The Socialist Community of Citizens: an Institutional Design for Republican Socialism

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the Socialist

Community of Citizens

an institutional design for republican socialism

Author: Tim Platenkamp (ID:12499021)

Supervisor: Dr. A. Freyberg-Inan

Second reader: Dr. G.R. Arlen

Master’s thesis in Political Science (Political Theory)

University of Amsterdam (UvA)

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Abstract

This thesis attempts to expand the normative dimension of the research programme of socialist republicanism, by investigating whether civic republicanism and socialism can be married to form a coherent, attractive, and feasible model of society that promises a qualitative break with capitalism. In this way, republicanism could aid in the revival of socialism as a political movement which challenges capitalism at a fundamental level. I attempt to accomplish this by designing a socialist institutional framework which can accommodate the core values of the republican tradition. The thesis finds that multilevel iterative planning—involving self-governing production associations, intermediate negotiation bodies, and a Central Planning Board—is the means to realise republicanism in the economy. To ensure its durability, a constitutional-republican order—in which citizen assemblies act as public forums and instruments for direct legislation, within a constitutional context, complemented by a bicameral legislature—is required.

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Chapter I: Introduction

1.1 The Need for a Vision

“We aim in the domain of politics at Republicanism, in the domain

of economics at Socialism […].” — August Bebel

In the 1990s we witnessed a general rout of socialism. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and other Marxist-Leninist regimes across the globe caused socialists of all varieties to lose confidence, even in more moderate forms of socialism (Heywood, 2017, p. 22). The far-left in Europe, for instance, retreated from offensively advancing an alternative to capitalism to instead committing itself to defending expansive welfare state policies which were abandoned by the centre-left social-democratic parties (March, 2008, p. 9-10). When elected to office, European far-left parties hardly challenge the neo-liberal order—let alone capitalism (March, 2008, p. 14). Many socialist parties lack a coherent political vision or ideology and are consequently forced to fall back on populist or pragmatic reinventions of postbellum social-democracy (March, 2011). In order to restore the ability of socialism to offer fundamental opposition to the present state of affairs, a positive vision must be available that socialist theorists and strategists can draw on. The major extant socialist schools of thought that are available for adoption are anarchism, Marxist communism, and democratic socialism (Busky, 2000, p. 2). The latter barely qualifies as a vision per se since it lacks a coherent body of thought (March, 2011; Heywood, 2017, p. 114). Instead, democratic socialism may be regarded as a “set of ameliorative values and policies” that do not aim at a fundamental break with capitalism (Laibman, 2020a, p. 1-2). A revival of socialism hinges on restoring political confidence, which in turn requires the availability of a positive political vision. This vision will need to be ambitious (promise a substantive break with the existing state of affairs), attractive (guarantee a reasonable quality of life), coherent (be logically congruent), and feasible (have workable social and political institutions that can sustain a reasonable material standard of living). Republicanism may aid in the development of theoretical equipment for socialism that can be employed offensively.

In recent years there has been a growing body of literature devoted to exploring a converging relationship between republicanism and socialism. Mostly, this literature is devoted to exegeses which seek to discover hidden or forgotten republican themes in the writings of historical figures or in social movements (Gourevitch, 2015; Leipold, 2017; Roberts, 2017; Lewis [ed.], 2019; Muldoon, 2019; Thompson, 2019; Leipold, Nabulsi, & White, 2020). This can be seen as a project of ‘socialist republicanism’, a less voluminous branch of what has been termed the “neorepublican research program” (Lovett & Pettit, 2009, p. 13). The normative aspect of this project is severely underdeveloped (which is understandable given that it is only now escaping its embryonic phase), although some basic normative theory is being introduced (Muldoon, 2019; O’Shea, 2019). In order to move this project forward, normative arguments and proposals need to be developed and fleshed out.

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Toward this purpose, I will draw from the conceptual repository of republicanism in order to define the parameters by which I will subsequently review diverse socialist proposals and attempt to piece together a normative institutional framework of ‘socialist republicanism’ or, if one prefers, ‘republican socialism’.1_{This should give socialist political actors the sense of direction and confidence that is}

needed to restore offensive initiative.

