perspective
Re-Envisioning Socialism
prabhat patnaik
The quest for human freedom
requires a transcendence of
capitalism. What is important,
however, is the overall vision
that we have of the socialism that
will emerge, one which accords
centrality to human freedom,
which remains continuously
“open” and untainted by
ossification in any form, and
which constitutes an unleashing
of democracy and a perennial
engagement of the people with
politics.
This is a slightly revised text of the Alam
Khundmiri memorial lecture delivered at
Hyderabad on September 21, 2007. I wish to ex-
press non-incriminating thanks to Anil Bhatti,
Margit Koves, Rajendra Prasad, Utsa Patnaik,
Javeed Alam, Prasenjit Bose and Jyotirmoy
Bhattacharya for their comments on an earlier
draft of this lecture.
Economic & Political Weekly  November 3, 2007
S
ocialism, and economic liberalism,
paradoxically share the same intel-
lectual origin, namely Adam Smith’s
idea of bourgeois society as a self-acting,
self-driven economic order.1 Any restriction
placed on the functioning of this order
by meddlesome sovereigns or govern-
ments is at best futile and at worst perni-
cious since it destroys the coherence of its
functioning. Adam Smith saw this order
as being in conformity with the laws of na-
ture, and, in its consequences, benign and
productive of “progress”, in the sense of
an augmentation of the “wealth of na-
tions”. He and his followers therefore
drew the implicit conclusion that nothing
lay beyond capitalism, that we had come
to the end of history. As Marx was to say of
classical political economy (1976: 174): “…
there has been history, but there is no
longer any”.2
The Case for Socialism
While accepting the fact however that
bourgeois society constitutes a self-acting,
self-driven order, if we see this order ana-
lytically not as being benign and produc-
tive of progress, but as being antagonistic
and exploitative, giving rise to the growth
of wealth at one pole and of misery at an-
other, then the quest for human freedom,
precisely because government interven-
tion cannot mend it, must require a tran-
scendence of this order. The same “spon-
taneity” (to use Oskar Lange’s (1963)
term) which underlies the bourgeois eco-
nomic order and constitutes the case for
economic liberalism if its consequences
are seen to be benign, gives rise to the
very opposite conclusion, of the need for a
revolutionary overthrow of this order, if its
consequences are seen as destructive and
de-humanising.
This of course was Marx’s argument.
His case for socialism was “scientific”
in the sense that it took classical politi-
cal economy as its starting point but came
to different conclusions precisely by
re-examining classical questions at great-
er depth. It did not entail placing a capital-
ist and an imaginary socialist order side
by side and establishing the comparative
superiority of the latter; it did not entail
asking questions like: “what is the justifi-
cation for a separate group of persons, the
capitalists, earning profits, when the
society could function just as well if the
means of production are collectively
3
owned?”. In short, it did not make out an
ethical case for socialism, a case based on
an abstract extrinsic comparison between
systems on ethical grounds. True, it took
mankind’s quest for freedom as given, but
it showed that this quest necessarily
entailed going beyond capitalism. This is
also why Marxism must not be confused
with a theory of the inevitability of social-
ism.4 To say that the quest for freedom
cannot be satisfied within capitalism is not
the same as saying that socialism is inevi-
table. The matter in short is one of praxis,
not of prediction.
Marx’s argument however was not just
this; it went deeper. Capitalism is inimical
to human freedom not just because it
spontaneously produces wealth at one
pole and misery at another as a condition
for its self-reproduction, and not just be-
cause inequality, insecurity, and the non-
availability of the means to satisfy a cer-
tain minimum level of material needs
(which may itself be changing over time),
all of which are conditions for freedom in
the sense of the realisation of one’s crea-
tive potential, are incapable of being
achieved under capitalism; it is inimical to
human freedom precisely because within
it mankind is trapped in a self-acting and
self-driven order where individuals be-
come the objects of external coercive forc-
es. This is true not just of workers, but
even of the capitalists whom Marx in
Capital (Volume I), described as “capital
personified”, that is, as human agents
through whom the immanent tendencies
of capital are mediated (1986: 555).
Not only is it the case that the outcome
of the functioning of the system is different
from the intentions of the individuals par-
ticipating in it, but these intentions them-
selves are neither a matter of individual
volition, nor autonomously sociologically
41
perspective
caused (like the desire to “keep up with
the Joneses”, etc). The very logic of the
functioning of the order imparts to the
different individuals specific motivations
which they can ignore at their own peril,
the peril of getting displaced from their
positions within the economic order. For
instance, a capitalist who chooses to opt
out of the Darwinian struggle of survival,
in which all capitalists are caught, will get
displaced as a capitalist; and so on.
