The Essence Of Socialism
Socialism and American life. Edited
by Donald Drew Egbert and Stow Persons.
Princeton University Press. 2 vols., 790 pp. and 589 pp. $10.00 per vol., $17.50 the set.
Socialism has been preached and practiced in America under many guises. First there was the vogue of small model communities—like Oneida, New Harmony, Brook Farm—set up in the wilderness, and dedicated to the task of realizing a vision of fraternal cooperation in perfect unity and equality. Then came Marxism with its emphasis on the class struggle, the grievances and demands of urban labor, and the historical necessity of anti-capitalist revolution. Still later, the emergence of totalitarianism in Soviet Russia caused a split between Stalinists and democratic Marxists. In addition to these main variants of American socialism, there were many other shadings—anarcho-syndicalism, “bread and butter” trade unionism, liberal socialism of an academic tinge, and so on. One feels that there has been some common element in all these currents, regardless of all differences in basic outlook as well as in practical orientation. But it is not easy to spell out the reason for this feeling of a common, “American” inspiration behind such extremely dissimilar ventures as, say, New Harmony on the one hand, and the American Socialist party or, for that matter, the Communist party of America, on the other. Both “utopian” socialism and Marxism in America are different from their European counterparts and originals. I do not mean that there is necessarily a conscious difference in doctrines and principles. The American Communists function as an appendage of the Moscow center and manifest not the slightest independence or originality. But, unlike most of the European Communist parties, they are not, and never have been, a party with a spontaneous, “class-conscious” mass following. And the same is true of the democratic, or “Social Democratic” wing of American Marxism, which, unlike its European counterpart, has always been a marginal, sectarian affair cut off from the mainstream of political life. What is it in the American political, social, and cultural climate that prevents socialism from playing a role in it analogous to that of European socialism?
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In search of an answer, we turn to a monumental, supposedly exhaustive, two-volume study of American socialism that was published last year at Princeton, Socialism in American Life. Its first volume consists of essays by various hands on various aspects of the subject; the second of an annotated bibliography.
A magnificent chapter, by Daniel Bell, on Marxian socialism in the United States amounts to an exhaustive clinical study of the decay of Marxism on American soil. The main reason for the failure of Marxism as a functioning political movement in the United States has been, as Mr. Bell sees it, its inability to solve the problem of living “in but not of the world.” The socialist movement in America “could not relate itself to the specific problems of social action in the here-and-now, give-and-take political world.” Wedded to an ethical postulate, the movement did not succeed in bridging the gap between ethics and practical politics.
This, it seems to me, really goes to the heart of the matter. A typical pattern in American life, recurring in many contexts, is that ethical goals and principles get in the way of effective, day-to-day political action. As a result, either principles or practice suffer, and the alternative becomes ineffectual, abstract “idealism,” or unprincipled “opportunism.” It is not that Americans tend to swing between an excess of idealism, on one hand, and of cynicism, on the other, but that American idealists typically expect their ideals to be attained automatically by the spontaneous banding together at the grass-roots level, of people who agree with them. For the American, a hierarchically structured, power- and pressure-oriented group devoted to idealistic human ends is a contradiction in terms. For the European, it is not. Hence, in Europe, hyper-idealistic, Utopian definitions of ultimate socialist goals did not prevent the creation of rigidly disciplined mass organizations that worked to attain finite, immediate aims. In America, however, as Bell shows, American socialists, while setting themselves grandiose economic and political objectives, refused to descend into the economic and political arena where actual struggles were waged for actual gains. It was inevitable that the mass of people refused to follow them and chose, instead, leaders and organizations that did so descend.
The “class” organizations of American labor, interested in economic gains, discovered that success depended on political neutrality; thus the unions learned to shun identification with any political party. At the same time, American political parties discovered that their own success depended on not being identified with any social class. The American socialist parties, functioning only as class parties, lost all purpose and, degenerating into debating societies, preserved a semblance of vitality only in a few large cities. The fatal mechanism of this process emerges with clarity from Bell’s pages.
Still, this explanation would have gained in depth, I think, if the contrasting development of the European Marxist movements had been traced, at least in outline. The book does contain a chapter by Harry W. Laidler on European socialism since 1848, but whenever he stops shrilly crying in triumph at “socialism on the march,” he offers nothing but a rehash of socialist party programs and of the debates between Kautsky, Bernstein, and other venerable figures. We learn nothing about the actual political roles played by socialist parties in European countries, nothing about the challenges they faced and how they met them.
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The historical contributions to the book—Stow Persons on “Christian Communitarianism in America,” T. D. Seymour Bassett on “Secular Utopian Socialists,” and Daniel Bell’s essay—taken together, give an impression of diversity, without a common core, a defining principle of socialism as such, emerging from them. There are, however, a number of more analytical papers that attempt, repeatedly, to establish a basic principle common to all shades of “socialism” and in terms of which we can distinguish socialists from non-socialists. Of course, the contributors differ among themselves, but, as I have said, there is at least some convergence towards a definition, a dominant leitmotiv that for the authors seems to be the prototype.
We first meet with this criterion for “socialism” in the Introduction, where the editors, having duly acknowledged the extraordinary variety of socialist creeds and methods, try to boil down, in one brief formula, their basic common premise. This, they say, is “the belief that only through some form of collective organization, some form of collective action, can the individual come nearest to fulfilling his potentialities.” This idea is amplified by Professor George W. Hartmann, who writes of “the psychology of American socialism” that:
. . . socialism is distinctive in that its psychological essence lies in its espousal of an all-embracing plan of organization for meeting the basic needs of the persons included within its scope. Its conscious aim, by contrast with non-socialist systems, is to inventory and catalogue the major wants of mankind and then to plan the structure and functions of the whole economy around them. All people require an optimum amount of nutrition; ergo, the collectivity, whether a demonstration ‘colony,’ a vast empire, or even a unified world state, ultimately assumes the responsibility for seeing that such food is provided to the citizens. In principle, every evolving need (no matter how elaborate, provided it is common to enough members) can be most effectively met by the advanced pattern of cooperation which socialism represents and advocates.
