Transition Theory, Social Empowerment and Marx
A Model for Using the State to Promote Anti-Capitalist Regime
Change
Author: Seán Looney Student Number: 11598263
Course: Masters Thesis Political Science, Public Policy and Governance Supervisor: dr. Paul Raekstad
Second Reader: dr. Enzo Rossi Date: June 2018
Introduction 4
Research Question 4
Relevance 4
Outline 5
Chapter 1: The Use of the State 6
The Instrumentalist View of the State 6
Theoretical Criteria for Use of the Inherited State 11
Why the State? 15
Chapter 2 Social Empowerment Theory 19
Defining Power 19
A Temporary Transitional Model 20
Hybrids 21
Pathways to Social Empowerment 22
Subordinating State Power to Social Power 29
Chapter 3 Transition Theory 32
Transition Theory 32
Conceptualising Pathways to Transition in Avelino and Rotman’s Power Framework 35
Transition Management Theory 42
The Role of the Transition Manager in Transition 44
Conceptualising Transition Theory in Terms of Social Empowerment Theory 45
Chapter 4: The Model 49
Assumption: The Inevitability of Another Economic Crisis 49
Scale 51
Phases 51
(1) The Pre-development Phase 51
(2) The Take-Off Phase 57
(3) The Acceleration Phase 61
(4) The Stabilization Phase 62
Results 62 Limitations 63 Implications 63 Conclusion 65 Summary 65 Future Research 67 Bibliography 68
Acknowledgements
As this thesis represents the culmination of my past year of studies at the University of Amsterdam I wish to acknowledge everyone I worked alongside and befriended this year. The sum total of knowledge and learning I have gained from you in the course of less than twelve months will stay with me for far longer. Thank you, and I wish you all the best of luck in future endeavours.
Introduction
The question of whether or not socialist use of the inherited capitalist state is necessary in order to transition away from capitalism has been fiercely debated throughout the history of Marxism. These debates between Social Democrats and Leninists, Instrumentalists and Structuralists are ongoing to this day and seemingly irreconcilable. Despite this lack of consensus, in recent years there has been an increasing number of leftist movements which have sought the use of state power to either regulate and reign in the power of capital, or to transition away from capitalism entirely. Such as the Democratic Socialists of America’s movement for the regulation of the power of capital and private interests in the realm of health insurance, or Chavista movement in Venezuela utilising state power to set the country on a path of 21st Century Socialism.
Research Question
Previous attempts to utilise the State in such a way have lead to societies, such as the USSR or Cuba, where the state is the main vehicle for socialism. Leading to situations of excessive centralisation of power in the hands of the state, a form of Marxism where the individual nature of the proletariat is ignored as they are instead treated as a monolith, and where the revolutionary subject was not the people but the vanguard party which led them. The question is then whether or not this is inherent to any socialist movement attempting to use the state or is there is a way for the state to be used in a manner which avoids these pitfalls. In other words, how can a government use the state to transition away from capitalism without falling into the trap of statism?
To answer this question, in this thesis I propose a model by which Transition Theory can be used by a government to promote anti-capitalist practices in sectors of society to the point where they can become the norm in their respective sectors. While Transition Theory operates over long timeframes of 15-25 years it provides a way in which radical change can occur incrementally. This is a possible answer to one of the problems facing Western socialism. That radical change is becoming increasingly necessary to avoid economic and ecological disaster but short term implementation of radical change is likely to end in maximal resistance from the current capitalist society.
Relevance
The thesis aims to contribute to both the field of public policy and governance, and to a marxist theory of the state. In terms of public policy it expands the scope of Transition Theory by placing it within the wider power framework of Social Empowerment Theory, and demonstrating how its incremental
approach to affecting structural change can be used to push for transitions outside of its usual issue areas such as climate change or technological modernisation. Additionally the empowerment cycle of the model utilises reflexive governance practices of puzzling, powering, and participation, more commonly used in the field of policy analysis, as a means to empower niches within transition theory.
In terms of Marxist theory this thesis aims to contribute to the instrumentalist view of the state first though a analysis of Marx, Engels and Lenin on both the nature of the capitalist state and what opportunities use of it presents. Secondly the model itself demonstrates how the state can be used in pursuit of socialism in an iterative manner which still (a) treats the proletariat as the revolutionary subject, (b) meaningfully acknowledges the individual nature of the proletariat, and (c) decentralises power away from the state. Finally, It aims to provide a mechanism by which the inherited capitalist state can be transformed incrementally into one “subordinate to society, into the self-government of the producers” (Lebowitz 2006, p. 68) through the creation of power from below.
Outline
In terms of outline, this thesis consists of four chapters. In chapter one I argue from an Instrumental Marxist perspective that the inherited capitalist state can be used to transition towards socialism, I also derive the aforementioned criteria on the proper use of the state from the works of Marx, Mézsáros and Raekstad. Finally I outline tasks and issues facing the building of socialism today which necessitate the use of the inherited state. In chapter two I use Wright’s Social Empowerment Theory to provide a framework for the model, and subject Wright’s pathways to Social Empowerment concerning the use of the state to the aforementioned criteria, finding participatory socialism and associational democracy to line up the most with them upon evaluation.Chapter three outlines and explains both Transition and Transition management theory and attempts to place them within the framework of Social Empowerment Theory. Finally the model is fully constructed in Chapter 4 and shows how governments can empower social empowerment niches within sectors in a way which allows said niches to gain public legitimacy, experience of governance and provide members of the public with real experience of political life under a non-capitalist system. Once empowered the niche is in a position to challenge the regime and cause a transition, the remainder of the model describes how the government can aid the niche in these efforts. The results, limitations and implications of this model are then discussed.
Chapter 1: The Use of the State
In order to advocate for a state centric theory of transition towards socialism it is necessary to first fully elaborate (a) the Instrumentalist view of the state, (b) criteria which any transitional state must fulfil in order to fully acknowledge the individual nature of the revolutionary subject, the proletariat, and (c) social and political problems and tasks that the state is best equipped to address. This chapter addresses these prerequisites through (a) an analysis of Miliband’s Instrumental Marxism in relation to orthodox Marxist texts, (b) the development of criteria drawn from the works of Istvan Mészáros, and (c) a review of Harnecker and Lebowitz’s work on 21st Century Socialism.
