Przeworski: Socialism Is Freedom

The Marxist take

"[A]utomation, accumulation, and independence of want-satisfaction from labor--constitute the necessary conditions for the liberation of labor, a double liberation simultaneously from toil and from scarcity."

Once again, the pronunciation is “Shaworski.” The writer I am trying to channel is Adam Przeworski, associated with “analytical Marxism,” a school of thought to which I will return. My priors in regard to the economics are jaundiced. AP is a political philosopher and is still around, at Johns Hopkins Uni. I reread the postscript to his “Capitalism and Social Democracy,” and it’s kind of a revelation to me. It’s brief and not hard to find online as a PDF, for free. I never thought about Marx in this way.

An interesting thought from AP is a difference between the objectives of social-democracy and the struggle for political power. The political focus turns militants into politicians. The struggle to take over and run public bureaucracy turns socialists into bureaucrats. He contrasts the quest for power with wholesome bread-and-butter pursuits, such as the formation of cooperatives. I don’t see a difference: those on the ground activities are part and parcel of the broader movement, and the movement, including socialists in government, is the sum of those parts. A lurking idea is that the decentralized actions are superior to socialists taking political power. There is an anarchist or syndicalist thread in there, one not really defended as such.

Both Lenin and his opposite number, Edward Bernstein of the German socialist movement, were obsessed with political power. Bernstein wanted to take over capitalist government institutions, Lenin wanted to smash them.

The basic distinction is between reformism and social-democracy, on the one side, and socialism in its deepest, Marxian sense. In a nutshell, socialism properly conceived is about the liberation of, and from, Labor. None would be constrained by mutual obligation. No “he who does not work, neither shall he eat” rubbish. The objective is not equality; it is freedom. All would be free to play with little green army men, go fishing all day, or invent medical breakthroughs.

I would insist that this arguably utopian outlook is valuable. It offers a direction towards which to strive. I’ve been arguing that democratic socialism is a journey. Przeworski is saying it is not pointed in the same direction as Socialism, though it has virtues in and of itself, and superior alternatives are lacking. The dilemma is that improving capitalism, or reformism, or social-democracy, need not lead to socialism. His purpose is to keep the ideal in mind.

The Yippies with their slogan of “Free everything” had a handle on this. So does Michael Harrington, in his suggestion at the end of the book I’ve been writing about that socialism entails the end of Money. Where MH would go awry, by Przeworski, is in the expectation that progressive reforms, even those conducive to material abundance, would get us there.

AP takes a skeptical view of evolutionary socialism. (He describes pessimism as “informed optimism.”) Reforms need not cumulate to socialism. Reforms’ accomplishments are reversible. Reformism conduces to bureaucratic organization, it demobilizes the partisan masses, and it is not immune to new problems. The underlying message is that social-democracy is worthwhile, in and of itself, but it is not Socialism, nor does progress towards more of it necessarily lead to Socialism.

The German Social Democratic Party found this out, to its chagrin. Their burgeoning movement, especially in the powerful trade unions, became drunk on its own success, winning valuable concessions from Capitalism. We see many of these in the present day, such as the eight-hour day, different types of regulation, the ban on child labor, the minimum wage, social insurance, and so on. Eventually its success led to its downfall, blocking with the government in the first world war, then leading a failed governance that cleared the decks for the Nazis.

Socialism is not about that, by AP. Full employment, economic equality, and a growing public sector can be good things, but socialism by Marx is mostly about the freedom to forego labor, and still get what you need (subject to aggregate economic constraints), to escape from Alienation. Besides the abolition of wage labor, really any work one is liable to reject for its failure to bring inherent satisfaction, there is also the priority of collective rationality, not a trivial concern in this era of climate change. That said, it is easy to see why the average person would consider social-democracy more plausible, and more immediately valuable in material terms, than Socialism in the grand, ideal sense.

AP fears that failure to slay the dragon of profit-seeking would infect an enlarged public sector fixated on economic growth. Government would be run like a well-run business. Again, it’s not that growth would necessarily be bad, it’s that it would not make us Free. AP’s vision also contrasts with what has been described (including by myself) as a ‘producerist’ bias in the labor movement (and at my old workplace, the Economic Policy Institute). My buddy Chip Berlet used to rant about ‘producerism’ with regard to to populism, a former distraction of mine, with its implicit disdain for paupers disconnected from the labor market.

I do not share AP’s skepticism. I think there is more potential in evolutionary socialism than his wet blanket affords. The struggle for political power entails winning and consolidating concessions. But he makes a good case, and there is some implied guidance. A problem here is the lurking assumption that all distasteful work would be automated. At some point the utopianism is carried too far, and socialism passes from ideal to fantasy.

Full employment and redistribution raise incomes, and money gives people a wider range of choice. So do the reduction of inequality and a shorter work week. Money and more free time expand freedom, if not all the way to a capital F. Social progress breeds contentment, but it also proves more of it is feasible. Institutionalized reforms can be reversed, but it is not easy, witness the durability of ObamaCare. In any case, this is the way of democratic socialism. Finally, the specter of Barbarism that confronts us still makes social-democracy the essential, urgent alternative.