The Future is Socialism

What is socialism? And, an even more important question, does it have any relevance in the 21st century? Can it be defined in terms which make it relevant to the economic, political and social challenges we face today. Can it be described, and explained, in language which enables voters to perceive its relevance?

The current economic difficulties, not to mention the political difficulties of the Labour Party, are good reason to examine the possibility of a credible socialist political programme. Capitalism is clearly in great difficulty, not least in the United Kingdom.

To prevent the collapse of the banking system, the government has (i) nationalised the Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley banks, and (ii) made hundreds of £ Billions available for the banks to borrow. As a result of the money provided, it also has a majority shareholding in the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Why was the Labour government so reluctant to nationalise Northern Rock; a solution advocated by the Liberal Democrats when that bank’s problems became public? Why, at a time when capitalists were exposed as incompetent, as well as greedy, is there little consideration of socialist solutions?

Third Way, No Way

Tony Blair explicitly abandoned socialism. He removed Clause 4, in effect about equality and public control, from the Labour Party’s objectives: he also made every effort to distance his governments from the trade unions. .

Blair governments’ policies were based on the concept of the Third Way. The origins of the Third Way are generally considered to be in Professor Anthony Giddens’ book, Beyond Left and Right (1994). In policy terms, the Third Way, I am told by a believer, is considered to be somewhere between Stalinism and Thatcherism.

I must confess that I do not find this particularly helpful, since all positions which are not Stalinism or Thatcherism are likely to be somewhere between the two.

In practice, the Third Way has turned out to be a watered down version of Thatcherism – beefing up capitalism, and assigning socialism to the dustbin of history. Privatisation, started under Thatcher and continued under Major, was accelerated by private finance initiatives (PFIs) during the three Blair governments.

Nationalisation had become a dirty word and was replaced by “privatisation” as the means of operating the economy. Yet it is clear that the railway system was a much more reliable service when it was nationalised. And the charges, and service provided by, the utilities (water, gas, electricity) are clearly against the interests of consumers.

In general the perception of socialism is determined by its opponents and no attempt is made to explain it – except by a few, increasingly isolated, individuals such as Tony Benn. The views of socialism expounded by capitalists are rarely challenged. Whatever New Labour is about, it is certainly not socialism.

In addition to their criticism of domestic issues such as nationalisation, opponents of socialism quote against it the system in the USSR under Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev and in China under Mao Zedong and his successors. So it is rejected because it is held responsible for the treatment of the peasants by Lenin, Stalin’s purges and the violence against students in Tiananmen Square.

A related perspective is that it is the enemy of capitalism and, therefore, would destroy Western economies and civilisation. The worst part of this for capitalists, of course, is that a socialist government’s pursuit of equality would mean that they would lose their privileges and experience heavier taxation.

The answer to these arguments is that they have scant relevance to the question of socialism in the U K. The systems in the USSR and China were based on the concept of the Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat, not on the socialist principles advocated in Western societies. Lenin succeeded Tsarist dictators in a country where democracy was unknown.

Socialism for Western Societies

The key characteristic of socialism for the U K, arising from its historical origins, is a commitment to democracy, without which no socialist programme can be justified. Indeed, socialism requires not just an election every 4 or 5 years but democracy operating daily at all levels of society. This should be the response to the current disillusionment with politics, which results from voters feeling they do not count.

Instead of minor decisions affecting people’s lives being handed down from Whitehall, decision-making should be devolved, as appropriate, to regional, local or community level. This requires, first, going back to the situation of regional and local authority powers as they existed pre Thatcher; and then beyond this to recognise the necessity for people in communities to have greater control over their own lives.

It is also relevant that, despite the hype, capitalism has scant respect for democracy. One only has to mention the “allies” of the USA in South America to expose the sham of democratic intention. And as everybody (with the exception of Bush and Blair) now recognise, the intervention in Iraq was about oil, not democracy.

Socialism is not Marxism as in the USSR and China. But neither is it idealism – about democracy, equality, peace – divorced from the realities of society and the political process. Indeed, in the early stages of any democratic and peaceful movement towards socialism, it must, inevitably, operate within a mixed economy – with private, as well as public, control and enterprise.

It might turn out to be the case that a socialist society, a society operating in accord with the principles of socialism, is compatible with a mixed economy. This will depend very much, of course, on the nature of the mix.

What is not in question is that a socialist society would be characterised by, and be moving towards, educational opportunity for all, equality, fairness, peace, democratic public control. None of these exist at present. Although they occur in political rhetoric, no Party at Westminster has a credible programme to achieve them.

The test is not the intellectual coherence and purity of socialist theory, but its relevance to solving political, social and economic problems. Given the failures of capitalism (which the credit crunch has made obvious in the USA as well as in Europe) socialist solutions, at minimum, deserve consideration.