The Instrumentalist View of the State
As this thesis advocates the use of the inherited capitalist state as a means of transitioning away from capitalism it follows that this thesis views the state as an instrument of the economically dominant class in line with the work of Ralph Miliband in The State in Capitalist Society
(1969). Miliband does not argue
that capitalists control the state, they are not sovereign for example, but that the State tends to serve their interests. There are two reasons given for this. First, the “social composition of the state elite proper”
(p.
59), both those who run the state, “the state elite”
(ibid) and capitalists tend to belong, in economic and
social terms, to the upper and middle classes. Becoming a member of the state elite requires a level of education and training which is more readily available to those born into upper and middle class families. Thus both tend to act in their class interests. Additionally there are personal relations between the state elite and capitalists which often begin in the elite educational institutions; Miliband points out the preponderance that the “bulk of British higher civil servants has to a remarkable degree continued to be drawn from a narrowly restricted segment of the population, much of it public school and Oxbridge educated.”
(p.61)
This was famously challenged by Nicos Poulantzas who argued that as the state is essentially a capitalist entity its sole purpose is preserving the capitalist mode of production. Stating that Miliband has “visible difficulties in comprehending social classes and the State as objective structures, and their relations as an objective system of regular connections, a structure and a system whose agents … are bearers of it” (1972, p. 70). These objective structures consist of one or more institutions which fulfill specific economic, political, or ideological functions “necessary to sustain a particular mode of production” (Barrow 2002, p. 22). There are two rebukes to Poulantzas’ theory which are relevant to what this thesis
aims to accomplish; the agency and autonomy denied to agents of State institutions, and the essentially capitalist nature of the state within Poulantzas’ Structuralism
The Autonomy of the State
First, the agency and autonomy denied to agents of the State. Poulantzas (1978, p. 104) defines state power as the capacity of a social class to realise its objective interests through the state apparatus.
Poulantzas argues that state institutions, as such, do not have any power, but must be related only to social classes that hold power. Framed in this way Poulantzas’ theory denies the State any independent source of power and thus any form of autonomy. In response Miliband argues that it is necessary to separate class power and state power as to deny the State any form of autonomy or power of its own conceptualises it out of existence in all but name (1973, p. 87). This also gives the agents who lead and run these institutions agency whereas under Poulantzas’ theory they are simply “bearers” of the will of the dominant class. This distinction is important for what this thesis aims to construct as if the institutions which comprise the state are simply a disguise for the will of the capitalist class then seeking to use them to promote anti-capitalist niches within society is necessarily impossible. Even if socialists are
democratically elected to these positions of power within the state, they will lack the agency and autonomy necessary to do anything besides what the capitalist class wants them to do.
The Nature of the State
Second, on whether the State is essentially a capitalist entity. The following section interrogates this notion of Miliband’s Instrumentalism versus Poulantzas’ Structuralism through an analysis of more orthodox texts on the State by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. This section aims to serve as a response to Poulantzas’ readings of the aforementioned authors to justify his structuralist position. Specifically in this thesis ‘the state’ refers to the use of the inherited capitalist state, I will avoid properly defining The State as Marx’s definitions of The State changed throughout his life.
This view of the state as a capitalist entity has been at the core of Marxist theory since the earliest writings of Engels and Marx. In ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific’
Engels described the modern state as
“essentially a capitalist machine- the state of the capitalist, the ideal personification of the total national capital”
(2013, p. 70) In ‘The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State’, the State is “the
entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel”
(1978, p. 326). So here we have two views of the state from Engels, first that the
state exists in relation to capital, specifically total national capital, second that it has been produced by a society as a means of dealing with irreconcilable class antagonisms. The state as a personification of total national capital certainly lends itself to a structuralist viewpoint, whereas the state as a means to address class antagonisms lends itself to an instrumentalist view of the state.
A further explanation of the nature of the modern state is found in ‘The German Ideology’
(1968), where
Marx and Engels draw upon a historical analysis of the development of private property from Roman and Celtic tribal property through feudal landed property, corporative movable property, capital invested in manufacture to its final destination as modern capital “determined by big industry and universal competition, i.e. pure private property”
(1972, p. 89) The modern state corresponds to this modern
private property in that it has fallen entirely into the hands of the owners of said property through the national debt, and its existence is dependent on “the commercial credit which the owners of property, the bourgeois, extend to it, as reflected in the rise and fall of State funds on the stock exchange”
(p. 90). The
state is nothing more than the form of organisation which the bourgeois necessarily adopt for “the mutual guarantee of their property and interests”
(ibid). This too can be interpreted both ways, either that the
State here is an instrument which the bourgeoisie use to secure their interests, or that the state is a form of bourgeois organisation irrevocably tied to class power.
Lenin builds upon this description of the state in ‘The State and Revolution’ writing that the State is “an instrument for the exploitation of the oppressed class”
(2013,p. 88). As the state arose from the need to
hold “class antagonisms in check”
(p. 89) and simultaneously, in the midst of the conflict of those classes
it is, as a rule, “the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class”
(ibid). Again, while the state was spawned in response to
irreconcilable class antagonisms it is not purely a capitalist structure, rather the state of the most
economically dominant class which will not necessarily the capitalist class and can be made to serve the interests of the proletariat.
One of the primary problems with the entity of the State for Lenin and Engels, who he draws on throughout ‘The State and Revolution’, is that the state as a power arises from society but “places itself above it and alienates itself more and more from it”
the state has at its disposal “special bodies of armed men”
, “prisons” (ibid) and other institutions of
coercion at their disposal. Due the class schisms within society a self-acting armed organization of the population is impossible, if the population allowed to arm themselves, this would inevitably lead to an armed struggle between them along class grounds. “A state arises, a special power is created, special bodies of armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the state apparatus, shows us how the ruling class strives to restore the special bodies which serve it, and how the oppressed class strives to create a new organization of this kind, capable of serving the exploited instead of the exploiters”
(p.87). While
emphasis is place on destroying the inherited capitalist state there is also a claim for the creation of an organisation of the same kind as the inherited state but that which serves the “exploited instead of the exploiters”
(ibid).
