Democratic Socialism: False Friend of the Working Class
In his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Programme, Karl Marx took aim at what he considered to be a particularly pathetic current within the contemporary workers’ movement: a “kind of democratism” which “keeps within the limits of what is permitted by the police and not permitted by logic”. He saw in this current’s demands “nothing beyond the old democratic litany familiar to all: universal suffrage, direct legislation, popular rights, a people’s militia, etc”. Now, a century and a half later, we are confronted with that same litany – one which is even more absurd today than in Marx’s time, given how thoroughly capitalism and bourgeois democracy, its characteristic political form, have revolutionized the world.
We are referring here to “democratic socialism”. Those who subscribe to this fundamentally petty-bourgeois ideology are very sensitive to the deficiencies of bourgeois democracy. Where it promises freedom and equality, they see unfreedom and inequality; where it promises rule by the people, they see rule by a tiny minority; where it promises emancipation for minorities, they see oppression. In a word, they are disappointed with the results of existing–that is to say bourgeois – democracy. Their solution to this is simple, if banal: more democracy is needed. Instead of questioning exactly what democracy itself entails, and whether it is really a one-size fits-all panacea for the world’s problems, they simply assume that these problems are due to a lack of democracy, that the form of democracy which currently exists is not real democracy.
In his Conspectus of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy, Marx informs us that «[e]lection is a political form present in the smallest Russian commune and artel. The character of the election does not depend on this name, but on the economic foundation, the economic situation of the voters…”. Lenin takes up the same theme in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, where he castigates the titular opportunist for his invocation of “pure” democracy:
“If we are not to mock at common sense and history, it is obvious that we cannot speak of ‘pure democracy’ as long as different classes exist; we can only speak of class democracy… ‘Pure democracy’ is the mendacious phrase of a liberal who wants to fool the workers. History knows of bourgeois democracy which takes the place of feudalism, and of proletarian democracy which takes the place of bourgeois democracy».
Currently, the vast majority of the world lives under some version or another of bourgeois democracy: that is, a democratic regime suited to the needs and interests of the bourgeoisie, the class which enjoys ownership over the means of production. By extending political rights to the whole population and enfranchising the masses, the bourgeoisie ensures the continuation of its class rule. To put the matter simply: in a society without any a priori political privilege, those with economic power inevitably rule. For this very reason the bourgeoisie, in its great revolutions against the Ancien Régime, swept away the political privileges of lords and kings, and in doing so, it put the citizen in place of the feudal subject.
The equality of citizens is only the political reflection of the economic relations upon which bourgeois society is founded. In this society, individuals confront one another as owners of commodities, i.e., of private property in the form of products destined for exchange. They are free, in that they voluntarily swap their commodities in order to meet their own needs; and they are equal, in that they meet in their capacity as commodity-owners and trade commodities of equal value. Here, in the relation of commodity exchange that constitutes the basis for capitalist production, all distinctions of social rank and traditional privilege are razed. There are only commodity-owners.
In Capital, Marx has demonstrated that the exploitation and enslavement of labor-power is perfectly compatible with this free and equal exchange of commodities. The worker sells his labor-power for wages; he and the capitalist exchange their respective commodities on the market, with no extra-economic coercion required. But labor-power has a special use-value: when consumed, it can create new Value. In fact, it creates more Value than is required for its own maintenance and reproduction. This is the source of capitalist wealth. At the end of the whole process, the laborer – once he has exchanged his wages for food, clothing, rent and other essentials – is left with nothing but his ability to work (or his labor-power), as before. He must once again sell this paltry commodity if he is to survive. The capitalist, meanwhile, has been furnished with the product of the laborer which, when sold on the market, returns to him not only with an equivalent for the variable capital (wages) he has advanced, but also with surplus-value that can be used to command more labor.
