Next Sunday people in France will be voting in the first round of the French presidential elections. They will have a choice of 12 candidates, including one from the so-called Socialist Party, another from the so-called Communist Party, three Trotskyists and an “anti-capitalist”.
We are often asked why all those calling themselves socialist don’t just get together. The programme of the Trotskyist candidates in these elections provides one answer. When we contest elections, we campaign only for socialism as a worldwide system of society, without frontiers, based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, with produced solely for use not for profit. When the Trotskyists contest elections, they hardly ever mention even their (mistaken) conception of socialism (which in reality is state capitalism). They assume that capitalism will continue and offer only reforms to it, thus contributing to the illusion that capitalism could be made to work in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers.
A case in point is Lutte Ouvrière, the premier Trotskyist organisation in France. Here’s how they describe their candidate’s programme in the latest issue of their French-language theoretical journal Lutte de classe:
“The three major problems for the popular classes are the persistence of unemployment at an unacceptable level, the continual decline of the purchasing power of the toiling classes and the catastrophic state of housing for the people. These necessitate an urgent solution. This urgent solution requires a different use of the high profits realised by enterprises over many years. It is from these profits as well as from the hand-outs given to enterprises by the State at a loss that must be taken the funds needed to finance the maintaining of employment in the private sector and to create new ones, useful to the population, in the public sector”.
In other words, capitalism, including a private sector, is to continue and there is a “solution”, even an “urgent” one, within it: to use the profits of capitalist enterprises to create new jobs and build new and better houses. This is just demagogy as there is no solution to unemployment and bad housing under capitalism, as the experience of capitalism shows let alone a knowledge of Marx’s analysis of how capitalism works.
But it gets worse. The naughty capitalists have, apparently, not been using their profits properly:
“The unprecedented profits accumulated by enterprises are not used for real investments, i.e. for the building of new factories, the manufacture of new machines, the enlargement of productive capacities with jobs as a consequence. That’s the essential reason for the present economic crisis. Instead of enlarging the basis of production, the accumulated money is more and more financialised and only used for those false investments that are the take-over of enterprises by each other. Unable to enlarge the market with a sufficient rate of profit, the main aim of enterprises is to dispute with others their share of the market. The competition between them to outbid each other sustains a speculative spiral which, in addition, threatens the economy with a new stock exchange or monetary crisis”.
There’s a solution to this too:
“The only way to stop this rush towards the abysm is for the popular classes, the population, to impose their control over enterprises, over the choices made by their managements. The population must be able to exercise control over the enterprises day by day, over their finances, their strategies, their choices, their short and long term projects, so as to be able to oppose projects which manifestly go against the interests of society”.
We don’t know if they really believe that all that is needed to get enterprises to produce in “the interests of society” rather than for profit is popular control over their investment decisions, but that’s what they say, so giving the impression that this would be possible under capitalism. That capitalism could be reformed in this way is of course just another reformist illusion.
We suspect we know what they are going to reply in response to this criticism: that these promises are only a “transitional programme” designed to lead workers, who can’t understand the “abstract” idea of socialism, to realise through the experience of the failure of these reformist measures the need to get rid of capitalism (actually, to establish state capitalism as in Russia under Lenin and Trotsky).
In other words, there’s a subtle theory for the “vanguard” and demagogic reformist promises for the thicko “masses”.
Either they believe their promises (in which case they are reformists). Or they are just offering them as bait to win followers (in which case they are disreputable manipulators). Either way they stand condemned. Which is why we are just as opposed to them as to the openly pro-capitalist candidates.
We say that workers in France who want socialism can show this by dropping a paper marked “SOCIALISME MONDIAL” into the ballot box.
We are often asked why all those calling themselves socialist don’t just get together. The programme of the Trotskyist candidates in these elections provides one answer. When we contest elections, we campaign only for socialism as a worldwide system of society, without frontiers, based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, with produced solely for use not for profit. When the Trotskyists contest elections, they hardly ever mention even their (mistaken) conception of socialism (which in reality is state capitalism). They assume that capitalism will continue and offer only reforms to it, thus contributing to the illusion that capitalism could be made to work in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers.
A case in point is Lutte Ouvrière, the premier Trotskyist organisation in France. Here’s how they describe their candidate’s programme in the latest issue of their French-language theoretical journal Lutte de classe:
“The three major problems for the popular classes are the persistence of unemployment at an unacceptable level, the continual decline of the purchasing power of the toiling classes and the catastrophic state of housing for the people. These necessitate an urgent solution. This urgent solution requires a different use of the high profits realised by enterprises over many years. It is from these profits as well as from the hand-outs given to enterprises by the State at a loss that must be taken the funds needed to finance the maintaining of employment in the private sector and to create new ones, useful to the population, in the public sector”.
