Mark Phillips: The American Question

The militants who formed the old socialist movement were perfectly clear what they meant by the term "socialism". They meant: nationalization of hitherto private enterprises and their administration by the state.

They said this in different ways, for instance, "Collective ownership of the means of production". But, this is what they meant. Certainly it's what the Second International meant, in both its reformist and revolutionary flavors.

For a very brief blink of an eye the Third International meant something different. To be sure they advocated statization too, but the state they had in mind was a different thing, one which was controlled directly by the mass of working people "from below", and which was engaged in withering away. The civil war crushed that, then the failure of the European revolution, then the steamroller of Stalinism.

The Second International crushed it in Western Europe, too, over the 20th Century. They nationalized right and left -- well, mostly right -- yet by the fourth quarter of the century were no longer referring to themselves as "socialist". Which was only reasonable.

Somewhere in there we all stopped believing that nationalization equals socialism. Rightly. Stalinism and Social Democracy taught us otherwise.

Now, the interesting thing is that, after abandoning the old definition, we never put up a new one.

Well -- you know. We did. I for one started talking about how "socialism" means the movement for political independence by working people and the poor. Which is, to be literal, an updated Bernsteinism in which the movement is everything, the goal nothing.

But by and large we simply went silent about what "socialism" might be, so that we really, I think, became for a whole period a movement of anti-ists. We were anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-sexist. But not really so much for anything.

Of course, that's not literally true. We were for things like "democratic control from below". IMO these are great-sounding but empty, that is, incantations. Empty in large part because we were no longer able to say what "socialism" is.

In my experience we often covered our silence with the incantation of anti-utopianism. I heard this a million times, and probably said it just as often. We can't say what socialism is, 'cause that would be utopian. Nevermind that socialists for a hundred years before us hadn't had that trouble.

I vote for abandoning the anti-utopian incantation and doing serious theoretical work based on Capital to produce a basic sketch of the Socialist Mode of Production, including not merely the juridical question of ownership but the specific mechanisms of planning, of what "control" and "below" mean in that context, of what the "laws of motion" would be, and so on.

Naturally, I'm not personally capable of doing any of this. I don't have the specialized training. So, I'm voting that you should do it.

Us old types -- Wayne says we're "veterans", I say "Excuse me, I'm a refugee" -- us old types might be able to contribute some political and methodological pointers. I think the one I've just stressed is a great one. Don't be intimidated by that incantation about anti-utopianism. It never bothered anybody until after our movement had abandoned the old statist definition of socialism.

New movements will arise. IMO, one measure of their capability will be their willingness to tackle the theoretical specificities left silent by previous generations.