socialists do two things — — participate in and build as much as possible any struggle against the evils of capitalism and lay the basis for a revolutionary party by building socialist organization. The two are directly related. Revolutionary organization can help movements be more successful now AND increasing movements against capitalism can help create more conscious revolutionaries.
If you agree with the politics put forward in this essay, get in touch with Firebrand Communists, at https://firebrand.red/