In his discussion of commodity fetish-
ism, Marx had talked of the fact that social
relations within capitalism appeared as
the relations between things, and that the
outcome of social relations appeared as
the inherent property of things (such as
for instance the “fantastic” notion of
latter-day bourgeois economics that
profits arise because of the productivity
of “capital”, seen as a set of means of
production detached from its relational
aspect). In fact however his analysis went
further: human beings under capitalism
were actually indistinguishable from
things; human beings under capitalism
became “objectified”. Apropos Ricardo,
Marx (1975: 548) says:
In this conception, the workers themselves
appear as that which they are in capitalist
production – mere means of production,
not an end in themselves and not the aim of
production…Ricardo expressed these tenden-
cies consistently and ruthlessly. Hence much
howling against him on the part of philan-
thropic philistines.5
This “objectification” is different from,
though related to, “reification” and “alien-
ation”, both of which are phenomena
characterising capitalism. “Objectifica-
tion” refers neither to how things appear
under capitalism, nor to the fact of the
products of labour appearing in the
alienated form of capital; it refers to the
phenomenon of capitalism being a self-
driven self-acting order, in which the im-
manent tendencies of capital are mediated
through human beings, who therefore
cease to be subjects and are reduced to the
status of mere objects. This objectification
is a denial of freedom: capitalism is in-
compatible with human freedom because
it objectifies human beings. The case for
socialism is that it alone creates the condi-
tion for human freedom by overcoming
this objectification, for which a necessary
42
condition is the social ownership of the
means of production.
Ending Objectification tific as opposed to an ideological under-
The above argument for socialism differs
in a basic sense from the arguments
usually advanced in favour of socialism.
And it is important to emphasise this dif-
ference because from these different argu-
ments different visions of socialism follow.
The usual arguments are of two kinds:
“productivist” arguments and “distri­
butivist” arguments. Let us consider the
former. A very common argument for
socialism is that it carries forward the
development of productive forces which at
a certain stage gets arrested by the re­lations
of production characterising capitalism.
This “march-of-the-productive-forces” argu-
ment for socialism can at first sight derive
sustenance from several of Marx’s writ-
ings, notably his famous preface to A
Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy; but it represents a superficial
reading of Marx, especially when, as is
usually the case, “productive forces” are
defined exclusively in material terms. This
superficial reading which informs a good
deal of current official Chinese literature on
socialism, was epitomised by the former
Soviet prime minister Alexei Kosygin’s
remark that socialism was synonymous
with a 7 per cent growth rate! 6
Marx did not see productive forces ex-
clusively in material terms. And his re-
mark that a mode of production becomes
obsolete when it has developed the pro-
ductive forces to the highest level it is ca-
pable of, should not be given a crude and
exclusively material interpretation. This is
borne out by his own statement in The
Poverty of Philosophy (1976: 211): “Of all
the instruments of production the greatest
productive power is the revolutionary
class itself. The organisation of revolution-
ary elements as a class supposes the exist-
ence of all the productive forces which
could be engendered in the bosom of the
old society.” A “revolutionary proletariat”
in short is not just a productive force, but
represents the highest level of develop-
ment of the productive forces in a bour-
geois society.
This statement, however, is in keeping
with Marx’s perception of socialism as
essential for human freedom. The break
from the human condition of unfreedom
under capitalism, starts with our knowledge
of this unfreedom, i e, starts with a scien-
standing of the roots of this unfreedom.
“Freedom”, Engels had said in Anti-
Duhring echoing Hegel, “is the recognition
of necessity”. The immanent laws of
motion of the capitalist mode of produc-
tion constitute, in this context, this realm
of necessity. Freedom from these laws be-
gins with the knowledge of these laws and
culminates in the formation of a revolu-
tionary proletariat in which this knowl-
edge has developed to a point where it can
break into revolutionary praxis.
In the process of the development of
this knowledge, particular episodes in the
development of capitalism, such as crises
and stagnation, no doubt play an impor-
tant role, in providing practical proof of
the validity of this knowledge, but this is
not the same as saying that the existence
of crises and stagnation is what constitutes
the case for socialism or that there is some
final phase of stagnation which constitutes
the denouement for capitalism (which is
what Bernstein had interpreted Marx as
saying and which Lenin (1976: 402) had
explicitly attacked by saying that “there is
no such thing as an absolutely hopeless
situation” for capitalism).
The same goes for the “distributivist”
argument. While no doubt egalitarianism
and “distributive justice” cannot be
achieved under capitalism, and require
socialism for their realisation, they are not
synonymous with socialism, which, to
repeat, seeks to end the objectification of
human beings and constitutes a necessary
condition for human freedom.