In other words, capitalism, including a private sector, is to continue and there is a “solution”, even an “urgent” one, within it: to use the profits of capitalist enterprises to create new jobs and build new and better houses. This is just demagogy as there is no solution to unemployment and bad housing under capitalism, as the experience of capitalism shows let alone a knowledge of Marx’s analysis of how capitalism works.
But it gets worse. The naughty capitalists have, apparently, not been using their profits properly:
“The unprecedented profits accumulated by enterprises are not used for real investments, i.e. for the building of new factories, the manufacture of new machines, the enlargement of productive capacities with jobs as a consequence. That’s the essential reason for the present economic crisis. Instead of enlarging the basis of production, the accumulated money is more and more financialised and only used for those false investments that are the take-over of enterprises by each other. Unable to enlarge the market with a sufficient rate of profit, the main aim of enterprises is to dispute with others their share of the market. The competition between them to outbid each other sustains a speculative spiral which, in addition, threatens the economy with a new stock exchange or monetary crisis”.
There’s a solution to this too:
“The only way to stop this rush towards the abysm is for the popular classes, the population, to impose their control over enterprises, over the choices made by their managements. The population must be able to exercise control over the enterprises day by day, over their finances, their strategies, their choices, their short and long term projects, so as to be able to oppose projects which manifestly go against the interests of society”.
We don’t know if they really believe that all that is needed to get enterprises to produce in “the interests of society” rather than for profit is popular control over their investment decisions, but that’s what they say, so giving the impression that this would be possible under capitalism. That capitalism could be reformed in this way is of course just another reformist illusion.
We suspect we know what they are going to reply in response to this criticism: that these promises are only a “transitional programme” designed to lead workers, who can’t understand the “abstract” idea of socialism, to realise through the experience of the failure of these reformist measures the need to get rid of capitalism (actually, to establish state capitalism as in Russia under Lenin and Trotsky).
In other words, there’s a subtle theory for the “vanguard” and demagogic reformist promises for the thicko “masses”.
Either they believe their promises (in which case they are reformists). Or they are just offering them as bait to win followers (in which case they are disreputable manipulators). Either way they stand condemned. Which is why we are just as opposed to them as to the openly pro-capitalist candidates.
We say that workers in France who want socialism can show this by dropping a paper marked “SOCIALISME MONDIAL” into the ballot box.
ALB
4 comments:
I have to say I think Socialist Standard is one of the best Marxists papers around, it outlines its arguments well without being dull. One of the areas in which it lets its readers down is the routinely superficial characterisation (caricature may be a better word) of Trotskyism it provides.
The fairly homogenous reading that is routinely provided of "Trotskyism" (as though we could describe such a thing so easily!) is at best odd, at worst, politically naive and ahistorical.
Hi j.b.
we've yet to hear anyone from the plethora of parties object to being called Trotskyists.
The Socialist Standard has covered specific parties in depth before, which inevitably brings out the differences those parties have. Notably Militant and the Socialist Workers' Party.
Militant, of course, argue that Soviet Russia was a degenerate workers' state and that Russia only restored capitalism around 1991, whereas the SWP argue that Russia became state capitalist after 1928. It's a moot point how interested readers are in the minutae of these differences.
However, they do share agreement on: the necessity for a vanguard party, transitional demands, getting workers to follow Labour leaders in order that workers learn to distrust Labour leaders, national liberation, Lenin's theory of Imperialism, etc.
I wish the Socialist Standard or any other SPGB mouthpiece can elaborate more on how the World Socialist Movement's version of Socialism differs with respect to other Socialist/Communist party movements, particularly within the UK.
I took the opportunity to check out the register of political parties and their links on the British Electoral Commission website today, and discovered there are quite a number of Socialist and even Communist parties operating. SPGB needs to define very clearly how it differs from these since all I see are criticisms levelled at the Scottish Socialist Party and not the others. I would particularly be interested in knowing the attitute of SPGB towards the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Revolutionary Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist).
SPGB's version of Socialism is a beautiful one. Don't let it be buried under the weight of distortions of others.
I would have thought that it was obvious, Ferman. The CPB and RCP(ML) stand for the sort of state capitalism regimes that used to exist in Russia and China where there was still worker exploitation and a privileged ruling class (even they if they owned the means of production collectively through the state rather than individually through shares as in the West). The SPGB stands for socialism (or communism) as a system of society where the means of production are owned in common, subject to democratic control and used to turn out things to satisfy people's needs not to make a profit, and where the principle "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" applies. The difference couldn't be clearer. It's just unfortunate that they use the same words as us, but to mean something quite different.
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