The State as Opportunity
Thus far the modern state has been shown to be a capitalist machine which exists to hold class
antagonisms in check while providing the more dominant classes in society a means of further exploiting the more oppressed classes. This has muddied the waters of the Miliband-Poulantzas debate this section aimed to contribute to. However the state presents itself as a means to an end for the ascendant proletariat in Marxist theory and it is here where the instrumentalist interpretation of these more orthodox Marxist texts becomes clearer.
Engels argues that ultimately due to the inherent contradictions within Capitalism the official
representative of capitalist society - the state- will have to undertake the direction of production, citing the then recent conversion into state property of the post office, telegraphs, and railways (2013, p. 69) This does not mean the end of capitalism, on the contrary, as the state is “the ideal personification of the total national capital”
(2013, p. 70), the more productive forces it takes over, the more it becomes the national
capitalist, the more citizens it exploits. Rather than doing away with the capitalist relation this dynamic brings the capitalist relation to its end point where in it topples over. It topples over due to how the capitalist mode of production increasingly transforms the majority of the population into proletarians. In doing so it creates the power which will be its undoing. By focusing more and more on the transformation of vast means of production into state property it shows the way by which the proletariat can overthrow the national capitalist. “The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into state property”
This is echoed in ‘The Communist Manifesto’ where Marx argues that the proletariat will “use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state”
(2013, p. 22). This is followed by a number of state centric specific
policy recommendations which include the “centralization of credit in the hands of the state”
(ibid) and
“centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state”
(ibid). The State
is not then an essentially capitalist entity as per Poulantzas, as if the state is nothing but the will of the capitalist class then wresting all capital from the bourgeoisie into the hands of the State is essentially a circular motion which takes capital from the bourgeoisie only to give it to the State, which is in itself the bourgeoisie. It is only within an instrumentalist perspective that the above mechanism logically makes sense.
In The Civil War in France
where Marx states that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready
made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes”
(The Third Address, 2000) In a letter to Dr
Kugelmann concerning the Paris Commune Marx emphasises that the next French revolution should not aim to “transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and this is essential for every real people’s revolution on the Continent”
(2000).
Miliband argues in his article Marx and the State
that Marx “would have agreed with Engels view,
expressed a few weeks after Marx’s death, that ‘the proletarian class will first have to possess itself of the organised force of the state and with this aid stamp out the resistance of the capitalist class and
reorganise society”
(1965) but that Marx saw this dictatorship of the proletariat as an “immeasurably
freer form of political power”
(ibid). To support this Miliband cites Marx’s Critique of the Gotha
Programme
where Marx states that “Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ
superimposed upon society into one completely subordinated to it”
(ibid).
While the state any socialist movement inherits from contemporary society is of a capitalist nature. It is not essentially of a capitalist nature, rather it is an instrument which is tied to the most economically dominant class within society. From this viewpoint the state is not an unusable part of capitalist relations but simply a powerful instrument which so far capitalists have used to serve their interests and guarantee their property. While this capitalist nature of this inherited state must be transformed to serve the needs of the revolutionary subject there is nothing inherent to the state which stops this from happening. Thus it is possible to use the state, in a model based in transition theory, to promote anti-capitalist practices in sectors of society to the point where they become the norm in their respective sectors.
Theoretical Criteria for Use of the Inherited State
The question then becomes how should the state be used in the model in question? More specifically, how can the inherited capitalist state be transformed into the revolutionary socialist state without falling into the traps that befell the Soviet Union? The answer to this stems from the work of Marta Harnecker and Michael Lebowitz on building 21st century socialism. However due to how Harnecker and Lebowitz’s work relies on Mészáros’s agent centred realist political theory this must be explained first. It is from an examination of the three that I will derive criteria by which a socialist government can still use the state without making the same mistakes as the Soviet Union.
Mészáros’ theory is realist in the sense that “it starts from a conception of social or political agency and its contexts, and seeks to construct a theory which contributes to that agent’s agency and actions”
(Raeksted, 2015). It is agent-centred in that it fulfills the following criteria: (1) it starts from a “descriptive account of a particular context or a kind of context c
” (ibid). (2) This descriptive account provides “a
conception of the social forces that c generates, be they factors processes, or agents of whatever kind” (ibid).
(3) The political theory in question is constrained by “the available factors, processes, or agents available in c”
in that only alternatives which can be brought about by “one or more of the available
factors, processes, or agents are open for political theorising”
(ibid). Specifically these theorised
alternatives must be (a) viable, (b) contain at least one factor, process or agent, or combination thereof, F; in (c) context or kind of context c. Such that (d) in or from c, F can “really bring about the alternative in question”
(ibid). Here viable is taken to mean that the alternative(s) are able to survive and maintain
themselves over time in “light of certain basic, critical facts about human nature, planetary conditions, and so on”
(ibid) and that these alternatives are able to generate, at least in principle, “the consequences
its proponents claim without generating negative effects which outweigh these positive ones”
(ibid).
(4) Within the bounds these aforementioned constraints the political theory in question develops a “conception of at least two or more alternatives within or from c”
(ibid). At least one of these alternatives
is evaluated and recommended over the other(s) “in terms of the social realisations it generates, or can reasonably be expected to generate”
(ibid). Finally in (5) “the available factors, processes or agents
(a) seek to address itself to an agent, A; (b) in a suitable manner, i.e. by some suitable means; (c) such that A will act appropriately (and/or not inappropriately), in light of the other factors, processes, and agents F, in or from c, to bring about the alternative in question”
(ibid).
For both Mészáros and Marx the agent of social change is the “proletariat or the working class in alliance with the peasantry and other dominated and oppressed groups under capitalism”
(Raekstad,
2015). In Raekstads account of Mészáros criteria above the proletariat is a revolutionary subject
in that it
is both the “principal factor, process, or agent proposed to bring about the achievable alternative in (3) and the agent Mészáros’ theory needs to appeal to as per (5)”
(ibid). From this I derive criteria (a); the
state should, in its actions, view the proletariat as the revolutionary subject in an agent centred political theory.