This is how the freedom and equality of commodity-owners transform dialectically into their opposites, the exploitation and enslavement of some by others. As Marx puts it:
«… [T]he laws of appropriation or of private property, laws that are based on the production and circulation of commodities, become by their own inner and inexorable dialectic changed into their very opposite».
It is little wonder, then, that in constructing their preferred political order the bourgeoisie did not need to resort to the crude system of political privileges that characterized the feudal State. Freedom and equality are by no means incompatible with bourgeois production – indeed, the latter actually presupposes them as its basis. Hence the citizen, this abstract designation stripped of all differentiation of rank, steadily replaced the lords, serfs and slaves of the pre-capitalist order. In their capacity as citizens, individuals from all classes – at least in the classical form of bourgeois politics – are permitted to vote, that is, to participate in the bourgeoisie’s rule. They select the personnel who will administer the bourgeois State, a State whose fundamental mission, the defense of private property and capital, is never up for debate.
Democracy «changes every time the Demos changes» (Engels), or, in other words, every time the economic and social situation of the voters changes. The demos, in a typical capitalist society, embraces the entire adult population. But within this population the ruling economic force, hence the ruling intellectual force as well, is the bourgeoisie itself. Its command over the means of production grants it command over the means of mental production as well; and so, «generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it». And since bourgeois democracy abhors special political privileges, that is, it treats every member of society as an abstract “citizen”, it is only natural that those with economic privileges rise to dominate the positions of rule. They have the time, money and resources to do so, and after all «[t]he ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas». Plus, the State machine itself cannot be viewed in isolation from the economic power of the bourgeoisie since it depends upon the accumulation of capital for its own power, a power which it wields to safeguard that very same accumulation. The State is an organ for the exercise of bourgeois class rule, and the democratic forms it takes do not change this fundamental fact.
As Lenin writes: «Kautsky the Marxist historian has never heard that the form of elections, the form of democracy, is one thing, and the class content of the given institution is another».
Thus, throughout history the democratic mechanism has been employed by various ruling classes, from Athenian slaveholders to Roman patricians to the modern bourgeoisie, as an instrument of rule. The mere form of democracy in no way guarantees the rule of any class – its outcome depends on the «the economic foundation, the economic situation of the voters» (Marx, Conspectus of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy).
Thus the State, for the individuals enmeshed within bourgeois relations, is viewed as a means to certain ends – ends which the State itself imposes upon them, for example, the need to dispose of private property in order to satisfy one’s needs. And all the while, its actual purpose, to safeguard the conditions for continued accumulation of capital, remains unchallenged. The State, after all, is the association of the bourgeoisie against the other classes. The cry against, for example, the corruption of corporate lobbying only reveals a complete ignorance of this class nature of the State. The latter relies upon the success of the capitalist economy for its own power, and makes use of democracy as a means to this end. Where democracy fails to produce the required docility, rare as this is, recourse can always be had to naked force. Violence is not in contradiction with democracy, but is its necessary complement; where the scalpel fails, the hammer will suffice.
We mentioned above that Marx demonstrated how economic freedom and equality can transform into their opposites: un-freedom and inequality. But those who accept this insight in the field of economics often remain curiously unwilling to apply it to politics. They do not realize that elections based on free, fair and universal suffrage can serve as instruments of class rule because of the economic relations within which they are intertwined. They cannot see that democracy is «not a ‘principle’, but rather a simple mechanism of organization, responding to the simple and crude arithmetical presumption that the majority is right and the minority is wrong» (“The Democratic Principle”), that its character «does not depend on this name [i.e., democracy], but on the economic foundation, the economic situation of the voters». This economic situation, as determined by the prevailing mode of production, dictates the content of the democracy in question. Hence the democratic “mechanism of organization” has demonstrated its compatibility with social formations as distinct as the Athenian slaveholding State, peasant village assemblies and proletarian trade unions.
