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SCIENCE & SOCIETY
EDITORIAL PERSPECTIVES
ONCE AGAIN ON REFORM, REVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM
As this is being written (March 2010), news arrives that the U. S. House of Representatives has just (barely) passed the Health Care bill without a public option. The Left Forum has just concluded its annual conference, the largest ever, in New York, and running through many sessions and conversa¬tions there was the question: what position should socialists take on this leg¬islation? The breakdown into yeas and nays seems to be based on random distributions of personality types, and personal preference. Is the victory over Republican intransigence which threatens to blossom into a de facto coup d’etat more important than registering opposition to the failure of the Democrats to uphold even their own limited recognition of the increasingly desperate plight of working people (both poor and near-poor)? Everyone in this debate on the left, at any rate agrees that we are at the very begin¬ning of a long road to health security in the United States; the difference lies in what choices at present best position us for the struggles to come.
And, into this mix comes announcement of this year’s Daniel Singer Prize competition. A $2500 annual prize is awarded for the best essay on a theme announced by the Daniel Singer Millennium Prize Foundation, and the Foundation asks us to popularize this announcement. (Daniel Singer, who died in December 2000, was an outstanding French writer and lecturer, and a major presence in the Left Forum’s predecessor organization, the Socialist Scholars Conference.) Unfortunately, and as happens often when people ask Science & Society to publicize forthcoming events, the event threatens to pre¬cede the announcement. The deadline for submissions to the essay competi¬tion was July 31, 2010; you may be reading this in October, after the deadline but at least before the announcement of this year’s winner in December. For future reference, check out danielsingerfdn.com, which asks us to encourage people, especially younger folks, to participate and submit essays (up to 5000 words) for consideration.
What does all this have to do with health care? Well, this year’s essay question is:
Given the devastating effects of the present crisis on working people, what proposals for radical reform can be raised which are both practical to the vast majority while moving us towards the goal of socialism?
This is the long-standing “reform/revolution” problematic. Despite the spectre of déjà vu, it may be worthwhile revisiting it, using the prize competition question as our basis. On close reading, it opens multiple conceptual cans of worms.
“Given the devastating effects ... on working people...” Do we detect a hint here of the idea that devastation as such is consciousness-raising? In the case of revolutionary transitions in which one exploiting class takes power from another, the challenging class can mobilize the devastation-induced rage of the subaltern masses as a weapon against the ancien regime. When revolutionary agency resides with the exploited masses themselves, however, things are different: the struggle must empower the working-class majority, prepare that majority to shoulder the immense burdens of running the institutions and structures of society, while simultaneously transforming those institutions and structures. If this is right, then we must conclude that it is the response to devastation, not the devastation itself, that matters. The response is much more empowering in action and therefore much more consciousness-raising than the crisis that provoked it.
“...practical to the vast majority ...” What seems “practical” at any moment in time is what is bounded by existing paradigms! So the “public option” was “impractical”: it was placed out of bounds by the ideological guardians of the status quo. This is an aspect of hegemony, in Gramsci’s sense: the limits to action decreed by the agencies of the ruling class are made to seem inevitable, natural. It is precisely the practice of the vast majority that can potentially alter what seems practical to that majority. The task of struggle for “temporary improvement” (see the testimony of Marx, quoted below) is to expand the horizon of the “possible” to overthrow the constraints on what appears as “practical.”
“...moving us toward the goal of socialism...” Again, an (admittedly very close) reading suggests a conception of socialism as an exterior projection, a “system” that replaces capitalism from the outside, and is therefore formed in consciousness as a “goal.” Now communism (as the generic term for the mode of production that transcends capitalism, along with all class-antagonistic modes of production) does take shape as a vision, or goal; this is the moment within Marxist theory that draws upon the treasure-trove of utopian thought. The dominant moment, however, is the one that establishes the socialist-communist tradition associated with Marx and Engels as scientific in an appropriate non-scientistic sense of that term. This is the insight that socialism is the culmination of forces developing within capitalism; in the present case, most essentially the capacities, experiences, struggles and evolving consciousness of the working class, emerging as part of the system of class relations that defines capitalism. If this (too) is right, then socialism is the social-economic democracy that arises in the practice and consciousness of the working-class struggle and is, simultaneously, part of the laws of motion of capitalism. The goal is not a timeless abstraction; it is itself shaped and reconfigured and fleshed out within the movement of the exploited. This movement is revolutionary, because it can only realize itself in the ultimate overthrow of capitalism, creating the historic moment in time at which socialismcommunism emerges as a unique, transcendent stage in social evolution.
“...radical reform ...” The problem, as we begin to see, is not so much with “radical” as with “reform.” “Reform” takes an object: it is reform of a system. What is our conception of this system? If the utopian moment becomes overextended, the system appears as something exterior to the working-class struggle itself: it is “their” system, and we (presumably) “want no part of it.” But, in the light of the scientific moment, we are part of it. The system is the unresolvable antagonism between classes, and its core state is the balance of class forces: the entire complex of relations economic, political, cultural, ideological that constitute the power of the capitalist class to extract surplus value, and the power of the working class to resist and moderate that extraction. We think of efforts on the part of the working class to alter the balance of forces in its favor as “reforms.” How should we relate to those efforts? That, of course, is what the debate is about. Marx, it seems, was unequivocal on this point:
...the very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scale in favour of the capitalist against the working man.... Such being the tendency of things in this system, is this saying that the working class ought to renounce their resistance against the encroachments of capital, and abandon their attempts at making the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation.... By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement.