There is an additional element of Mészáros political theory relevant to this thesis, that is; the relationship between the individual and class nature of the proletariat. Mészáros theory on the individualistic nature of the proletariat stem from a quote from Marx in The German Ideology
on the emancipation of the social
individual where “the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, have to abolish the hitherto prevailing condition of their existence (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to then), namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order,
therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State.”
(1972, p. 80) If you were
to try to remove the concept of individuals from this meaning, the whole enterprise becomes
‘meaningless’ as the need to abolish the State arises because the “individuals cannot assert themselves as individuals, not simply because one class is dominated by another
” (1995, p. 908)
This differs from many more orthodox readings of Marx which focus primarily on the emancipation of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie but as Mészáros, correctly, points out; “what would be the point of this emancipation if the individuals who constitute the proletariat remained dominated by the proletariat as a class?”
(ibid). From here I derive criteria (b); the government should meaningfully acknowledge the
individual nature of the proletariat.
In addition to this Lebowitz and Harnecker draw on Mészáros’ analysis of the need for decentralisation in post revolutionary socialist societies. In ‘Political Power and Dissent in Post Revolutionary Societies’ Mészáros draws upon an historical analysis of Lenin’s actions throughout 1917-1924 to describe the
change in Lenin’s view of the state from advocating “a state without a standing army, without a police opposed to the people, without an officialdom placed above the people”
to advocating the necessity for “a
central authority, for dictatorship and a united will to ensure that the vanguard of the proletariat shall close its ranks, develop the state and place it upon a new footing, while firmly holding the reigns of power”
. (1995, p. 904)
The result of this centralization of power was that these ‘institutions of necessity’ which Lenin and his vanguard created to further the transition towards socialism began to dominate the ideals of socialism themselves. “The idea of autonomous working-class action had been replaced by advocacy of ‘the greatest possible centralization”
(1995, p. 906). All effective power was deprived from factory workers
councils and the Soviets, any talk of the most limited amount of self determination for trade unions was dismissed as “syndicalist nonsense and a deviation towards syndicalism and anarchism”
(ibid) and a
direct threat to the dictatorship of the proletariat. This paralysation of the working class base, Mészáros explains, helped the culmination of the Soviet Union’s development into Stalinism. From here I derive criteria (c); the government should avoid excessive centralisation of power in the hands of the state.
Lebowitz (2012) argues that the practices of Lenin’s vanguard marxism stems beyond (c) excessive centralisation. It also failed to (a) acknowledge the proletariat as the revolutionary subject and in doing so, (b) denied the proletariat its individual nature. Regarding (a) the proletariat or any wider coalition is not the revolutionary subject within Vanguard Marxism, the Vanguard party is. The Party seeks to “maximise investment to achieve the highest possible growth of productive forces
” (2012, p. 184), and in order to do
so it “stresses the necessity of the state to direct from above
” (ibid). Lebowitz argues that this perspective
is one of a conductor “who believes that the working class must be led into the promised land
”(ibid). The
Vanguard Party thus stands above and against the working class. This is irreparably tied to the one sided nature of Vanguard Marxism wherein the proletariat are not fully developed or developing human beings but workers who exist to either be liberated from their exploitation at the hands of Capital by the efforts of the Vanguard Party.
In regards to criteria (b) this one sided view of the worker within Vanguard Marxism, viewing the worker only in regards to Capital fails to grasp “the importance of struggle as a process of producing and
transforming people
” (2012, p. 175) and by doing so fails to acknowledge Marx’s consistent emphasis on
the full development of the human being, “upon the rich human being, upon the development of a rich individuality, upon the development of all human powers as such the end in itself
Vanguard Marxism only sees the worker insofar as they are exploited by Capital, and by doing so it “naturally obscures the relevance of the other sides of that worker as a human being within society” (2012, p.175). Due to this it is impossible for this one sided form of marxism to see how non class struggles, which they may or may not be individually subject to, also transform these workers. These include struggles against patriarchy, racism and national oppression (ibid). Additionally it doesn’t
consider the other sides of these workers, such as the other relations within which workers exist, “such as their communities, their network of friends and family, and their common position as members of a society with common ownership of the means of production”
(ibid). So then if the government in this
model fails criteria (b) they also fail to provide a means for the development of the revolutionary subject as a group of individuals and will be unable to see them for how they truly are.
So then any attempts to use the state to promote anti-capitalist practices through the use of the state must (a) treat the proletariat as the revolutionary subject through accordance with the criteria found in
Mészáros’ political theory, (b) acknowledge and incorporate the individual nature of the revolutionary subject, and (c) avoid the pitfalls of excessive centralisation, and instead aim towards decentralising state power.
Why the State?
One obvious question to be answered is why the state is needed at all if the goal of the use of the state is to give the people real bottom up power, why not simply cut out the middleman and abolish the state? As Lebowitz often states; “Socialism doesn’t fall from the sky”
(2006, p. 61). Lebowitz empirically cites the
Bolivarian revolution as an example of the necessity of the state in transitioning to socialism, and theoretically cites Marx as well as a general understandings of economic systems. “For Marx, it was self-evident that workers need the power of the state to create the conditions for a society that could end capitalist exploitation”
(ibid, p. 62)
The Fear of Capital Using the State
In real terms without the removal of state power from capitalist control, “every real threat to capital will be destroyed
” (2006, p. 68). As explained above “the capitalist state is an essential basis of support for
resources of the state will be mobilized to stifle every particular in road that cannot be absorbed. Capital always uses the power of the state when challenged.”
(ibid)
So, while it is evident that socialists must use the State out of fear that Capital will inevitably use it against them, there remains the question of how do we avoid the pitfalls of the Soviet experience, how do we stop the State itself coming to dominate the revolutionary subject? Lebowitz answers that it must be transformed into one “subordinate to society, into the self-government of the producers”
(2006, p. 68)
This is a must because without “creating power from below … the tendency will be the emergence of a class over and above us - a class that identifies progress with the ability to control and direct from above”
(ibid). Echoing Mészáros, Lebowitz adds that socialism cannot be achieved “from above through
the efforts and tutelage of a vanguard that seizes all initiatives and distrusts the self-development of the masses”
(ibid).