Our tendency wrote in 1920: «Bourgeois electoral democracy seeks the consultation of the masses, for it knows that the response of the majority will always be favorable to the privileged class and will readily delegate to that class the right to govern and to perpetuate exploitation. It is not the addition or subtraction of the small minority of bourgeois voters that will alter the relationship. The bourgeoisie governs with the majority, not only of all the citizens, but also of the workers taken alone».
It should be clear, then, that a “pure”, “true” or “real” democracy does not exist and has never existed; rather, the nature of a given democracy is determined by the economic foundation upon which it develops. And this, in turn, should demonstrate why “more” democracy will not solve the problems created by the capitalist mode of production. Quite the reverse: it is only by depriving the ruling class of its political rights, by using its untrammeled political supremacy to upend the existing economic relations, that the working class will succeed in remedying these ills.
This is not to say that, within the proletariat’s methods of organizing itself, there can be no use for democratic mechanisms. Situations may arise in the course of the revolutionary struggle which demand democratic consultation of the class, or of specific parts of the class. But to ascribe an innate value to democracy is to tie the proletariat’s hands in advance, to limit it arbitrarily to a particular mechanism of organization, to deprive it of the tactical versatility it will require in order to prevail in its conquest for power. There may come moments in the life-and-death struggle with the bourgeoisie when the proletariat must trust its leading element (i.e., the party) to act without consulting the masses, such as during military emergencies, instances when the majority of the class has been deceived by bourgeois propaganda, etc. To refuse, in principle, to allow for any deviation from the democratic mechanism of organization is to paralyze the revolution in advance. Communists evaluate democracy as a means to the end of a complete revolution in the social mode of production – nothing more, nothing less.
There can be no question at all, meanwhile, of extending democratic rights to the bourgeoisie under the dictatorship of the proletariat. We have seen that, on the basis of the capitalist mode of production, equality of political rights between classes is precisely what reproduces and sustains the present state of things; it is the arrangement which corresponds to the interests of the bourgeoisie as the economically dominant class. In order to overthrow this mode of production, therefore, the proletariat must deprive its enemy of its political rights and ensure that the workers alone wield power; it must privilege itself against the bourgeoisie.
One question remains for us to answer: if the demand for “pure” democracy, or more democracy, in the abstract does not emanate from the revolutionary proletariat, then what is the class basis of this demand? Or, as Lenin might have put it: who stands to gain?
The Petty Bourgeoisie: Labor’s Executioner
The petty bourgeoisie occupies a peculiar position within capitalist society. Caught between the ruling class and the class of wage-slaves, its individual members are constantly threatened with class destruction. It competes hopelessly against the big bourgeoisie, which, with its larger capitals and grip on State power, is perpetually fated to win, and cast the petty proprietors down into the ranks of the working class, in short, to expropriate them from above. While the bourgeois State, as the most advanced fighting organization of its class, may have an interest in maintaining a stratum of petty proprietors in order to blunt the proletariat’s antagonistic relationship with the bourgeoisie, it can only do this in spite of this ceaseless centralization of capital. On the other hand, the petty bourgeoisie is threatened with expropriation from below, that is, by a revolutionary movement of the proletariat against the relations of private property upon which the existence of the petty bourgeoisie is based. Too weak to challenge the bourgeoisie on its own, it must constantly try to dupe the proletariat into supporting its demands. But as soon as the proletariat begins to feel its own strength and fight for its own demands, the petty bourgeoisie is bound by its interest in the preservation of property to betray the workers at the critical moment. This is the pattern of vacillation displayed by the so-called middle class throughout history, a pattern which arises from its precarious position between the two great classes of modern society.
Moderation, adherence to an ideal of bourgeois society, is thus what the petty bourgeois wants most. The petty bourgeois wants private property, but of a moderate size; he wants competition, but of a moderate intensity; he wants workers, but docile ones; in a word, he wants capitalist society without its necessary consequences, consequences which threaten his petty-bourgeois existence. He is thus not only an arch-reactionary but an enemy of the working class, because he is an enemy of the socialization and concentration of productive forces which constitute capitalism’s great contribution to social progress and which provide the basis for the future communist society.