Denial of Democracy
The objectification of individuals in bour-
geois society is not a matter relating exclu-
sively to the esoteric realm of the political
economy of such societies; it permeates
their very being. The realm of the eco-
nomic after all does not stand alone, in
isolation from the other realms; it is
embedded within the whole. The realisa-
tion of the immanent tendencies of capital
requires therefore that the functioning of
these other realms must also be in con-
formity with what is needed for such reali-
sation. The state in a bourgeois society, for
November 3, 2007   Economic & Political Weekly

instance, must be such that it aids the
realisation of its immanent tendencies. It
may of course under certain exceptional
circumstances, slow down such realisa-
tion in the interests of the system as a
whole, by placing temporary restrictions
upon it; but it cannot altogether prevent
the realisation of the immanent tendencies
of capital.
Anti-democratic
It is for this reason that bourgeois society
is fundamentally anti-democratic. Human
beings cannot be objects in the realm of
the economy and subjects in the realm of
the polity, save in very exceptional situa-
tions, which are invariably transitory,
where there is a disjunction between the
economy and the state.
To say that bourgeois society is funda-
mentally anti-democratic may appear odd
at first sight, since its own claim has always
been that it alone can guarantee demo­
cracy. But implicit in the notion of a self-
acting and self-driven economic order
functioning independently of human will
and consciousness, is not just a denial of
freedom but also a denial of democracy.
This denial however is camouflaged in
various ways. Formal bourgeois demo­
cracy invariably operates under layers and
layers of insulation against the possibility
of the people actually intervening actively
in the political process as subjects.
The process of putting in place of these
insulations becomes especially transpar-
ent in societies like ours for a specific rea-
son. Bourgeois democracy with universal
adult franchise was introduced in our
country shortly after independence itself,
prior to the consolidation of bourgeois
rule, unlike in countries like Britain and
France where universal adult franchise
came nearly three quarters of a century
after the climacteric marking the start of
the consolidation of bourgeois rule. The
pro­cess of consolidation of bourgeois rule
in countries like ours therefore requires,
as it were, a “counter-revolution” against
the existing democratic institutions and
practices. This counter-revolution of
course also entails inter alia a change in
the relationship between the big bour­
geoisie and imperialism, for without the
latter’s help the consolidation of bourgeois
rule cannot be carried out (one of the visible
Economic & Political Weekly  November 3, 2007
symptoms of this change at present being
the Indo-US Nuclear Agreement); but the
counter-revolution in the realm of demo­
cracy, involving efforts to snuff out the
poli­tical activism of the people, is quite
evident (with the judiciary, which is
neither directly nor indirectly accountable
to the people, playing a leading role in it).
The means of attenuation of democracy
in a bourgeois society are several: the first,
which Lenin had emphasised, is the ossifi-
cation of the state where the bureaucracy
and the standing army become the core of
the state apparatus, and the elected
govern­ments become increasingly orna-
mental. The second is the fragmentation
of the people into ethnic, linguistic, or
even religious groups, or even into sheer
atomised individuals incapable of collec-
tive praxis. (The invoking of Christian
fundamentalism on issues like abortion
and gay rights has been a potent weapon
in recent years in the hands of the Repu­
blican Right in the United States for ob-
taining majorities which have then been
used to serve corporate interests.) The
third is the denial of meaningful choices
to the electorate, since the agendas of the
dif­ferent political parties, each trying to
appease a middle class constituency in
thraldom to the bourgeois order, tend to
converge (a fact used with great effect of
late in India where the imperative of so-
called “development” has made parties
belonging to very different segments of
the political spectrum adopt almost
identical pro-capitalist policies).
Scant Respect
The very fact that despite the opposition
to the Iraq war by the majority of people in
each of the advanced capitalist countries
engaged in the war, the war still drags on,
shows the scant respect shown to popular
opinion in capitalist democracies; and a
major factor explaining this phenomenon
is the absence of any significant difference
among the political parties. The fourth is
the inculcation of insecurity among the
people, which encourages mutual distrust
among them, prevents united action and
creates a favourable ground for the main-
tenance of the status quo through vio-
lence. Given the fact that resistance, no
matter in what form, is ever-present in any
bourgeois society and its periphery, to
perspective
capitalist and imperialist exploitation, the
inculcation of such insecurity is by no
means difficult. One segment of the people
can always be made to feel insecure
through demonising another segment
which happens at the time to be engaged
in such actions of resistance. The fifth is
the deliberate promotion of mindlessness
among the people by the media and the
peddlers of popular culture. One can go
on listing such factors and much has been
written on this subject anyway. The basic
point is the incompatibility of authentic
democracy where the people are the po-
litical subjects with capitalism where they
are the objects.