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Another variant of the “criterion” is provided by David F. Bowers in a chapter on the socialist philosophy of history:
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In essence the socialist solution to the problem of historical ends consists of three assertions. One of these is that the goal of history is the intellectual, moral, and physical perfecting of the individual. Another is that realization of the goal will be brought about, and indeed can only be brought about, by some form of collectivized society. According to the third, this goal will actually be reached within a definite period of time.
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Bowers’ definition is the best, tersely adumbrating the Utopia that actually gives all socialist thinking about the meaning and direction of history its distinctive coloring. The editors’ definition is so general and noncommittal as to be useless: after all, how could any individual come nearest or even second-nearest to realizing his potentialities, except through “some sort of” collective organization and action? Hartmann’s version, on the other hand, has special distinction: it reproduces with terrible fidelity all the clichés that dog—not every school of socialist thought—but the kind of socialism now popular in many American intellectual circles. All the non sequiturs, the evasions of basic problems and the question-begging, dogmatic arrogance that distinguish this kind of thinking, are present.
Socialism, as we see, becomes essentially a technical problem. A set of “data”—that is, a complete inventory of “needs”—determines, all by itself, the distribution of all goods and advantages. No matter how much “needs” may conflict—within the same individual, and between one individual and group and another —we do not have to worry: when the “needs” are put through the wringer, nothing but “advanced cooperation” can come out. That we shall also have plenty and freedom goes without saying; after all, the economic machinery is structured “around” needs, and what does man need more than plenty and freedom? The question whether we shall have what we need is solved by a definition. That freedom is rigorously ruled out the very moment we adopt this technological image of the good society does not bother this kind of socialist intellectual. He sees no problems of human choice because, for him, nothing exists but depersonalized, inventorized, neutral “needs” among which an impersonal machine can make a choice. Let us only take away man’s humanity and he will not want or fight for his freedom.
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Not all the authors represented in the volume show this lack of sensitivity to the problem of freedom under socialism. The essays by Sidney Hook and Will Herberg are particularly good; they see the preservation of freedom as the foremost task of the socialist planner. Both writers, shocked profoundly by the dreadful excesses of Soviet totalitarianism, wish to purge the Marxian doctrine of those elements in it which invite totalitarian use or misuse. For them it is not enough to define socialism as a system that automatically satisfies all needs, including that for freedom; they call for explicit guarantees that would safeguard democratic freedoms under any socialist system.
Unfortunately, Herberg and Hook, too, seem to take it for granted that the problem is merely whether one wants to preserve freedom under socialism, and not whether one can do so. I think there are some very serious sociological reasons for doubting this—reasons that have nothing to do either with hasty generalizations from the Soviet case, or with the usual type of laissez-faire apologetics. At the same time I recognize that serious arguments can be made for the socialist side. It would, perhaps, have been too much to ask that a really searching and critical discussion of the problem of the possibility of freedom under integral socialism be included in a work of this kind—but was it necessary to ignore the problem altogether?
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Socialism will inevitably become an essentially technological proposition if we accept the formulation of the socialist principle that prevails in the work under discussion: namely, that socialism is fundamentally concerned with establishing a type of society that will enable its members to “satisfy their needs” or “realize their potentialities.” It seems to me that the choice of this criterion obscures insight into the nature and meaning of socialism as a historical, cultural, and social phenomenon. Not that the initiators of socialist movements, or their followers, would have disagreed with the principle so formulated. Statements of it abound in the history of socialism. The important thing to realize is, however, that socialist thinking and action are not articulated the way this “criterion” suggests. They do not start from premises about “individual needs” and proceed to devise the “means” required to satisfy them. The socialist principle is not a kind of syllogism reading: we know that human beings have such and such needs; ergo, we shall make such and such arrangements to satisfy them. Socialism, as a political and cultural phenomenon, was not born from this kind of speculation, but, in every case, from indignation, rather, at the actual state of society, and indignation in particular at the role and behavior of a privileged minority. Men have become socialists, whether as initiators or as followers, after discovering the fact of the “iniquitous appropriation,” by the few, of the basic goods, spiritual and material, that ought by right to be shared by all. The distinctive trait of all socialism, Utopian and “scientific,” religious and atheistic, anarchist and statist, is the conviction that the key problem of society is constituted by the existence or non-existence of “iniquitous appropriation.” All the socialist expectations of unbounded plenty, unlimited freedom, and unblemished physical, moral, and intellectual perfection are logically tied to this basic postulate. Without iniquitous appropriation, there can be no evil on earth—this is the socialist principle.
It is not hard to see why the historically potent, negative, explosive, and original principle of socialism has been replaced by a pale and neutral derivative in this academic discussion of socialism. In its original, historic form the socialist principle is too value-laden to permit really “scientific” treatment. We must reformulate it in terms of purely factual, neutral, uncontroversial “data.” But this original principle of socialism is too “controversial” in a political sense, too. Most of the actual, historical evidence we have goes against it: the elimination, on the Marxist pattern, of “iniquitous appropriation” has completely failed to insure the disappearance of evil from society.
There is no doubt that, from a public-relations point of view, the harmless, bowdlerized, academic definition of socialism given in Socialism in American Life is more useful than the old slogans and articles of faith that have inspired socialist movements throughout history. “Socialism,” in the hands of the Princeton contributors, has surely achieved respectability. And just as surely, it has lost its historical identity, its stark cataclysmic appeal, its soul.
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