It is therefore no surprise that, in the sphere of political ideology, the petty bourgeoisie’s demands appeal to a “pure” democratic ideal, a form of democracy which has never and will never exist. Perversely, it condemns actually existing democracy as fake while extolling an ideal democracy as real or authentic. It reveres the ideological reflection of bourgeois society, the image it maintains of itself, as a refuge from the precarious position it really occupies.
«The peculiar character of social-democracy – Marx writes in the Eighteenth Brumaire – is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided».
Democratic socialism, as the modern heir to the tradition known in Marx’s time as social democracy, fully exhibits these same tendencies. It seeks more democracy, pure and true democracy, because «the special conditions of [the petty bourgeoisie’s] emancipation» – i.e., the contradictory need for a capitalist society shorn of its necessary threats and antagonisms – demand it. And because the petty bourgeoisie is too weak to extract meaningful concessions from the bourgeoisie on its own, it must enlist the proletariat in its cause. Hence the democratic socialists advertise their pipe-dream of a renovated capitalism to the workers, promising them that their sufferings are due to a lack of democracy and that “real” democracy will put power in their hands. Instead of organizing on their own class terrain for their own demands, workers are encouraged to join in inter-classist campaigns for universal healthcare, higher taxes on the rich, nationalization of industries, abolition of the Senate, universal basic income, etc. All of these measures, as Marx points out, aim merely at diluting the antagonism between capital and labor, keeping the workers docile enough to be exploited sustainably and the big capitalists too weak to expropriate their smaller cousins. Above all, the petty bourgeois is concerned with maintaining his ever-threatened position, by hook or by crook.
Communism versus Democratic Socialism
If democratic socialism is concerned with weakening the antagonisms inherent in capitalism, and therefore preserving the existence of the petty bourgeoisie and bourgeois society itself, communism is concerned with sharpening those antagonisms and bringing them to their historical conclusion: the overthrow of the ruling class by the working class. The proletariat has no stake in bourgeois society, which rests upon the ruthless exploitation of its class. On the contrary, it can only liberate itself by abolishing bourgeois society and its material foundations.
The same cannot be said of the petty bourgeoisie, who want more than anything to maintain their position within this society. That is the source of their magnetic attraction to democratic socialism, which promises a harmony achieved without the destruction of the present social relations or of the petty bourgeoisie as a class. What this ideology amounts to is a pious wish: an inane positing of the ideal expression of bourgeois society against its dirty reality, of “pure” democracy against democracy in its social reality. It is a fantastical attempt to perfect bourgeois society, to eat one’s cake and have it too, whereas the revolutionary proletariat seeks to abolish this society. The ideology of democratic socialism bursts like a soap bubble upon the slightest contact with the real world.
Democracy, on the foundation of bourgeois production relations, has given us the world we see today – the very same world which the democratic socialists condemn as undemocratic. In order to change this world, democracy will not be enough; no simple “mechanism of organization” can guarantee the success of a revolution in the social relations of mankind. Rather, what is needed is a proletarian revolution, one which deprives the bourgeoisie of all participation in political life and uses its dictatorial grip on power to abolish by force the basis for capitalist exploitation. This will not take place until the proletariat has learned to stand on its own two feet and fight for its own class objectives; until, in other words, it has freed itself from the distracting influence of the petty bourgeoisie and its ideologues, who want only to enlist workers as deluded foot soldiers. The democratic socialists are prime examples of such ideologues, and therefore, in addition to being wrong, are harmful to the workers’ movement. The practical experience of the failures of the present workers’ movement will inevitably compel workers to gain this theoretical consciousness and sever ties with the petty bourgeoisie and its organizations. The practical experience of the consequential success of the workers’ movement will ensure that the petty bourgeoisie will never regain its hold upon that movement, so long as the workers stay true to their own independent position, that of communism.