As We See It
The revised version
5. Socialism is not just the common
ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. It
means equality, real freedom, the end of oppression based on
restrictive male/female social roles, reciprocal recognition and a
radical transformation in all human relationships. It is people's
understanding of their environment and of themselves, their
domination over their work and over such social institutions as they
may need to create. These are not secondary aspects, which will
automatically follow the expropriation of the old ruling class. On
the contrary they are essential parts of the whole process of social
transformation, for without them no genuine social transformation
will have taken place.
6. A socialist society can therefore only
be built from below. Decisions concerning production and work will be
taken by workers' councils composed of elected and revocable
delegates. Decisions in other areas will be taken on the basis of the
widest possible discussion and consultation among the people as a
whole. This democratisation of society down to its very roots is what
we mean by ‘workers' power’.
Self-managed institutions and collectivities will be the living
framework of a free society. There can be no socialism without
self-management. Yet a society made up of individual self-managed
units is not, of itself, socialist. Such societies could remain
oppressive, unequal and unjust. They could be sexist or racist, could
restrict access to knowledge or adopt uncritical attitudes towards
'expertise'. We can imagine the individual units of such a society -
of whatever size or complexity (from chicken farms to continents) -
competing as 'collective capitalists'. Such competition could only
perpetuate alienation and create new inequalities based on new
divisions of labour.
Genuine freedom will only be possible when our lives are no longer
the object of economic, cultural and political forces which we
experience as external to ourselves, and which constantly tend to
regenerate capitalist or authoritarian social relations. A socialist
society would therefore abolish not only social classes, hierarchies
and other structures of domination, but also wage-labour and
production for the purpose of sale or exchange on the market. Th
fulfil their needs and desires, people would live and work in free
co-operation. The national frontiers of armed states would be
replaced by a democratic human community, on a world scale. The
elimination of competition (and the decay of competitive attitudes)
would have profound social effects which we can hardly imagine today.
As We Don’t See It
5. This section differentiates our concept
of socialism from most of those prevailing today. Socialism, for us,
is not just a question of economic reorganisation from which other
benefits will 'inevitably' follow, without consciously being
fought for. It is a total vision of a completely
different society. Such a vision is linked to the total
critique of capitalism we have previously referred to.
Social-democrats and Bolsheviks denounce equality as 'utopian',
'petty.bourgeois', or'anarchist'. They dismiss the advocacy of
freedom as 'abstract', and reciprocal recognition as 'liberal
humanism'. They will concede that the radical transformation of all
social relations is a valid ultimate objective, but cannot see it as
an essential, immediate ingredient of the very process of meaningful
change.
When we talk of people's understanding of their environment and of
themselves, we mean the gradual discarding of all myths and of all
types of false consciousness (religion, nationalism, patriarchal
attitudes, the belief in the rationality of hierarchy, etc.). The
pre-condition of human freedom is the understanding of all that
limits it. Positive self-consciousness implies the gradual breakdown
of that state of chronic schizophrenia in which-through conditioning
and other mechanisms-most people succeed in carrying mutually
incompatible ideas in their heads. It means accepting coherence, and
perceiving the relation of means and ends. It means exposing those
who organise conferences about 'workers control' . . . addressed by
union officials elected for life. It means patiently explaining the
incompatibilities of 'people's capitalism', 'parliamentary
socialism', 'christian communism', 'anarcho-zionism', 'Party-led
"workers councils"', and other such rubbish. It means understanding
that a non-manipulative society cannot be achieved by manipulative
means or a classless society through hierarchical structures. This
attempt at both gaining insight and at imparting it will be difficult
and prolonged. It will doubtless be dismissed as 'intellectual
theorising' by every 'voluntarist' or 'activist' tendency, eager for
short cuts to the promised land and more concerned with movement than
with direction.
Because we think people can and should understand what they are
doing, IT FOLLOWS that we reject many of the approaches so common in
the movement today. In practice this means avoiding the use of
revolutionary myths and the resort to manipulated confrontations,
intended to raise consciousness. Underlying both of these is the
usually unformulated assumption that people cannot understand social
reality and act rationally on their own behalf.
Linked to our rejection of revolutionary myths is our rejection of
ready-made political labels. We want no gods, not even those of the
marxist or anarchist pantheons. We live in neither the Petrograd of
1917 nor the Barcelona of 1936. We are ourselves: the product
of the disintegration of traditional politics, in the advanced
industrial world, in the second half of the 20th century. It is to
the problems and conflicts of that society that we must apply
ourselves.
Although we consider ourselves part of the 'libertarian left' we
differ from most strands of the 'cultural' or 'political'
underground. We have nothing in common, for instance, with those
petty entrepreneurs, now thriving on the general confusion, who
simultaneously promote such commodities as oriental mysticism, black
magic, the drug cult, sexual exploitation (masquerading as sexual
liberation) seasoning it all with big chunks of populist mythology.
