SOCIALISM, RADICALISM, FASCISM

January 24, 2003; November 22, 2010

2. Marxism. Karl Marx (1819-1883) was the author of Capital, the classic and basic text of modern socialism. He was also a shrewd and incisive journalist and commentator, as well as a political activist. Along with his collaborator and financial angel, Frederich Engels, Marx saw capitalism as both a liberating and an exploitative force. Its dynamism destroyed all the old traditions and hierarchies, freeing people from the dead hand of the past. However, its success depended on the exploitation of labor and the appropriation of wealth by an increasingly small and powerful class of owners (and their political henchmen) of the means of production. Capitalism carried within itself the seeds of its own destruction because in exploiting labor, it created an ever larger and more alienated class of workers whose increasingly desperate conditions and whose outrage at their exploitation would eventually lead to revolution. Eventually, as the social crisis created by capitalism deepened, the expropriators (i.e., capitalists) would be expropriated (i.e., workers would destroy the system and gain control of the means of production themselves).

Marxism was (and is) a broad, generic intellectual and political tendency. Some Marxists see Marx's writings as virtually sacred and probe them endlessly for instructions on how to act. More sophisticated Marxists, however, take his basic insights as to the material basis of all political and social life and seek to apply them in a flexible way. Agreeing with Marx's basic analysis, contemporary socialists believe that the apocalyptical vision of a labor-capital Armageddon is no longer relevant. Others stress the democratic thrust of Marxism, the call for empowering the majority and resisting the claims of the wealthy. Still others stress Marx's early writings, in which he wrote lyrically about the need to reclaim human agency in the face of relentless division of labor and alienation of workers from the tools of production. There are Christian Marxists, Marxist humanists, neo-Marxists, even pro-market Marxists. For my money, the best single book on Marxism, one that has insightful things to say about its application to conditions in the US, is Michael Harrington, Socialism (1972).

3. Socialism. Socialism is the generic term applied to those on the Left who believed (and believe) that a truly just and humane society cannot be achieved so long as the means of production, distribution, and exchange remain in private hands and who believe that the state must play a crucial role in the transition to a new form of social organization. Traditionally, socialism has been associated with government ownership and operation of economic activities, although many socialists believe(d) that only the "commanding heights"-the large, concentrated, critical industries and utilities such as railroads, steel, banking-need be publicly owned. There are and have been many varieties of socialism but in the absence of explicit qualifying remarks, for the purposes of this class when reference is made to "socialism," it means the ideas and programs and movements associated with the main socialist political parties and labor organizations in the western countries (i.e., industrialized regions, mainly Western Europe, the British Commonwealth, the US) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These socialist movements were strongly critical of the inequities of capitalism, strongly supportive of organized labor, and quite confident that socialism represented the wave of the future. In Europe, socialist organizations were at the forefront of those seeking to expand the suffrage and to bring working people into the political community. In more recent decades, socialists have lost much of their previous confidence but they continue to be critical of market capitalism, which they believe breeds inequality, waste, political corruption, and the disempowerment of ordinary people.

4. Social Democracy. In the heyday of socialism (ca. 1880-1950), many socialists, while remaining critical of capitalism, came to believe that Marx's basic analysis needed revision in light of more recent developments. Many of those active in the German Social Democratic Party (which was the largest political party in Germany for much of this period) and the British Labour Party (which after 1919 constituted the main opposition party in Britain and which came to power in 1945) came to regard the reform and regulation of capitalism as the only realistic goal. In Marx's day, so raw and naked was the exploitative thrust of capitalism it was reasonable to regard its overthrow as possible and necessary. But now, Social Democrats (most of whom remained active in socialist parties and organizations) argued, we have shown that it is possible to control capitalism through public regulation and legislation to protect workers from its excesses by encouraging trade unionism and regulating working conditions, as well as by state provision of medical, old age, and unemployment benefits. Social Democrats continued to be sharp critics of capitalism and often continued to believe that in the very long run capitalism would have to be supplanted but in practical political affairs they reached out to non-socialist progressives and liberals, dampened revolutionary rhetoric, and operated within the political system to improve the social welfare, educational, and regulatory functions of government. In 1959, the German Social Democratic Party formally abandoned explicitly revolutionary intent, while in 1995 the British Labour Party rescinded Clause Four of its 1919 constitution that had called for full public ownership of the means of production and distribution. In the US, the Socialist Party of America reached a peak in the WWI era, with its charismatic early leader Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) capturing 900,000 votes in the 1912 presidential election and many local officials and two congressmen gaining election on the Socialist ticket. Since the 1920s, however, socialism has been only a marginal element in US political life and leading American socialists such as Norman Thomas (1884-1968) and Michael Harrington (1929-1989) have functioned more as social democratic critics and champions of social justice than leaders of a vanguard party.