The republican conceptual repository lends itself to various interpretations, and has thus been employed in service of widely diverging political positions, from radical labourism to liberal republicanism (Gourevitch, 2015; Irving, 2017). Republicanism is not intrinsically wedded to any particular ideology and due to the limitations of this thesis I will not attempt to see if a form of socialism must logically and necessarily follow from republican premises—although I suspect it does not. The justification for investigating the possibility of a union between republicanism and socialism lies in the attempt to rehabilitate socialism. I proceed from the assumption that republicanism can potentially positively influence the attractiveness and viability of socialism, which I will seek to test by designing an institutional arrangement that reflects republican and socialist values. Herein I will not discriminate between neo-Roman and neo-Athenian concerns, but focus broadly on republican values, particularly a mixed constitution, civic virtue, republican liberty, and self-government.

The aim of this thesis is not to add to the already abundant pile of critiques of capitalism but instead to discuss positive alternatives to capitalism. This may be regarded as putting the cart before the horse but we have good reasons to investigate the functional feasibility of a republican socialism before we flesh out normative arguments in favour of it. We cannot afford delegating the task of designing socialism to spontaneous historical processes alone. This would presuppose that a workable—and in relation to capitalism, comparatively superior—socialism must necessarily follow from the concerted efforts of, the traditionally so regarded, working class as revolutionary subject (i.e. the subjective bearer of the objective world-historical development toward communism).2_{To do so is to put faith in untested}

assumptions, which runs afoul of claims to ‘scientific socialism’. After all, it makes little sense to devote considerable energy to the realisation of socialism only to in the end having to find out that some of the difficulties in implementing socialism will cause it to collapse back into capitalism. Especially in light of the failure of actually existing socialisms—which suffered from debilitating inefficiencies and bureaucratic political control—we should first of all ask the question what a feasible socialism could look like. Rather than an afterthought this should be a priority for those interested in socialist revival.

1 ‘Socialist republicanism’ and ‘republican socialism’ may be taken to indicate a differentiation of emphasis, or they could be used interchangeably. I prefer ‘republican socialism’ since it fits neatly when we discuss ‘libertarian socialism’, ‘democratic socialism’, or ‘authoritarian socialism’. 2 The dialectical process of ‘Aufhebung’ (sublation), in which qualitative improvement cumulates

progressively by cycling through a series of ‘contradictions’, underpins this assumption (see e.g.: Wheat, 2012). We should carefully test the assumption that socialism will be a higher form of human social organisation in theory before we might consider doing so in practice.

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Therefore, the central research question which will guide this thesis is as follows: ‘What could an attractive, coherent, ambitious, and operationally or functionally feasible socialist institutional framework look like that is consistent with republican values?’3_{In order to answer this question we}

will need to define the central values of republicanism and review existing theoretical models of socialism. In the following sections of chapter I, I have elected to concisely summarise the historical and theoretical background of both republican and socialist theory for the purpose of context, clarity, and direction. It is with this background that I will engage to develop a normative republican socialism. Evidently, whenever possible empirical data will be used to ground theory, but this thesis is fundamentally theoretical in nature.

1.2 The Core Values of Civic Republicanism

The intention here is not to critically interrogate the axioms of the republican tradition, but rather to provide an outline of its basic conceptual framework. At its most basic core, republicanism is a political tradition stemming from the ancient Graeco-Roman world which argued that government is not the private affair of an aristocracy but a public concern. This classical republicanism was revived in the renaissance, and again rediscovered in the late twentieth century in academia and re-conceptualised as neo-republicanism (Honohan, 2002, p. 13-111; Laborde & Maynor, 2008, p. 2-3). A central feature of the Roman Republic was the separation of powers. Political power was dispersed between diverse public organs and its procedures were constitutionally defined and limited in order to curtail the uncontrolled exercise of power (Mouritsen, p. 3, 6-8). Republican thinkers of the ancient Graeco-Roman world saw it thus:

Monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, according to these writers, are prone to degenerate into tyranny, oligarchy, and mob rule, respectively; but a government that disperses power among the three elements could prevent either the one, the few, or the many from pursuing its own interest at the expense of the common good. With each clement holding enough power to check the others, the result should be a free, stable, and long-lasting government. (Dagger, 2004, p. 169)