Their dissemination of myths and their advocacy of 'non.sectarian
politics' do not prevent them from taking up, in practice, many
reactionary stances. In fact, they ensure it. Under the mindless
slogan of 'Support for people in struggle', these tendencies advocate
support for various nationalisms (today always reactionary) such as
those of both IRAs and of all the NLFs.
Other strands, calling themselves 'libertarian marxist', suffer
from middle class feelings of guilt which make them prone to
workeritis. Despite this, their practice is both reformist and
substitutionist. For instance, when they (correctly) support
struggles for limited objectives, such as those of squatters or
Claimants' Unions, they often fail to stress the revolutionary
implications of such collective direct action. Historically, direct
action has often clashed with the reformist nature of the objectives
pursued. Again, such tendencies support the IRAs and NLFs and refrain
from criticizing the Cuban, Vietnamese or Chinese regimes. Having
rejected the Party, they nevertheless share with leninism a bourgeois
concept of consciousness.
Because we think our politics should be coherent we also reject
the approach of others in the libertarian movement who place their
whole emphasis on personal liberation or who seek individual
solutions to what are social problems. We dissociate ourselves from
those who equate the violence of the oppressor with the violence of
the oppressed (in a condemnation of 'all violence'), and from those
who place the rights of strikers on the picket line on the same
footing as the right of scabs to blackleg (in an abstract defence of
'freedom as such'). Similarly, anarcho-catholicism and anarcho-maoism
are internally incoherent outlooks, incompatible with revolutionary
self-activity.
We feel that there should be some relation between our vision of
socialism and what we do here and now. IT FOLLOWS that we seek as
from now, and starting with those closest to us, to puncture some of
the more widely held political myths. These are not confined to the
'right'-with its belief that hierarchy and inequality are of the
essence of the human condition. We consider it irrational (and/or
dishonest) that those who talk most of the masses (and of the
capacity of the working class to create a new society) should have
the least confidence in people's ability to dispense with leaders. We
also consider it irrational that the most radical advocates of
'genuine social change' should incorporate in their own ideas,
programmes and organisational prescriptions so many of the values,
priorities and models they claim to oppose.
6. When we say that socialist society will
be 'built from below', we mean just that. We do not mean
'initiated from above and then endorsed from below'. Nor do we mean
'planned from above and later checked from below'. We mean there
should be no separation between organs of decision and organs of
execution. This is why we advocate workers' 'management' of
production, and avoid the ambiguous demand for workers' 'control'.
(The differences both theoretical and historical between the two are
outlined in the introduction to our book on 'The Bolsheviks and
Workers Control 1917-1921')
We deny the revolutionary organisation any specific prerogative in
the post-revolutionary period, or in the building of the new society.
Its main function in this period will be to stress the primacy of the
Workers Councils (and of bodies based on them) as instruments of
decisional authority, and to struggle against ail those who would
seek to lessen or to bypass this authority - or to vest power
elsewhere. Unlike others on the left who dismiss thinking about the
new society as 'pre-occupation with the cookshops of the future' we
have outlined our ideas about a possible structure of such a society
in our pamphlet on workers councils and in discussion in our
magazine.
This section seeks to evoke a fuller vision of a new society than
is encompassed in the usual economistic definitions. It also seeks to
rescue the term 'self-management' from those who, for various (and
often contradictory) reasons, have sought to debase it. But it does
more. It also raises awkward questions such as 'what is the "self"
that it is to be self-managed?' However self-managed, a racist or
sexist 'self' cannot abolish racism or sexism. A 'self' that accepts
heirarchy will encourage the appearance of hierarchs. The ignorance
of the many both allows and fosters manipulation by the few
If society is to be truly self-managed, then all aspects of
collective life must be democratically controlled by the people. The
persistence of market forces would remove the area of work from the
control of those involved in it. Such forces would perpetuate the
alienation of the producers from their product, and the state of
affairs where people
go-to-work-to-get-money-to-buy-the-things-that-keep-them-alive-to-go-to-work,
and so on, ad nauseum.
Economic competition between 'self-managed' units would inevitably
restore hierarchical social structures. Self-management in
production, therefore, means the total control by the producers over
their products and the ending of production for sale or exchange. A
self-managed society would constantly strive to overcome the division
between work and play, and would realise (in both senses of the word)
the joy of creative activity.
The social institutions of the new society will not develop (or
even survive) within a value system inherited from capitalism. The
old will reassert itself unless specifically fought against. The
process of change involves us all - and starts here and now. It
implies an on-going and conscious cultural revolution in which -
unlike what happened in China - there will be no taboos whatsoever,
and no attempts by anyone (with or without bayonets) to restrict the
'permissible' areas of criticism, experiment or debate.
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