Socialism, it follows, constitutes a nec-
essary condition for the authentic realisa-
tion of democracy. The proposition that
socialism and democracy are incompatible
is part of the propaganda of capitalism.
On the contrary, socialism which aims to
overcome the objectification of the people
in bourgeois society, is alone compatible
with democracy; it alone can create the
conditions for the full flowering of demo­
cracy. But more than that, socialism is the
full flowering of democracy, a proposition
which we shall examine later. Since the
claim that socialism and democracy are
incompatible is usually supported with
reference to the actual practice of former
socialist countries, a brief discussion of
that experience is in order here.
Actual Practice of Former
Old socialism came as a result of revolu-
tionary expediency, through seizing an
opportunity created by the war, in order
to save mankind from the barbarism of
that and other similar wars. It appeared in
a relatively backward country; it appeared
abruptly; it did not spread, as was origi-
nally expected, to other countries, espe-
cially to the relatively more advanced
countries; and it was encircled, and iso-
lated and had to fight for its very survival
against vastly superior forces throughout
its existence. As a communist character
puts it apropos the Soviet Union in Graham
Greene’s last great novel The Human Factor:
“My country has been at war since 1917”. It
is within this context of isolation, of des-
perate efforts to develop the productive
forces to overcome the challenge of encir-
clement, including increasingly from Nazi
43
perspective

44 November 3, 2007   Economic & Political Weekly


Germany, and of the estrangement from
the peasantry arising from this desperate
bid for raising the productive capacity of
the country, that the political institutions
of the Soviet State were formed. And these
institutionalised a dictatorship of the party
in the name of the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
True, this isolation of the Soviet Union
was overcome in the post-second world
war years when the socialist camp became
much larger, but the new entrants to this
camp were also relatively backward coun-
tries, and in the case of many even the
entry was a result of the Soviet Red Army’s
victorious march against Nazism. Far from
providing succour to the Soviet Union they
were often a source of strain on it; and far
from contributing to a reconfiguring of
Soviet political institutions, they themselves
imported the Soviet political “model”.
The fact that this “model” represented a
far cry from the vision of the Soviet State
which had informed the revolution is ob-
vious. On the eve of the revolution itself
Lenin had said: “we can at once set in
motion a state apparatus consisting of ten if
not twenty million people.”7 The vision
clearly was of a state that had got dis-
solved into the class itself; a state that
was an association of workers, vastly dif-
ferent from the bureaucratised, ossified
bourgeois state, where a tiny coterie of
persons takes crucial decisions behind
closed doors affecting the lives of millions
of people, without the people having any
say in the matter; a state that unleashed
the political praxis of the working class.
But the actual political institution that
came into being was a highly centralised
dictatorship of the party, which eventually
brought about a depoliticisation not only
of the working class but also of the party
itself (where, as we know in retrospect, a
person could become the general secretary
of the communist party of the Soviet Union
without believing in socialism).
Novel Objectification
To what extent this was the result of spe-
cific mistakes, or of “personality factors”,
whether, even within the constraints of
the circumstances, a different course
could have been taken, are matters that
need not detain us here. The basic point is
that old socialism, even while it overcame
Economic & Political Weekly  November 3, 2007
the “spontaneity” of capitalism, even
while it got rid of the old problem of capi-
talist “objectification”, ensured full em-
ployment, and set up the most gigantic
welfare state the world had even seen, in-
troduced a very different and altogether
novel form of objectification itself. The
sub­stitution of private ownership of the
means of production by state ownership
(which is supposed to express social own-
ership) and the accompanying substitu-
tion of commodity production by national
planning, may overcome bourgeois objec-
tification, but the only way that the people
can acquire the role of being subjects in a
socialist society is through political praxis.
(The old Yugoslav model, reminiscent of
the syndicalist position, which believed
that subjectivity can be restored to the
people in the realm of the economy itself,
by having worker-managed factories, did
not overcome commodity production and
hence bourgeois objectification.) The de-
politicisation of the working class meant
that this subject-role was never acquired
by the people. They escaped bourgeois ob-
jectification, but got trapped into another
kind of objectification in a society which
also had its own form of fetishism. This lat-
ter objectification is lucidly captured by Jean
Paul Sartre (1965) in his satirical remark:
“Budapest’s subway is in Rakosi’s mind; if
the subsoil does not allow it, then the sub-
soil must be counter-revolutionary!”
The foregoing must not detract in any
way from the enormous historic achieve-
ments of old socialism. Leaving aside what
it achieved internally in those societies
where it prevailed, it was responsible for
the defeat of fascism, for making possible
the entire process of decolonisation, and
for putting a check on the depredations of
imperialism for well over half a century.