Inheritance of a Culture Antagonistic to Socialism
Just as socialism doesn’t drop from the sky, those who would be the protagonists of the construction of this new society are “dragging a weighty cultural transformation behind them”
(2015, p. 174). A wide
scale process of cultural transformation is necessary to overcome the individualist, consumerist, and paternalistic culture ingrained into those operating under capitalism. In order for 21st century socialism to consolidate itself, Harnecker writes, we must “impregnate present and future generations with a new humanistic and solidarity-infused ethics, one that respects nature and stresses being rather than having” (ibid).
In more orthodox Marxist theory, the problem of an inherited culture of staunch individualism,
consumerism, and paternalism must be tackled through, as Marx states, long periods of “civil wars and national struggles, not only to bring about a change in society but also to change yourselves, and prepare yourselves for the exercise of political power”
(1975, p. 399) However there is a role for the transitional
state here also, in that it should provide educational strategies by which it is easier for the people as a whole in absorb new knowledge, think critically about old inherited ideas and practices and form new ideas and practices more in keeping with the ethics and culture of the new socialist society (Harnecker 2015, p. 176).
Second, another realist appraisal of the situation facing those who wish to build socialism is the fragmentation of the revolutionary subject; the proletariat. The working class is heterogeneous, it is weakened by processes of labour casualization and sub-contracting. On top of this it is internally divided by both the “objective conditions caused by neoliberalism”
(2015, p. 175) and ideological differences,
personalities, and in the specific case of Latin America; ‘caudillismo’ or the belief in military strongmen (ibid).
To this Harnecker has two answers; (a) the creation of spaces (real and cyber) where the public can meet, and (b) the importance of charismatic leadership. In regards to (a) the state should create these spaces where they can encourage the coordination of emancipatory practices by bringing together all the actors to discuss their common goals. “Our political instruments should be instances for promoting the unity of the people, capable of filling millions of women and men with the enthusiasm to fight for a common goal.” (2015, p. 178) Regarding (b); while there should overall be a focus on the construction of collective leadership, in the short term there is a role for charismatic leadership in overcoming the fragmented nature of the revolutionary subject. However Harnecker is at pains to point out that good leadership necessarily “create the conditions in which they become less and less indispensable”
(ibid).
Lack of Meaningful Experience of Governance
Finally, although the end goal of any socialist government should be the self-government of a society of freely associated producers, this is not something which occurs overnight. The people’s experience, living under capitalism, with governance has been one of cronyism, populism, of not reasoning
politically, of asking for things. They have little to no experience of participating fruitfully in government and so it is necessary to “govern with the people for a certain length of time so that they can learn to govern themselves”
(ibid).
Here the works of Mészáros, Lebowitz, and Harnecker avoid the pitfalls of vanguardism by finding a fine line between it and the view of Rosa Luxemburg that; “Mistakes committed by a genuine revolutionary labour movement are much more fruitful and worthwhile historically than the infallibility of the very best Central Committee.”
(Cliff, 1959) The solution advocated is that the transitional state govern with the
people for a time. Harnecker advocates in particular that the running of state institutions by revolutionary cadres who “are aware that they should aim to work with the organized sectors of the people to control
what the institutions do and press for transformation of the state apparatus can make it possible, within certain limits, for these institutions to work for the revolutionary project”
(2015, p. 105).
However Harnecker does not envision that the socialist government should limit itself to just using the inherited state. The foundations of the new political system must be the creation of a “new state from below”
through creating adequate space for popular participation; “preparing the people to exercise
power at all levels, from the most simple to the most complex”
(2015, p. 105). While Harnecker sets out a
number of other tasks for a government attempting to transition to 21st century socialism she states that encouraging and facilitating the people’s protagonistic participation is the most important as without it the building of socialism is impossible. This is framed as an opposition to Soviet centralization and
bureaucratism which Harnecker cites Kropotkin in stating that “the party ended up drowning the creative initiative of popular organizations.”
(2015, p. 179)
So then it is not only useful to use the state to promote anti-capitalist practices, it is necessary given the array of tasks and threats which the state itself is best suited to address. As argued above the state cannot simply be used as it exists now, rather it must be transformed in the search for a decentralised new state from below. The model constructed in this thesis will aim to address these tasks and challenges, at least in part, through the provision of a public space where the citizenry can discuss its common goals and
meaningfully participate in governance while simultaneously decentralising power away from the central government authority.
Summary
So then in summary; while the inherited state is a manifestation of capital and irreconcilable class antagonism, it provides the means by which the proletariat can be emancipated from the rule of Capital. Additionally some of the problems faced by 21st century socialists can be best addressed by the use of the state, these include the fragmented nature of the revolutionary subject, the weighty capitalist culture we inherit along with the state and the inexperience of the people at governing society. However I have been at pains to show, through the work of Lebowitz, Mészáros, and Harnecker that a fully state centric, Soviet-esque centralisation is not a viable course of action and have argued for a more decentralised form of transitional state which aims at ultimately decentralizing power amongst a society of freely associating producers. So then the following model of empowering anti-capitalist practices in certain sectors of society through the state will aim at complying with the three criteria outlined in the section on Mészáros’
agent centred realist political theory above, those being; (a) fulfilling the criteria outlined of an agent centred political theory wherein the proletariat is the revolutionary subject (b) acknowledgment and incorporation of the individual nature of said revolutionary subject, and (c) avoidance of the pitfalls of excessive centralisation, and instead aiming towards decentralising state power.