This idea of the separation of powers was recovered in the renaissance and lives on in the conception of ‘trias politica’ (Honohan, 2002, p. 83, 106). The republican conception of mixed government derives from its concern for the common good, which sets this tradition apart from liberal individualism, which prioritises individual self-interest above the community. In liberal ideology, the political community should create the preconditions that allow individuals to pursue their own conceptions of good life and permit bargaining between rival private interests in the political arena (Dagger, 2006, p. 155). In republicanism, citizenship is the status that mediates the relationship of the natural person to their political community. Citizens, in the republican conception, should surrender, at least partially, their particular interests to the common good out of civic obligation. It is necessary, then, that citizens experience a sense of solidarity to one another as well as loyalty to core political values of the republic. 3 This thesis will thus not focus on political viability.

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This should bind all citizens to a shared future and common liberty. Common social bonds and a shared basis in public life, or civil society, should facilitate the public-spiritedness of the citizenry. This civic virtue safeguards the republic:

If the balanced constitution is the characteristic form of the republic, civic virtue is its lifeblood. Without citizens who are willing to defend the republic against foreign threats and to take an active part in government, even the mixed constitution will fail. Republics must thus engage in what Michael Sandel calls “a formative politics […] that cultivates in citizens the qualities of character that self-government requires” (1996: 6). Constitutional safeguards may be necessary to resist avarice, ambition, luxury, idleness, and other forms of corruption, but they will not be enough to sustain freedom under the rule of law. Replenishing the supply of civic virtue through education and other means will thus be one of the principal concerns of a prudent republic. (Dagger, 2004, p. 170)

To Schnapper (1998), the republic can best be qualified as a “community of citizens” or, as Lovett and Pettit put it, “a community of equal citizens governed by law” (Lovett & Pettit, 2009, p. 22). This community is a political community and rests upon active political participation by the citizenry. Again, this hinges on the willingness to surrender private interests to an extent. However, “[t]his is not to say that republicans believe that citizens would easily or quickly come to agreement about what the common good requires if only government could be freed from the stranglehold of interest groups” (Dagger, 2004, p. 175). Political dialogue is necessary for citizens to develop a conception of the common good, but it is not required that a consensus be formed (Honohan, 2002, p. 222-223). Deliberation is therefore integral to civic republicanism (Peterson, 2011, p. 3-4). The capacity for political dialogue must be nurtured. First, the personal characters of citizens have to be capable of dialogical exchange in order for a culture of political deliberation to emerge; second, the institutional infrastructure of public life has to be capable of acting as an arena for dialogical exchange. This is the basis of self-government in the republican sense (Dagger, 2006, p. 155). In the ‘neo-Roman’ conception self-government is instrumental to ensuring that republican liberty is sustained through political participation; but the ‘neo-Athenian’ republicans also emphasise the importance of political participation in its own right, for the development of virtue in citizens, under the assumption that the social nature of humans can be expressed through political participation (Brest, 1988, p. 1623; Laborde & Maynor, 2008, p. 2-3; Laborde, 2012, p. 6). Freedom, in this tradition, is understood as self-mastery (Laborde & Maynor, 2008, p. 3).

According to neo-Roman thinkers Pettit and Lovett, the republican conception of freedom is the paramount value of republicanism (Lovett & Pettit, 2009, p. 18). All other values, such as mixed constitution, civic virtue, and self-government, flow from the republican conception of freedom: they are necessary instruments to secure liberty by acting as checks on arbitrary power. Republican freedom, or sometimes neo-Roman freedom, is defined as ‘freedom from domination’. This means that one is considered free when one is not subject to the arbitrary will of another, or dominated. There are some variant definitions of the same core concept, but in all cases republican freedom emphasises