As Joan Robinson used to say in her Cam-
bridge seminars, “we would not be sitting
here today but for the Soviet Union”.
Nonetheless, the fact remains that old
socialism was a product of its times.
Apart from anything else, the times
today are vastly different. For instance,
inter-imperialist rivalries which played
such an important role in Lenin’s think-
ing, are far more muted today. The
socia­list project today must be based on
very different foundations for this reason
at least, if not for the more basic reason
perspective
that the realisation of its vision of over-
coming the objectification of human be-
ings requires such a re-foundation.
Flowering of Democracy
Central to any such re-foundation must be
the people’s political praxis. Since authen-
tic democracy consists in unleashing this
praxis, socialism must be seen as the full
flowering of democracy. An economistic
perception of socialism as consisting
essentially in state ownership of the means
of production is not enough; socialism
must mean the unleashing of authentic
democracy in the sense of political praxis
of the people. This praxis is limited at any
time by lack of understanding of the con-
juncture. The role of the revolutionary
party is to provide this understanding.
The revolutionary party locates and opens
doors when no doors are visible. It points
the way forward for people’s political
praxis at every stage, so that the process of
unleashing of democracy, which consti-
tutes the essence of socialism, does not get
stymied. The role of the revolutionary
party is not to substitute itself for the peo-
ple, not to depoliticise them as a counter-
part of the establishment of its own dicta-
torship; it is on the contrary to politicise
them, to ensure that their political praxis
is not thwarted, by pointing at every stage
the way forward.
This however requires not just a right
set of institutions through which the rela-
tions between the party and the people,
the relations between the party and other
parties, etc, are mediated, but also the
right approach to Marxism. The old social-
ist view canonised Marxism, saw it as a
closed and complete system, which only had
to be grasped, like a religious text, through
perseverance, and “applied” to specific con-
texts. According to old socialism there was
a “thing” called Marxism (or rather Marx-
ism-Leninism, since Lenin too was canon-
ised in hyphenated splendour), and Mao
“applied” it to China, and we have to apply it
to India. This fundamentally erroneous atti-
tude has been a predominant characteristic
of a good deal of left thinking to this day.
It is erroneous because it arbitrarily
separates “theory” from its “applications”
and does not recognise that “application”
too is theory. It is erroneous because via
this separation it implicitly presents a
45
perspective
religious attitude to Marxism, as a closed
complete theory. It is erroneous because
it refuses to recognise the progress of
know­ledge which mankind acquires and
which should be a source of enrichment of
Marxism; instead it arbitrarily and unjusti-
fiably selects only those strands of the ad-
vance of knowledge which in its view sup-
port canonical Marxism, and treats the
rest as inconsequential if not reactionary.
And it is erroneous because in the process
it devalues theoretical endeavour on the
left, and discourages creativity. (The atti-
tude becomes: “Since Marx has said every-
thing of importance that there is to say,
what more can I say except simply finding
more evidence of his correctness?”.)
All this is usually sought to be justified
by saying that if we abandon the “texts”
then we will be in a world of theoretical
free-for-all which would stand in the way
of praxis. To believe this however is to be-
lieve that people cannot act except with
reference to canonical texts, i e, they can-
not act except when inspired by a religion,
which itself constitutes a fundamental
epistemological negation of socialism.
The people cannot acquire the role of
subjects in social and political life, if
they do not acquire the role of subjects
in the theoretical domain. To say this is
not to applaud half-educated cocky self-
assurance; it is simply to break the reli-
gious approach to Marxism, to treat it as
essentially an open system.
Understanding the Present
There is in other words at every moment
an attempt to understand the present
through a reconstruction of Marxism.8
Every attempt at understanding the present
is a theoretical endeavour, based not on an
“application” of a given closed set of doc-
trines, but a creative effort to reconstruct
Marxism. Its validity has to be judged, as
in all theoretical efforts, not with refer-
ence to whether or not it deviates from the
“text”, but whether or not it is correct, i e,
whether or not it enables us to understand
the present. Every thinking person who
wants to carry the cause of socialism for-
ward, is thus engaged in reconstructing
Marxism. Debates among such persons
are inter alia debates among alternative
reconstructions of Marxism, each seeking
to make the present comprehensible
46
through the use, in different ways, of
concepts left to us by Marx, Lenin, and
others, but not necessarily confined to these
concepts alone (which is another way of say-
ing that Marxism must be continuously
nourished by advances in knowledge).