Chapter 2 Social Empowerment Theory
In order to articulate a manner in which the state can be used to eventually transition away from
capitalism through the promotion of anti-capitalist niches this thesis needs to provide a framework which describes the capitalist nature of society as it currently exists and pathways by which society can
transition away from Capitalism. To address this, this chapter uses the works of Erik Olin Wright on Social Empowerment theory. When the aim of this thesis is placed within Social Empowerment theory it becomes; to describe a way by which governmental or state power can be used to empower social power to a dominant position over both state and economic power. This thesis acknowledges that it does not present, or intend to present, a comprehensive institutional design for a radical democratic egalitarian alternative to capitalism. Rather it aims to contribute to the principles of institutional innovation and change which tell us whether we are moving in at least the right direction, or in Wright’s words “The Socialist Compass”
(Wright 2010, p. 128)
Defining Power
As this is a power centric framework power must first be defined. A working definition of power in social theory is notoriously difficult, in order to remedy this I will adopt the stripped down concept of power used by Wright in his formulation. That power is “the capacity to do things in the world, to produce effects. This is what might be called an “agent-centred”
notion of power: people, acting individually and
With this working definition we can then define economic, state, and social power. Economic power is the ability to produce effects in the world which is rooted in the use of economic resources. State power is the same ability but rooted “in control over rule making and rule enforcing over territory”
(Hahnel and
Wright 2014, p. 64). What Wright terms Social Power is rooted in the “capacity to mobilise people for cooperative, voluntary collective actions”
(ibid).
Each economic system involves all three forms of power, connected in different ways. Ideal types of economic structures can be differentiated in terms of the dominant form of power controlling activity. The ideal form of capitalism is an economic structure where the means of production are privately owned and the “allocation and use of resources for different social purposes is accomplished through the exercise of economic power. Investments and the control of production are the result of the exercise of economic power by owners of capital”
(ibid). Whereas in the ideal form of Statism the means of production are
owned by the state and “the allocation and use of resources for different social purposes is accomplished through the exercise of state power”
(ibid). The investment process is controlled by State officials and
production is managed through some form of state-administrative mechanism.
This brings us to socialism where the means of production are socially owned, and the allocation and use of resources for different social purposes is accomplished through the exercise of Social Power. This view of socialism is effectively equivalent to defining socialism as “pervasive economic democracy”
(ibid).
Wright is at pains to remind readers that these are ideal types and that real-world actual economies are complex forms of these three types combines. They are hybrids that vary based on how economic, state, and social power interact and intermix within them. Thus when an economy is described as ‘capitalist’ it is shorthand for “an economic hybrid combining capitalist, statist and socialist power relations within which capitalist relations are dominant”
(Hahnel and Wright 2014, p. 64). Within this power framework
the possibility of socialism thus depends on our “ability to enlarge and deepen the socialist component of the hybrid and weaken the capitalist and statist components”
(ibid). This then provides the general
direction for the model this thesis aims at constructing, enlarging the socialist components of the hybrid which constitutes society in a manner which weakens both the capitalist and statist components.
Just as the state withers away in Communism so too does the model used to get there. It is important to note that once socialism is achieved the Social empowerment model necessarily falls away along two axis; the increasingly involuntary nature of social power, and how state, social, and economic power are transformed through transition.
Wright defines Social Power as being rooted in “the capacity to mobilise people for cooperative, voluntary collective actions.”
However once society has used the dominance of social power to transition
towards socialism, which Wright defines as “pervasive economic democracy”
, the voluntary nature of
collective actions becomes involuntary. Just as Marx argues that the freedom to choose between working and starving under capitalism is a no freedom at all, so too is the freedom to choose between participating in collective action and starving under socialism. That is, if the form of socialism achieved is a “pervasive economic democracy”
wherein the method of production is democratic collective action, then it becomes
impossible to choose to not participate in collective action without subjecting yourself to the possibility of starvation making you unfree in a positive sense.
Following this, if the end point of socialism is “pervasive economic democracy”
, then the divisions of
state, social, and economic power fall away as state power and economic power are subsumed into social power. Thus the scope and usefulness of the model described in this thesis is limited to providing
preconditions of transitioning towards socialism. As previously argued in Chapter 1 in order for a full transition towards socialism the inherited state must ultimately be destroyed, but it is possible to use the state to begin that journey. Then the function of this thesis is to provide signposts which show how the state can be used with this ultimate objective in mind.
Hybrids
In line with this reasoning, “no actual living economy has ever been purely capitalist or statist or socialist, since it is never the case that the allocation, control, and use of economic resources is determined by a single form of power”
(Wright 2010, p. 123) Pure cases such as Totalitarianism,
Libertarian Capitalism, and Communism have never truly existed as “stable, reproducible forms of social organization”
(Wright 2010, p. 124).
The hyper-statist command economies of the most totalitarian variety “never completely eliminated informal social networks as a basis for cooperative social interaction which had real effects on economic
activity outside of the direct control of the state, and the practical functioning of economic institutions was never fully subordinated to centralized command-and-control planning”
(Wright 2010, p. 124).
Likewise the minimal nightwatchman state envisioned by the fantasy of libertarian capitalism would lead to an “unsustainable and chaotic social order
” (ibid). Likewise pure communism, a society of freely
associating producers and a withered away state, “could not function without some sort of authoritative means of making and enforcing binding rules (a ‘state’)”
(ibid).
Feasible, sustainable forms of large-scale organization, therefore, always involve some kind of reciprocal relations among these three domains of social interaction and power. Capitalism, statism, and socialism are, in this sense, not simply ideal types of economic structures but variables according to which form of power (economic, state and social) is used to allocate and use resources (Wright 2010, p. 124).
This variable nature of these concepts of power opens the possibility of “complex mixed cases … in which an economy is capitalist in certain respects and in others statist or socialist”
(Wright 2010, p. 125) For
example, all existing capitalist societies contain significant elements of statism and at least some elements of socialism. States everywhere allocate part of the social surplus for various kinds of investments, especially in areas such as public infrastructure, defense and education. States also remove certain powers from holders of private property rights through regulation. Socialist elements are present in that
“collective actors in civil society influence the allocation of economic resources indirectly through their efforts to influence the state and capitalist corporations”
(ibid).
This same line of reasoning applies to the State. While the state within a capitalist society can reasonably be called the Capitalist State, it is not solely a capitalist entity. “Actual state institutions can combine capitalist and non-capitalist forms”
and “contain internally contradictory elements pushing it to act in
contradictory ways”
(ibid).
Pathways to Social Empowerment
Both historically and contemporarily there are many institutional examples from which we can derive institutional pathways to state or capital empowerment. However there are few examples, outside of Venezuela, from which we can do the same for Social Empowerment. In Alternatives to Capitalism, Wright outlines three principle directions for institutional design anchored in each of the three forms of power discussed above;
1. Social Empowerment over the way state power affects economic activity. 2. Social Empowerment over the way economic power shapes economic activity. 3. Social Empowerment directly over economic activity.