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independence from arbitrary power, both historically and theoretically (Dagger, 2006, p. 155). This means that citizens should have a clearly defined range of choices that cannot be violated on the basis of the capricious whims of a principal actor; that is to say, social power should be ‘constitutionally’ limited so that citizens can act in full knowledge of what to expect when they elect to pursue a certain course of action (Lovett & Pettit, 2009, p. 17). Where the actions of free citizens are predictably, transparently, uniformly, and legally limited, it is important that these restrictions prevent social conditions of dependency and track the interests of the affected citizens (Pettit, 2002, p. 56). The government can therefore legitimately intervene in interpersonal affairs—even when they are formally voluntary—to alleviate the dependency of one person upon another (Lovett & Pettit, 2009, p. 21). Republicanism is, as Pettit (2002, p. 142) puts it, “congenial” to socialism. Neo-republicanism and socialism share the values of active citizenship, a concern for the concentration of wealth, opposition to social relations based in domination, critiques of liberal individualism (Brest, 1988, p. 1623-1627), as well as the universalism of republicanism and the internationalism of socialism. However, republicanism, unlike socialism, has an ambivalent relationship with property. Property is a source of power according to republicanism, and its concentration in the hands of a small segment may allow its members to convert it to political influence at the expense of the common good. Furthermore, commerce promotes particular interests by rewarding the pursuit of private gains in the marketplace materially. Thus the “materialistic ‘virtues’ of commerce” arguably displaced notions of active citizenship and civic pride (Honohan & Jennings, 2006, p. 11). Republicanism, in this sense, “constitutes a movement back to a status society of a strikingly pre-modern form” (Honohan & Jennings, 2006, p. 11). At the same time, republicans saw property as a means to ascertain independence (Gourevitch, 2015, “Greece and Rome in Virginia: Slavery as Republican Necessity”; Dagger, 2006, p. 159-160). This was mostly argued in the historical context of small proprietorship and pre-capitalist manufacturing, when all citizens having potential access to means of production was fairly realistic. With the advent of large-scale industrial production and the concentration of capital, radical republicans repurposed the republican conception of liberty. Instead of seeking a redistribution of property into individual hands and households (which was historically untenable due to industrial manufacturing), the labour republicans re-imagined self-control over the means of production in an industrial context (Gourevitch, 2015). These radical republicans emphasised that large segments of the population did not own means of production nor did they have a realistic chance of ever acquiring them; they were therefore dependent upon the owners of means of production. The capitalists were thus able to subject the workers to their private and arbitrary will—a violation of republican liberty. In order to rectify this, cooperative production was required (Gourevitch, 2015), or, to borrow a phrase by G.D.H. Cole from another context, “self-government in industry” (Cole, 1920a). Marx similarly employed republican vocabulary of dependency, subjection, and domination in his critique of wage-labour (Leipold, 2020a). He, too, re-imagined individual self-controlled production of pre-capitalist

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manufacturing—thesis—on the basis of large-scale social labour—antithesis—in the form of communism—synthesis (Chattopadhyay, 1991, p. 13; Wheat, 2012, p. 263; Leipold, 2020a, p. 8-9).4

For there to be a socialist republicanism it must firstly be shown that economic affairs are a public good and therefore that public control over economic resources can be legitimately exercised. Secondly, it must be demonstrated that socialism is capable of sustaining republican values in its social institutions, which will be the primary focus of this thesis. Toward the first point I will put forward the following basic argument: Society and its members—the general public—are dependent upon productive resources for access to means of life, and therefore the manner in which the productive resources are employed should be subject to stipulations by the public through its political institutions. That is, the economy is a public good which should be subject to some form of public control. This argument differs from the labour republican argument that workers become dependent upon a capitalist, since there the focus lies with the interpersonal dimension of the employer-employee relationship. Rather, my argument posits that the private wills of economic actors, particularly capitalists, can shape the entire course of a society, including, crucially, its government, through nothing but their capacity to direct productive resources on the basis of their private wills (Scott, 2006, p. 87-89). This, then, is also a distinct argument compared to those that emphasise how the ‘structural domination’ of property subjugates workers impersonally (Muldoon, 2019, p. 7-8), since it accentuates instead how the sum of private wills drives the allocation of resources as well as public policy at the expense of the common good and therefore potentially at the expense of public welfare—i.e. it centres the common good and public welfare and frames the latter as a republican concern.5_{A society regulated}

by the sum of private wills may be more unstable, which mirrors republican concerns that saw the capturing of the state by private interests as a threat to stable long-lasting government. If we conceive of ‘the economy’ as a public good, then the unfettered reign of private wills in the market is illegitimate. This is especially true when the weight of respective private wills depends on vastly unequal access to assets and resources, since this produces an imbalance of power.

4 In Marx’s own words:

“The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production” (Marx, 1867).

