International Socialists

Editorial Comittee

Won't a socialist revolution lead to tyranny?

This is probably the most basic objection to the idea of a socialist transformation of society. The whole experience of Stalinism - of despotic and exploitative regimes that call themselves socialist - has reinforced the idea that power tends to corrupt, that revolution will simply bring into being another form of oppression and exploitation.

To see why this is wrong, consider what Karl Marx, the founder of the revolutionary socialist tradition, meant by socialism. He described it as "the movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority." Socialist revolution would mean, he believed, not the abolition of democracy, but its radical extension.

Marx's model was the Paris Commune of 1871, where the standing army and police were abolished, and all officials were paid average workers' wages and made subject to regular election and immediate recall. Lenin, the main leader of the Russian Revolution, saw in the soviets, or workers councils, which emerged during it, the beginnings of a new form of state where the majority producers themselves for the first time directly exercised political power.

So Marx and Lenin viewed socialism as the transformation of society from below. From this standpoint, Stalinism amounted, not even to a deformed version of socialism, but a counter-revolution, the destruction of everything the original revolution stood for. We have always called the USSR and its like state capitalist countries, in which the working class were as exploited as they were in the West.

The fundamental cause of the Stalinist counter-revolution was the fact that the original workers' revolution in Russia didn't spread to other, more advanced countries. The revolutionary regime was subjected to a blockade by the Western capitalist powers which devastated the economy. The industrial working class, in any case a minority in a predominantly peasant country, disintegrated, and so the soviets became empty shells.

So the most important lesson of the Russian Revolution is that, for socialist democracy to survive and to flourish, the revolution, even if it begins in a particular country, must spread across the globe.

But what would this socialist democracy be like?

How would it differ from liberal democracy as it exists today under capitalism?

The most important difference is that democratic decision making would spread throughout the whole of the social body. Prevailing capitalist democracy separates political power, which is formally subjected to democratic rules, (even though they're often ignored or twisted in practice), and economic power, which is exercised by a small number of unelected bosses. This separation would go. The workplace would provide the basic unit of the new socialist democracy, electing delegates to local, regional, national and (as the revolution spread) international congresses.

Representative democracy, first developed by the emerging capitalist class when it was still revolutionary, would thus be extended beyond the sphere of politics narrowly understood, as decisions about what and how to produce passed into the hands of elected delegates. It would also be strengthened, since these representatives would be subject to regular re-election and liable to instant recall, thus making them accountable in a way that MPs never are.

Democracy also requires open discussion and choices between genuine alternatives. Both are limited by the power of capital in contemporary society. Here again socialism would present an extension of democracy. Access to the media would not be restricted to those with the wealth to buy newspapers and television networks.

Freedom of debate, however, isn't effective without the ability to choose between political parties offering different programmes. A workers' state would, like any other state, have the right to defend itself against counter-revolutionary forces seeking its overthrow. But any party willing to work peacefully within the framework of the new state would be free to compete for influence in the workers' councils and would be guaranteed access to the media.

It sounds as if your kind of socialism involves getting rid of the market.

But surely everyone now agrees that we can't do without the market?

A market economy is essentially a form of anarchy. Economic priorities aren't decided collectively, but are the outcome of the blind competition between different firms, each out to make as large amounts of profits as possible. This is an enormously wasteful economic system - look at the vast resources used to build office blocks that nobody wants. It's also a very dangerous setup, since uncontrolled competition is having a potentially catastrophic effect on the environment.

What socialism means economically is simply that we should collectively decide what uses to make of the available resources, and regularly monitor how these decisions are working out in practice. That's what planning amounts to. It's really straightforward common sense, and it's a symptom of the fact that capitalism is, as Marx put it, a "topsy turvy world," that planning is pilloried as an unrealistic idea. In fact, lots of planning takes place within the framework of capitalism - big companies draw up quite long term plans about investment projects, for example - but this framework means that the planning is fragmented and disorganised. Moreover, decisions are imposed from above with the people directly affected having no say.

Socialist planning, by contrast, would be part of the extension of democracy mentioned earlier. So not simply would the big firms which dominate every modern economy be taken into public ownership, but the individual workplaces would be democratically managed by those working in them. The producers themselves would then have to co-ordinate their decisions. Those affected by a particular investment decision - producers, consumers, residents - would cooperate to find the outcome most consistent with all their interests. Rather than economic power flowing vertically from the top, as it does under capitalism, it would flow horizontally, between the different workplaces and industries, as the producers sought democratically to coordinate their activities.

Wouldn't abolishing the market deprive people of the incentive to work?

Marx had a very realistic view of how socialist society would develop. He believed that no society can come into existence without the appropriate material and social conditions. The new socialist society, as it emerged amid the ruins of capitalism, would be, he said "in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society, from whose womb it emerges."

It's easy enough to think of examples of these "birthmarks." All the racism, sexism, and individualism bred into people by capitalism wouldn't disappear overnight. It would take time, a lengthy process of transition, to overcome the inheritance of capitalism. So Marx distinguished between what he called "the higher and lower phases of communist society."