It is in this rich atmosphere of discus-
sion that the revolutionary party must
function, for this alone can provide a
check against its going horribly wrong in
its assessment of the present. Free scienti­
fic discussion is like oxygen for a revolu-
tionary party; without such discussion it
cannot survive. But such free discussion
in turn requires not just complete intellec-
tual freedom, but also the existence of a
multiplicity of opinions (which in turn en-
tails a multiplicity of political parties), and
a redefinition of the concept of “demo­
cratic centralism” as the organising prin-
ciple of a revolutionary party. It is not of-
ten appreciated that Bukharin and other
“left-wing communists” who opposed the
treaty of Brest-Litovsk were freely bring-
ing out their own newspaper Kommunist
even during the most difficult post-revolu-
tionary times, which argued against the
official position of the Bolshevik Party.
And while Lenin, the strong advocate of
“democratic centralism” as the organising
principle of the Bolshevik Party, entered
into fierce polemics with the left-wing
communists, the question of silencing
them through disciplinary action never
arose. Such silencing of dissent was a later
and altogether unwholesome development.
The dictatorship of the party under
old socialism was typically justified
through a dichotomy between “science”
or “theory” which was the preserve of the
few, who happened to be in leading
positions, and “politics”, where the masses
participated, increasingly without enthu-
siasm, in conformity with this “theory”.
The “theory” in this conception was
necessarily a closed system. Once we see
theory as open, once we eliminate the di-
chotomy between theory and “politics” or
theory and “applications”, or “theoreti-
cians” and “activists”, the intellectual
ground for any dictatorship of the party
would have been removed.
A basic question which has been raised
in the context of socialism relates to the
motivation for work in a socialist society.9
In a feudal society, people work because of
the pressure of customs and traditions,
backed by force; if the serf does not put in
his labour in the lord’s field or does not
hand over product rent (where labour rent
has been so commuted), then he will be
physically punished, and if he does not
work in his own field sufficiently hard,
then his income net of rent will force him
to starve.
Reserve Army
In a capitalist society, people work because
of the existence of the reserve army of la-
bour, which acts as a co­ercive, disciplining
device. If a worker is suspected to be a
“laggard” or a “troublemaker”, then he is
dismissed and some one else takes his
place, such substitutes being always avail-
able owing to the existence of the reserve
army. But in a socialist society, where
there is neither the fear of the Monsei-
gneur’s whip, nor the fear of being unem-
ployed, since the economy is operating at
full employment and in any case substan-
tial welfare state measures are available
to all, what will be the source of the moti-
vation for work? Some would even suggest
that political authoritarianism, as expressed
through the dictatorship of the party, be-
comes indispensable for the functioning
of a socialist society, precisely because it
operates close to full employment and
has an array of welfare state measures,
i e, the modus operandi of such a society
must include an element of coercion.
Instruments of Discipline
The old Yugoslav answer to this, which
paralleled something tried briefly in the
Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era,
was to make peer pressure an instrument
for work discipline. In worker-managed
factories, the workers’ collective itself
would take on the role of pulling up lag-
gard workers, and this social pressure
from one’s own fellow workers would be
sufficient to inculcate work motivation
among workers. In Gorbachev’s time
when contracts were signed between the
state and workers’ collectives, again the
question of imparting work motivation
was relegated from the domain of the state
to that of the workers’ collectives which
could bring peer pressure to bear on
workers. But Yugoslav socialism was af-
flicted with substantial unemployment
November 3, 2007   Economic & Political Weekly

even in the heyday of self-management, so
that while peer pressure was dubious, the
fear of the “sack” was very real. And the
Soviet experiment did not last long, quite
apart from the fact that had it continued,
it might have reproduced features of the
Yugoslav system, based as it was on simi-
lar syndicalist perceptions.
The Yugoslav leadership always said
that workers’ management did not negate
social property, that it was workers’ man-
agement of social property; it simply en-
trusted the management of social pro­
perty to individual factory-based workers’
groups. The system does nevertheless
mean a fragmentation of the working
class, not into atomised individuals but
into atomised groups of factory workers.
Since the relations between the different
worker-groups managing different factories
are mediated through the market, “market
socialism” is a form of commodity produc-
tion which reproduces the well known
features of commodity-producing bourgeois
societies, such as inflation, unemployment,
and huge inequalities. “Market socialism”
of this sort is a contradiction in terms, a
negation of socialism (from which it follows
that the concept of “socialist commodity
production” which China has been talk-
ing about of late is equally untenable,
though the idea of using markets for
certain specific purposes in socialist
societies is not).
A socialist society clearly needs social
commitment as the basis of work motiva-
tion (apart from the fact that work must
itself become a source of joy). All the solu-
tions to the problem of work motivation
discussed so far take it for granted that the
workers are motivated exclusively by indi-
vidual self-interest, and then examine
how to coerce them into work despite this.