5 Neo-republicans have sought to disassociate from the ‘collectivism’ that the emphasis on the common good in classical republicanism implies (Lovett, 2018, “4.3 Civic virtue and corruption”). The degree to which the common good can be regarded as an instrument for securing common liberty or as a value in itself stretches beyond the scope of this thesis. Yet it is rather fundamental to the question of public welfare as a republican concern. For now it should be taken as a postulation that warrants both elaboration and close and critical examination in the future.

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It is with the core republican values—of self-government, mixed constitution, the common good, civic virtue, and republican liberty—in mind that I will attempt to craft an institutional framework for a socialist society. Thus, for there to be a republican socialism one would need to demonstrate that a socialist society can accommodate public bodies whose respective discretionary authority can be codified, limited, and balanced, to check against one becoming a source of domination. Furthermore, such a socialist model would need to encourage public-spiritedness, active participation, and sensitivity to the common good. The curtailment of commercial imperatives—which reward and reinforce narrow private interests—is a sound objective, then. Above all, a socialist republic will need to safeguard republican liberty, encouraging both self-mastery and independence from arbitrary power.

1.3 The Socialist Mode of Production in Theory and Practice

The lineage of ‘modern socialism’ can be traced back to both utopian ‘proto-socialism’ and radical republicanism (Moss, 1976, p. 2; Moss, 1993, p. 391-392). It is in particular indebted to the ‘Babouvists’, advocates of the political thought of their contemporary, Gracchus Babeuf, a radical Jacobin republican during the French Revolution and widely considered the ‘first revolutionary communist’ in history (Higonnet, 1979). The radical republicanism and the socialism which sprang from the ‘Babouvists’ took shape in response to the concrete conditions of their time (Muldoon, 2019, p. 4). Marx provided a theoretical foundation to this political movement (Chattopadhyay, 2005, p. 5,629) and combined French socialism with British political economy and German philosophy, as Lenin (1913) simplified. Marx’s political theory and strategy borrowed from the republican tradition in a number of ways as well, particularly its critique of wage-labour expressed in a vocabulary familiar to republicanism and advocacy of self-government (Roberts, 2017; Leipold, 2020b). Marx’s ideas, summarised under the term ‘Marxism’, gradually eclipsed rival radical political movements, such as the Owenites, Proudhonists, Bakuninists, Babouvists, and Lasallians. It seemingly remains the most popular coherent socialist body of thought in the world today. Logically then, Marxism will take centre stage in this thesis, by taking its theoretical and political principles as the point of departure for most of my discussions which contrast republican socialism with existing schools of socialist thought.

Marx theorised that communism would emerge from the concrete material ‘contradictions’6_of

capitalist society—rather than socialism being a moral theory, abstracted from socio-historical conditions. According to Marx, history moved through an intelligible pattern (Sheehan, 1993) which could be made accessible through the lens of a dialectical and materialist method (Wood, 1995). Large-scale industrial manufacturing in nineteenth century Europe dispossessed the immediate producers who had hitherto employed their individually owned and controlled means of production at their leisure. Individual labour was replaced by expansive socialised mass production. Despite the labour process attaining a social and collaborative character, the pattern of ownership did not fundamentally alter, it remained ‘individualised’ or ‘private’ (Engels, [1880], p. 310). The workers were thus subjugated to the 6 That is: the “opposition of structural principles” (Giddens, 1990, p. 145).

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will of capitalists (Leipold, 2020a, p. 3). This structural feature of socialised labour and private or capitalist appropriation is, per Marxist theory, the primary contradiction of capitalist society, and the source of social antagonisms between the proletarian class and the capitalist class (Engels, [1880], p. 310-311).