In line with these three principle directions Wright outlines seven conceptual pathways to Social Empowerment;
1. Statist Socialism
2. Social Democratic Statist Economic Regulation 3. Associational Democracy
4. Social Capitalism
5. Cooperative Market Economy 6. The Social Economy
7. Participatory Socialism
Each of these seven pathways has, “at its core, the idea of extensive and robust economic democracy through creating conditions in which social power … exerts both direct and indirect democratic control over the economy”
(Wright 2010, p. 144). While movement along just one of these pathways may not be
enough “substantial movement along all of them taken together would constitute a fundamental
transformation of capitalism’s class relations and the structures of power and privilege rooted in them” (ibid).
However due to the this thesis’ focus and limited scope I will focus only on those pathways which concern the relationship between state power and social power. These being; Statist Socialism, Social Democratic Statist Economic Regulation, Associational Democracy, and Participatory Socialism. These pathways will be evaluated according to the three criteria proposed in chapter 1; (a) adherence to a agent centred notion of power, where the proletariat is the agent of social change (b) acknowledgement and incorporation of the individual nature of the revolutionary subject, and (c) avoidance of the pitfalls of excessive centralisation, with the aim of decentralising state power. The pathways which best fulfil these criteria will then be incorporated into the model in subsequent chapters as directions the transitional government may take in their use of transition management theory to promote anti-capitalist niches within society.
Statist Socialism
In Statist Socialism we find a definition of socialism in which social power controls economic activity via the state. Investment, production and distribution are directly controlled by the exercise of state power while simultaneously “state power is itself subordinated to social power by being democratically accountable to the people”
(Hahnel and Wright 2014, p. 69).
More particularly Statist Socialism is a form of social empowerment in that political parties are
“associations formed in civil society with the goal of influencing and potentially controlling state power” (Wright 2010, p. 131). People then join these parties with the aim of influencing and potentially
controlling state power through achieving certain objectives, and the power of these parties depends significantly on their “capacity to mobilize such participation for collective action of various sorts” (ibid).
In line with this a socialist party which is both “deeply embedded in working-class social networks and communities and democratically accountable through an open process by which it politically represents the working class (or some broader coalition)”
(ibid) and the controller of the state “which in turn
controls the economy”
(ibid) can argue that an empowered civil society controls the economic system of
production and distribution.
This pathway is represented below in figure 1.1 terms of power wherein economic power is marginalised, as it is not through direct economic ownership and control over assets that people have power to organise production, rather it is through “their collective political organization in civil society and their exercise of state power”
(ibid).
As this thesis is aimed at avoidance of the Soviet experience it is no surprise that Statist Socialism fails the criteria proposed in chapter 1. While Statist Socialism is not the USSR, the Soviet experience shares similarities with it and the faults of Vanguard Marxism discussed in chapter 1 apply to Statist Socialism too. The Vanguard Party is the revolutionary subject within Statist Socialism which seeks to maximise investment with the aim of achieving the highest possible growth of productive forces and stresses that they must use the state to do. In doing so they place themselves, as argued by Lebowitz, in the role of a conductor “who believes that the working class must be led into the promised land”
revealing themselves as the agent of social change and thus failing criteria (a). In this view the proletariat only exist to be liberated from the exploitative clutches of Capital, and thus not as individuals each with their own non-class relations which shape and transform them through struggle. Because of this Statist Socialism does not have the capacity to provide the proletariat the ability to develop themselves as individual human beings and thus fails criteria (b). Finally, the focus on the state as the vehicle for the vanguard party to control society, transition towards communism and maximise the growth of productive forces necessitates that the state grow stronger by centralising more and more power in the hands of the state, failing criteria (c). The failure of these criteria marks Statist Socialism as a pathway which should be avoided by a government pursuing the model in question.
Figure 1.1 Power Configuration within Statist Socialism
Social Democratic Statist Economic Regulation
While in Statist socialism Social Power bypasses and marginalises economic power through the
leveraging of state power, in Social Democratic Statist Economic Regulation social power regulates the economy through “the mediation of both state power and economic power”
(Hahnel and Wright 2014, p.
investments, hire workers, and organise the labour process and so on, but this economic power is then regulated by state power, which in turn is subordinate to social power. Seen this way, social power exerts regulative control over the exercise of economic power as pictured below in Figure 1.2.
Again like Statist Socialism this path fails the criteria set out in chapter 1. (a) The agent of social change is not the proletariat, or some wider coalition, it is those who control the state; political parties. The proletariat is giving no meaningful participation in how economic power is regulated beyond voting for representative politicians who have discretion as to whether or not they will follow through on what they were elected to do. (b) This system of voting for elected officials denies the proletariat their individual nature as they simply become voters who may be treated as a, fickle, monolith which may be swayed collectively by empty rhetoric. Finally with regards to (c) if Social Democratic Statist Economic Regulation is to meaningfully regulate and control Economic power it must necessarily centralise more and more power in the state to do so. For example in the UK there are increasing calls from the public to re-nationalise or further regulate sectors such as transport and housing in the hands of the state and away from the private capitalist interests which currently control them. This is an example of Social Democratic Statist Economic Regulation in action wherein Social Power is used to influence State Power in order to weaken Economic Power. However the end-point of this action will not lead to Social Empowerment but State empowerment as it is the State which gains control of these sectors and thus centralises power in the State.
Figure 1.2 Power Configuration within Social Democratic Economic Regulation
Associational Democracy
Associational Democracy consists of a “wide range of institutional devices through which collective associations in civil society directly participate in various kinds of governance activities,
characteristically along with state agencies and business associations”
(Wright 2010, p. 136). This
flattening of power between all involved is represented in figure 1.3 where all three forms of power have influence over the economy. While it is most familiar in the form of tripartite neo-corporatist
arrangements present in some social democratic societies where organised labour, employers associations and the state bargain over economic regulations, it can be extended to a number of other domains
including watershed councils consisting of civic associations, environmental groups, developers and state agencies to regulate ecosystems (Wright 2010, p. 137).