This may have been an accurate reflection
of the reality of old socialism, especially
in its later years, but it cannot form the
basis of a socialist society. Such a society
clearly needs social commitment and an
overcoming of the exclusive preoccupation
with individual self-interest which bour-
geois society tries to inculcate. Indeed the
overcoming of such exclusive preoccupa-
tion with individual self-interest is what
underlies combinations among workers10
within bourgeois society itself, and hence
constitutes the starting point of the journey
Economic & Political Weekly  November 3, 2007
to socialism. And the journey to socialism
which begins with the overcoming of the
exclusive preoccupation with indivi­
dual self-interest among workers, cul-
minates in the formation of a revolution-
ary proletariat.
Marx clearly therefore saw in politics,
in the fact of struggle of which politics is
the expression, a means of overcoming
the individual self-interest that charac-
terises bourgeois society. Old socialism
depoliticised the workers. Our vision of
the socialism of the future must entail a
resurrection of politics, a perennial en-
gagement with politics on the part of
the working class, which will also pro-
vide the answer to the problem of work
motivation in socialist societies.
Relevance of Socialist Agenda
The two and a half decades after the sec-
ond world war witnessed the most ambi-
tious effort to “reform” capitalism that has
ever been undertaken. Keynesian demand
management by capitalist states brought
down unemployment rates to unprece-
dented low levels. The boost to demand
created a strong inducement to invest and
hence rates of growth unprecedented in
the history of capitalism. These were ac-
companied by high rates of labour produc-
tivity growth, because of which, in the
context of near-full employment condi-
tions, the workers succeeded in obtaining
high rates of growth of real wages. These,
together with social security measures in-
troduced by social democratic govern-
ments, made capitalism appear as a hu-
mane system. On the other side, decoloni-
sation rid capitalism of the stigma of keep-
ing the majority of the world’s people un-
der its oppressive political yoke. It seemed
for a while that capitalism had indeed
changed, and made the case for socialism
redundant, exactly as Keynes had wanted,
predicted and theorised about: “a some-
what comprehensive socialisation of in-
vestment will prove the only means of secur­
ing an approximation to full employment…
It is not the ownership of the instruments
of production which it is important for
the state to assume” (1949: 378).
The end of this long boom, which has
been called the “Golden Age of Capitalism”,
constitutes proof that the “spontaneity” of
the system cannot be overcome, save
perspective
temporarily and that too under exception-
al circumstances. The hegemony of capital
over labour gets undermined by the near
full employment conditions that prevail:
the “sack” loses its power, and inflation
gathers momentum over time as workers
feel emboldened to press higher wage
claims,11 which in turn creates pressures
from capital for the restoration of a sub-
stantial reserve army of labour. Adding to
these pressures is another fact, namely,
the capacity of the state, which naturally,
is a nation state, to carry out Keynesian
demand management, gets undermined
as the immanent tendency towards centrali­
sation of capital gives rise to globalisation
of finance and hence an international
finance capital. Since ignoring the capric-
es of this international finance capital, in-
cluding its preference for government –
expenditure deflation, entails the risk of
capital flight, the nation states willy-nilly
have to fall in line and eschew Keynesian
demand management.
Transient Keynesianism
Keynesianism in retrospect therefore must
be seen as a transient phenomenon, based
on an exceptional post-war conjuncture.
As the conjuncture passed, undermined
inter alia by the immanent tendencies of
capital, the programme of “reformed capi-
talism” was given a quiet burial. Not only
did growth rates in world capitalism plum-
met, not only did unemployment in the
advanced capitalist countries approach
double-digit figures and remain stuck
there, not only did the absolute real wage
rate of the workers show a virtual stagna-
tion in the post-“Golden Age” period, but
even the tendency towards decolonisation
got reversed, with imperialism making a
determined attempt to reappropriate the
world’s natural resources, especially oil,
for itself.
In this recolonisation attempt it enjoys
the backing of the third world big bour-
geoisie, which has done a volte face, from
leading the people against imperialism, to
collaborating with imperialism against
the people’s interests. And the people are
back to a situation reminiscent of the pre-
decolonisation experience: of an acute
agrarian crisis, of secularly adverse move-
ments in the terms of trade against pri­mary
commodity producers, of expropriation of
47
perspective
peasants’ land by corporate interests, of
the grinding down of petty production, and
in general of an unleashing of primitive
accumulation of capital, or what I would
prefer to call “accumulation through en-
croachment” in the periphery. Since all
this is not accompanied by any significant
increases in employment in the modern
capitalist sector within the peri­phery,
the outcome is growing unemployment,
destitution, hunger, poverty, and insecu-
rity. In short, all talk about the “reform” of
capitalism has come to nought.