The first phase would be marked by the establishment of forms of socialist democracy and planning which we've already looked at. But it would still make concessions to the capitalist past. One of these would be the basis on which goods and services would be distributed to people. These would be allocated on the principle, "From each according to his [sic] capacity, to each according to his works."

People's claim to a share of the proceeds of society's labour would depend on what they themselves put in (unless, of course, they were too young or too old or too ill to work). Clearly this "contribution principle" would mark progress compared to capitalism, where the bosses and their hangers on live off the labour of others. But Marx believed that it still involved a degree of inequality that would be unacceptable in the long run. The more skilled workers would receive a higher income than the less skilled, while those with more dependants would find themselves worse off than those with fewer.

But, as the socialist society entrenched itself - above all thanks to the success of the revolution globally - it would become possible to move towards what Marx called "the higher phase of the communist society." This would be based on the principle, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." It would require a change in people's attitude to work, which would have "become not only a means of life but life's prime want." People would work not just in order to survive but because they found the labour they performed fulfilling, and therefore were prepared to put into society whatever they could and receive in return what they needed.

This profound change in attitudes would depend on the transformation of labour itself during the transition to full communism. The introduction of workers' self-management would have been part of a broader set of changes breaking down what Marx called "the antithesis between mental and physical labour." Workers would have ceased to be mere cogs in the machine, learning instead how collectively to control their own labours. This transformation would depend on putting technology to new uses. For example, information technology would cease to be a way of increasing managerial control and sacking workers, and become an instrument of democracy.

The higher phase of communist society would also depend on reaching a sufficiently high level of material abundance. People would only be prepared to give to society freely if they were sure of having their basic needs met. Sometimes the idea of communist abundance is interpreted as meaning that people could have anything they wanted. It's easy to see that this requirement is physically impossible to achieve - what, for example, if I wanted the whole of London to myself?

More realistically, the abundance which full communism presupposes is of those goods and services required to meet people's basic needs - food, clothing, heating, light, education, transport, and health treatment. One way of detecting the approach of full communism is by the production of these goods and services in sufficiently large quantities that they can be supplied free. The closer society approaches to this point, the more the market withers and ceases to become relevant.

Communism would thus require the further development of the productive forces, the means of producing wealth for society. What makes socialism possible in the first place is the way in which capitalism itself expands these forces in some respects - above all, food production - scarcity is already abolished. People starve today, for example, not because there's not enough food but because they lack the money to buy it. Socialism will be able to deal with this quite quickly, but it will still have to develop the productive forces further before all basic needs could be met in abundance.

Plainly a balance would have to be struck between this requirement and the need to avoid further damage to the environment, and to begin to reverse the damage already caused. Socialist planning is the only framework in which these problems could be addressed, but undoubtedly difficult choices would sometimes have to be made between the priorities of economic growth and those of the long term survival of the human species.

But would this communist society involve treating everyone as the same, reducing people to a drab uniformity?

Absolutely not. Marx defined communism as "an association in which the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all." The point of communism, in other words, is to allow people each to realise their own distinctive abilities. The communist society provides the framework in which this individual self development can be achieved.

Sometimes the pursuit of individual self realisation would undoubtedly lead to conflict. People want different things and, given that the resources available would not be unlimited, sometimes all these wants couldn't be met simultaneously. The basic democratic mechanisms of free debate and majority decision-making, which socialist revolution had extended throughout society, would still be needed to resolve these conflicts.

Nevertheless the fact that these conflicts would take place against the background of material abundance (at least in respect of basic needs) would take the edge off them. Engels predicted that the state would wither away under communism. The state, he argued, was in its essence a specialised apparatus of coercion - the army, police, courts, and prisons - existing to defend the interests of the exploiting minority. This would begin to change after the socialist revolution, since state power would now be used by the exploited majority against the surviving capitalists.

But, as socialism triumphed worldwide and material abundance drew nearer, the need for organised coercion would diminish. The democratic mechanisms set in place by the revolution would assume a larger and larger role in resolving disagreements. A limited degree of coercion might still be needed from time to time where the odd individual or group wasn't prepared to respect majority decisions, but these cases could be expected to be exceptional and wouldn't require the kind of elaborate repressive apparatus beloved of class society.

For the most part, however, disagreement and debate wouldn't represent a problem for communist society but rather the motor force of its development.

Leon Trotsky imagined political parties being formed "over the question of a new gigantic canal, or the distribution of oases in the Sahara over the regulation of the weather and the climate, over a new theatre, over chemical hypotheses, over two competing tendencies in music, and over a best system of sports."

Far from being dull and uniform, this would be a society permeated by a ferment of creation, experiment and debate. It would have the dynamism and vitality of capitalism, but would replace its anarchy and exploitation with democracy and cooperation.

This was the vision of the future which inspired Marx and later revolutionary socialists to sacrifice their lives to the struggle against capitalism. Today, in a world thronging with the horrors denounced by Marx 150 years ago, it is still a vision worth fighting for.