Associational Democracy can be said to be a pathway towards social empowerments so long as the associations involved are: “internally democratic and representative of interests in civil society, and the decision-making process in which they are engaged is open and deliberative rather than heavily
manipulated by elites and the state”
(Wright 2010, p. 137). While this pathway does not fully fulfil
criteria (a) as the proletariat is not the sole agent of social change it does place the proletariat on equal footing to the other agents present. The participatory nature of associational democracy allows for the meaningful acknowledgement of (b) the individuality criteria. This participatory nature stems from the deliberative nature of governance within associational democracy wherein power structures are flattened and participants are able to freely express their wants and concerns in a meaningful manner and thus participate in governance. Finally this pathway fulfils criteria (c) by leveling the playing field between Economic, State and Social Power through the decentralisation of State Power. Despite its weakness in regards to criteria (a) associational democracy is a preferred pathway in that it fulfils two thirds of the criteria fully.
Figure 1.3 Power Configuration within Associational Democracy
Participatory Socialism
The final pathway discussed here can be said to be a combination of the previously discussed Statist Socialism and “the direct social participation characteristic of the social economy”
(Wright 2010, p.
138) pathway. Briefly, in Social Economy voluntary associations in civil society directly organise various aspects of economic activity rather than simply influencing the use of economic power. In Participatory Socialism “the state and civil society jointly organize and control various kinds of production of goods and services”
(ibid) as represented by figure 1.4.
Participatory Socialism is different from both of its parts. It differs from the Social Economy pathway in that the State plays a more pervasive role, in that it is directly involved in the organization and production of economic activities. Likewise it differs from State Socialism in that social power is not restricted to the “channels of democratic control of state policies”
but able to directly affect productive activities
themselves.
Participatory socialism, as previously discussed in chapter 1, fulfils all three of the criteria. This is unsurprising as the work of Marta Harnecker and Michael Lebowitz is heavily based in that of Istvan Mészáros which the criteria are based on. One of the chief features of Participatory Socialism is
decentralised participatory planning. This planning involves fully involving citizens in the planning process on a local level, by implementing a process in which they “genuinely discuss and decide upon their priorities, elaborate, where possible, their own projects … without having to depend on superior levels”
(Harnecker 2014) by doing so the proletariat is treated as the revolutionary subject and the agent
of social change thus fulfilling criteria (a). Additionally the ability this gives each member of the proletariat to meaningfully participate in governance allows them to express their own wants and grievances and so fulfils criteria (b). Finally the participatory nature of this governance is best suited to operating on the local level and thus “everything that can be done at a lower level should be
decentralised to this level”
(ibid), participatory socialism then fulfils criteria (c) as well. The full
fulfilment of all three criteria marks this pathway as preferable for the government in the model.
Figure 1.4 Power Configuration within Participatory Socialism
Subordinating State Power to Social Power
The four pathways discussed above directly involve the state as the means by which economic power can be either marginalised, regulated, or leveled. However the key issue in these pathways then becomes how can State Power be subordinated to Social Power? Without effective mechanisms to do so none of the above pathways can possibly “translate social power into control over the economy”
, in other words
For example the real world experiences of pathway one, Statist Socialism, has been mired by excessive the centralisation of power in the hands of the state. While initially the revolutionary state of the Soviet Union aimed to radically reorganise the institution of the state and economy through the use of the soviets, participatory councils that would directly involve workers’ associations in the exercise of “power in both the state and production” (Wright 2010, p. 132). The Soviets, “if fully empowered in democratic ways and rooted in an autonomous civil society could be thought of as a mechanism for institutionalising the ascendancy of social power”
(ibid).
However it was the concentration of power at the top by the vanguard communist party which centralised power heavily and in doing so subordinated social power to state power. The party then became a
“mechanism of state domination, a vehicle for penetrating civil society and controlling economic organisations”
(ibid). The Soviet Union was therefore more appropriately termed a form of authoritarian
statism than statist socialism. In light of this it is the model this thesis aims to construct must aim to not only subordinate economic power to social power through the use of the state but do so in a manner which does not subordinate social power to state power.
This lines up with the findings of chapter one of this thesis on the state. While this thesis aims to model a way of empowering social power to the point of subordinating economic power within society using the state, it aims to also avoid Soviet-esque centralisation of power in the hands of the state. Rather the model which pushes society down any of the four state centric pathways of social empowerment above must ultimately aim at decentralising power amongst a society of freely associating producers, or at least provide the transitional state with the theoretical room to do so. Thus it follows that the model should aim to push those pathways which comply more to the criteria set out in chapter 1, participatory socialism and associational democracy.
Summary
This chapter has aimed to provide a wider theoretical foundation for the model which will be constructed in subsequent chapters. It has relied heavily on the work of Wright on Social Empowerment theory to do so. In line with this power has been defined as the “capacity to do things in the world, to produce effects”. The theoretical economic system has been placed into a power framework following this definition wherein the economy consists of three forms of power; Economic, State and Social. In this sense no real
world economy can be said to be purely capitalist, socialist, or statist, rather they are complex hybrids which combine all three forms of power relations but where one is inevitably dominant.
While Wright puts forward seven pathways by which social power can become dominant in an economic system, this chapter chose to focus on the four pathways which directly involve the relationship between state and social power; Statist Socialism, Social Democratic Statist Economic Regulation, Associational Democracy, and Participatory Socialism. These were evaluated in accordance with the criteria established in chapter 1 and from this Associational Democracy and Participatory Socialism were chosen as the preferred pathways for the government in this model.
Finally, in line with the previous chapter on the use of the state, this chapter emphasised that it is not enough for the transitional government within the model to simply use state power to subordinate economic power to social power. Without effective mechanisms to also subordinate state power to social power the actions of the transitional government will not result in social empowerment. Instead it will simply succeed in subordinating both economic and social power to the will of the state. This reinforces this thesis’ focus on the promotion of anti-capitalist practices as a means of beginning the transition away from capitalism. The promotion of these practices to norms, which will be explored in the following chapters, decentralises power away from the state and provides a means of subordinating state power to social power.