The socialist agenda therefore remains
as relevant today as ever. And unless the
socialist movement gathers momentum,
the anger against imperialism will conti­
nue to take the most violent, destructive,
inhuman and unproductive forms, like
terrorism. The choice before us today, as it
was at the time of Lenin and Luxemburg,
is between socialism and barbarism,
between a situation where a predatory
imperialism remains locked in perennial
combat with equally ruthless groups of
terrorists, thus threatening the very
sur­vi­val of our civilisation, and one
where the very system that produces
both imperia­lism and its terrorist “other”,
is overthrown.
This revival of socialism of course will
take time. The old Comintern perception
of a “general crisis of capitalism” giving
rise, within a comparatively short period
of time, to the overthrow of the system,
lacks relevance in today’s context,
where, apart from anything else, the
inter-imperialist rivalries that had pro-
duced such a prognosis, are far more mut-
ed. George Lukacs’ view, expressed in an
interview in the New Left Review, that just
as the transition from feudalism to capi-
talism was a long drawn-out one, span-
ning almost 300 years, likewise the transi-
tion from capitalism to socialism is likely
to be a long drawn out one, appears more
plausible at this moment. If this perspec-
tive is accepted, then the collapse of the
Soviet Union or the recent distortions in
China would appear simply as episodes in
this long transition. But anyone who has
faith in the future of mankind, cannot re-
main sceptical about the occurrence of
this transition.
The precise mode of this transition,
and the precise problems that would
48
arise in the course of this transition are
issues whose discussion must await
another occasion. What is important
however is the overall vision that we have
of the socia­lism that will emerge. That
can only be of a socialism which accords
centrality to human freedom, which re-
mains continuously “open” and untainted
by ossification in any form, and which
constitutes an unleashing of democracy
and a peren­nial engagement of the
people with politics.
Email: prabhatptnk@yahoo.co.in
Notes
1 On this Smithian conception see Dobb (1973).
2 Marx was to add, by way of explanation (1976: 174):
“There has been history, since there were the institu-
tions of feudalism, and in these institutions of feudal-
ism we find quite different relations of production
from those of bourgeois society which the economists
try to pass off as natural and as such, eternal.”
3 This is how “Ricardian socialists” like Hodgskin and
Bray argued for socialism.
4 The notion of the “inevitability” of socialism has been
criticised strongly by Althusser (2003).
5 Elsewhere he wrote (1986: 558): “If to classical econo-
my, the proletariat is but a machine for the produc-
tion of surplus-value; on the other hand, the capitalist
is in its eyes only a machine for the conversion of this
surplus value into additional capital. Political econo-
my takes the historical function of the capitalist in
bitter earnest.”
6 Quoted by Mao Zedong in an interview published in
Schram (1973).
7 Quoted in the Introduction to Zizek (2006).
8 This point has been argued at length in Patnaik
(1998).
9 A fuller discussion of this issue can be found in
Patnaik (1990).
10 See Marx’s (1976: 206-11) discussion on this subject.
11 This is lucidly discussed in a prescient essay by
Kalecki written in 1943 and republished in Kalecki
(1971).
References
Althusser, L (2003): The Humanist Controversy and Other
Writings, Verso, London.
Dobb, M H (1973): Theories of Value and Distribution since
Adam Smith, CUP, Cambridge.
Kalecki , M (1971): ‘Political Aspects of Full Employment’
in Selected Essays on the Dynamics of Capitalist Econo-
mies 1933-1970, CUP, Cambridge.
Keynes, J M (1949): The General Theory of Employment,
Interest and Money, Macmillan, London.
Lange, O (1963): Political Economy, Vol 1, Pergamon Press,
Warsaw and Oxford.
Lenin, V I (1976): Selected Works (3 volumes), Vol 1,
Progress Publishers, Moscow.
Marx, K (1975): Theories of Surplus Value, Part II, Progress
Publishers, Moscow.
– (1986): Capital, Vol I, Progress Publishers, Moscow.
Marx, K and F Engels (1976): Collected Works, Vol 6,
Progress Publishers, Moscow.
Patnaik, P (1990): Economics and Egalitarianism, OUP,
Delhi.
– (1998): ‘The Communist Manifesto after 150 Years’ in
Prakash Karat (ed), A World to Win, Leftword Books,
Delhi.
Sartre Jean Paul (1965): The Problem of Method, London.
Schram, S (ed) (1973): Mao Zedong Unrehearsed, Pelican,
Harmondsworth.
Zizek Slavoj (ed) (2006): (with an Introduction) Revolution
at the Gates: Lenin’s Writings in 1917, Verso, London.
November 3, 2007   Economic & Political Weekly