Marx is addressing the issue in the context of trade union policy, but we may, I think, see it more broadly, in the contestation between classes that takes place at various social and political sites, including but not limited to the workplace.
Would genuine health-care security reliable access to medical treatment for all workers and their families, in all stages of life, without regard to capacity to pay, citizenship status, pre-existing conditions have an impact on the balance of class forces? Is it (or its absence) part of that balance? In light of the foregoing, this is of course a silly question. The answer is shown by the clear class understanding among the Republican Party in the United States: dominant circles within the ruling class (perhaps not the ruling class in its entirety; there are always enlightened outliers) will go to the mat on this issue, not merely because they don’t want to pay for health-care reform, but because they understand its positive impact on the general social condition of the working population and the consequences of that condition for ongoing and future challenges to their power/wealth/privilege, in all spheres. When the right (both the “respectable” Republicans and “crazies” such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck; the two camps are organically linked) sees health-care “reform” as a threat to “freedom” and Obama as a “Marxist,” they mean their (ruling-class) freedom, and “Marxist” in an ultimate sense, and guess what? they are correct!
In trade union contract negotiations, a distinction is drawn between “money items” and “non-money items”; the latter are issues such as the right of the union to post notices within workplaces, requirements on management to consult with the union concerning workplace conditions, and so forth. From the standpoint of the overall balance of class forces within the work-place (a component of the larger balance), we must aver: there is no such thing as a non-money item: anything that matters affects the overall outcome, the rate of surplus value extraction. Now, in the context of the larger issue of “reform” changing the balance in favor of working people I suggest a controversial extension of this principle: There is no such thing as a non-radical reform.
This does not mean that reforms from installing a traffic light at a corner where children cross on the way to school, to an increase in the minimum wage, guaranteed employment, or a public option extending health care services to 32 million people now completely excluded from them are inherently or necessarily revolutionizing. It does mean that every reform has implications for the class balance of forces, and must and will be combated by the ruling class (yes, even the traffic light); that every reform must therefore be defended, and extended, and linked with other reforms, and with the movements backing other reforms. This process provides the working class with political and organizational experience, with the opportunity and necessity to overcome divisions and separations in a word, with an ongoing laboratory for developing the skills and capacities needed to eventually take over the reins entirely. This, in turn, is the real foundation for advances in consciousness. It is the ultimate school for socialism. Note that this perspective does not say: “Unfortunately, workers are only ready for reforms; they are not (yet) ready for revolution.” Instead, it says: “workers need and desire reforms, and this is a good thing, because unless we/they build the struggles and movements for reforms, they/we will never be ready for revolution.”
But should we make distinctions between “radical” reforms and (presumably) “non-radical” ones? Are we to pick and choose among the needs and demands that arise spontaneously in workplaces and in working-class communities? Who is to be told that their needs don’t meet our test? The worst we could do is succumb to the ultimate arrogance of trying to fool people, by advancing “reform” proposals that (we somehow think) the “system” cannot deliver. Talk about “disqualify(ing our)selves for the initiating of any larger movement”!
If we have learned anything from the negative lessons of the 20th century, it is that the left must, as a matter of central principle, occupy the moral high ground, and this depends clearly on our not cherry-picking “strategically” selected projects to “teach” people about a “system” of which they are not seen as a part.
It must be said: those who fear reforms and reform movements on the grounds that people might become distracted from the “real” path of revolution, or that they might be “co-opted” into the “system,” are essentially saying that they do not believe that class interests within capitalism are irreconcilable! Put another way, these fearful folk actually think capitalism can solve the day-to-day problems of existence of the working class, and therefore want to keep that from happening.
If we do give principled support to all reform movements and currents, we still have the task of doing this in a revolutionary way, and there is no simply formula that can guarantee that. The health care legislation provides examples of the challenges; I cite here only the insidious tax on so-called “Cadillac” union plans, clearly designed to divide the working-class and frustrate further progress toward universal coverage and quality of health care. Working-class empowerment, as long as capitalist production relations are dominant, and indeed for some time after, is inseparable from class struggle, and those who share that perspective are in a position to identify the pressure points in the current stage of the struggle and mobilize the most broad-based campaigns to address them in the next round.
“What proposals ...can be raised ...” (quoting one last time from the Singer Prize question). Instead, let’s become part of the various real currents from which all proposals originate, and work with those currents to find ways of winning, deepening, extending, building. Out of that experience, revolutionary leadership will arise. It most likely will not be who we expect it to be! In the words of the wise old spiritual song: “Everybody talkin’ ’bout Heaven ain’t goin’ there...”
David Laibman