5. Anarchism. The anarchist criticism of capitalism is both similar to and very different from that of Marxists. "Man was born free," declared Rousseau in the 18th century, "but is everywhere in chains." In common with Marxists, anarchists such as Mikhail Bakunin denounced the exploitation inherent in capitalism. But whereas Marx and later socialists saw as the goal of revolutionary activity the gaining of state power, anarchists warned that any government, no matter how formally democratic, would inevitably degenerate into tyranny. This would especially be true of a socialist government that combined political and economic functions. Instead of gaining control of government, whether by revolutionary or legal means, anarchists believed, it was necessary for workers and citizens to gain democratic control of their workplaces and neighborhoods. While socialists envisaged a kind of superstate, coordinating everything from the top, anarchists believed in grass roots activism, without formal structures of governmental authority being necessary. Only through local activism and the insistence on grass roots democratic decision-making could people be truly free.

Some anarchists turned to violence, believing that "propaganda by the deed" could shatter the existing order and provide a liminal moment in which old structures of capitalist economics and bureaucratic government might be destroyed, providing room for the sprouting of innumerable popular organizations in workplaces, neighborhoods, and communities. Some anarchists preached sabotage and even assassination and indeed during this period there were many episodes of political murder (e.g., the killing of President William McKinley in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz, a self-styled anarchist) and bombings perpetrated by violent anarchist groups in the US, Russia, and Western Europe. Most anarchists, however, rejected violence. Over the years, the repression and victimization of anarchists (and other radicals) by public authorities and private vigilantes far exceeded the violence perpetrated by radicals.

6. Syndicalism. Syndicalism is the belief-actually, an extension and application of anarchist principles-in workers' control. The workplace, syndicalists such as Georges Sorel held, is the nodal point of modern civilization. Sorel spoke of the "myth of the general strike," meaning by the word "myth" not a falsehood but an organizing and sustaining principle or goal. Workers have the inherent power to gain control of the means of production and, through the exercise of this power, the central economic and political structures in society. Syndicalists urged that exploited workers ignore political action, which they felt was a distraction and a blind alley, and that they exert their decisive power at the point of production. Fight "on the job, where you're robbed," in the words of an American Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) slogan. Worker solidarity across lines of skill, gender, nationality, race, and ethnicity would enable workers to bring down the existing order and "create a new world from the ashes of the old." The militant syndicalism of the IWW, implying as it did the ignoring of existing structures of power and the building of an alternative social order from the workplace outward, is sometimes termed anarcho-syndicalism.

7. Leninism. Leninism, Bolshevism, or Soviet Communism are roughly synonymous terms. Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) was the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the main Russian socialist party and leader of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and head of the new Soviet state. Two main ideas characterize Leninism: 1) rather than waiting for the masses of people to develop a revolutionary consciousness, a small cadre of dedicated revolutionaries must foment revolution and control its processes, bringing the masses along through their example and through the instruments of state power developed in the Bolshevik seizure of power; 2) the only reason that capitalism in the industrialized West has not followed the trajectory outlined by Marx is because of western states' imperial expansion and domination of what later would be called "the Third World." In effect, Lenin argued, western capitalist regimes had been able to buy off their working classes through economic exploitation of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the wealth of which provided a sufficient surplus for capitalists and their political henchmen to raise living standards at home and thus deflect potentially revolutionary activism. While the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union initially derived from the common critique of capitalism shared by all on the Left, it soon developed a dynamic and a character of its own. Particularly after Lenin's death in 1924 and the emergence of Josef Stalin (1879-1953) as the Soviet leader, the Russian Communist regime deepened the authoritarianism toward which Leninist doctrine seemed in any event to tend. The term "Stalinism" has come to indicate a particularly brutal authoritarianism. During the 1930s and World War II, many western liberals and radicals ignoredor refused to acknowledge the more sinister features of Soviet Communism under Stalin in light of the Great Depression that afflicted the West and the Russian people's heroic struggle against Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Others in labor, socialist, and liberal movements, however, viewed Stalinism as the perversion of socialism and opposed it root and branch even during this period.

8. Socialism vs. Fascism. Students often profess to be confused about the differences between socialism and fascism. (Recall that by "socialism," I refer here to the ideas, policies, programs, and activities of the socialist and social democratic parties and movements of the West during the late 19th and 20th centuries [see No. 3, above]). Socialism and fascism are antithetical concepts. About their only point of agreement is that government must be used as an instrument of social and economic development. There are grounds for confusion, though. For example, Hitler's Nazi movement in 1920s and 1930s Germany adopted the name "National Socialist Party," and there are some conservative critics-historian John Lukacs is a good example-who believe that the kinds of enhanced government power advocated by socialists, as well as their scapegoating of certain categories of people-capitalists; the bourgeoisie; non-socialist politicians-is broadly equivalent to the authoritarianism and scapegoating central to fascism. But, unlike fascists or "national socialists" such as the Nazis, western socialists have never celebrated authoritarian rule, nor have they sought the physical liquidation of the people whom they identify as class enemies.

Here are some points to keep in mind:

* Socialists are democrats. Socialists, especially in Europe, fought for the expansion of the suffrage and the establishment and defense of what in America we call First Amendment freedoms. Fascists are authoritarians who regard democratic politics as a sham and constitutional freedoms as irrelevant, to be valued only insofar as they can be exploited to advance the fascist agenda.