In capitalism, different units of social production—enterprises, for simplicity’s sake—exist that execute their tasks in mutual independence. The production of commodities often requires the productive contributions of several autonomous units of production through which commodities pass before being available for end use. ‘Autonomous’, here, is the operative word (Chattopadhyay, 1994, p. 46). The coordination of social production between different units is achieved through bargaining, bidding, and exchange of commodities on the market, rather than directly through social links and a comprehensive social plan. As Chattopadhyay explains: “[I]n a society of generalised commodity production, where products result from private labours executed in reciprocal independence, the social character of these labours—hence the reciprocal relations of the creators of these products—are not established directly.” And therefore “[t]heir social character is mediated by exchange of products taking commodity form” (Chattopadhyay, 2005, p. 5,630). It is only where social labour is indirect that products need to assume the form of a commodity in market exchange. According to Marxist theory, this gives rise to the so-called ‘law of value’, arising from the competition of capitals, which thus acts as impersonal disciplinary mechanism, driving down the quantity of abstract labour-time used in production to the social average (Tsushima, 1956). Consequently, “[w]ith the inauguration of the [socialist mode of production] there begins the process of collective appropriation of the conditions of production by society”, which means that “with the end of private appropriation of the conditions of production there also ends the need for the products of individual labour to go through exchange taking the commodity form. In the new society individual labour is directly social from the beginning” (Chattopadhyay, 2005, p. 5,630). If coordination of social production happened directly through social relations, then products would not need to be subjected to exchange to realise their social character and would therefore never be transformed into commodities at all.

The antagonistic opposition of the social classes in capitalism would produce class conflict, which, according to Marxism, will assume a political struggle for supremacy, and ultimately permit the proletariat to seize state power. Since the source of conflict rests on the objective separation of the producers from the means of production—a condition that would be universalised through the expansionary tendency of capital accumulation—the struggle for political power would, in theory, also assume a universal scope. All means of production, therefore, would be transformed into public property, and through this social production would be brought into harmony with the property relations (Engels, [1880], p. 323). This ‘harmonisation’ entails that the social character of production would no longer be limited to within units of production but encompass society as a whole. In other words, the social character of production is given the “freedom to work itself out” (Engels, [1880], p. 325).

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Thereby, the ‘anarchy’ of market forces—a secondary contradiction of capitalism—would be replaced by the collaborative and planned organisation that is already present within the units of production (Engels, [1880], p. 323, 325)—albeit presently orchestrated at the behest of the capitalist and not by the producers themselves.

In communism, as Peter Hudis (2005) explains, “[p]roduction is now geared for use, not for augmenting value. Indirect social labor, based on the value-form of mediation, is replaced by direct social labor, based on ‘transparent’ interpersonal relations between the producers.” This is so because in communism the coordination of production would be managed by a cooperative association of producers that will encompass all units of production in society (Bukharin & Preobrazhensky, 1920) and therefore, in communist society, “there will be no money-capital at all in the first place, nor the disguises [prices] cloaking the transactions arising on account of it” (Marx, [1885], p. 314). Indeed: “According to nineteenth-century socialist views, socialism would function without capitalist economic categories—such as money, prices, interest, profits and rent—and thus would function according to laws other than those described by current economic science” (Bockman, 2011, p. 20).

Engels likewise described the course of the revolution as follows: “[W]hen all capital, all production, and all exchange are concentrated in the hands of the nation, private ownership will automatically have ceased to exist, money will have become superfluous” (Engels, 1847, p. 351), or:

From the moment when society enters into possession of the means of production and uses them in direct association for production, the labour of each individual, however varied its specifically useful character may be, becomes at the start and directly social labour. The quantity of social labour contained in a product need not then be established in a roundabout way; daily experience shows in a direct way how much of it is required on the average. Society can simply calculate how many hours of labour are contained in a steam-engine, a bushel of wheat of the last harvest, or a hundred square yards of cloth of a certain quality. It could therefore never occur to it still to express the quantities of labour put into the products, quantities which it will then know directly and in their absolute amounts, in a third product, in a measure which, besides, is only relative, fluctuating, inadequate, though formerly unavoidable for lack of a better one, rather than express them in their natural, adequate and absolute measure, time. (Engels, [1878], p. 294)7

Communist society, then, is first of all the product of the objective-material contradictions between the level of development of the productive forces and the production and property relations, as opposed to abstract subjective-moral philosophy. In the words of Bordiga (1920):

7 Or in Marx’s words:

“Within the collective society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labour no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of the total [social] labour” (Marx, [1875], p. 85).

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communism presents itself as the transcendence of the systems of utopian socialism which seek to eliminate the faults of social organisation by instituting complete plans for a new organisation of society whose possibility of realisation was not put in relationship to the real development of history.

Beyond a few informative sketches neither Marx nor Engels ever published a detailed blueprint of how communist society would work, however (Gluckstein, 2011, p. 32; Leipold, 2020b, p. 175-176). British guild socialists, such as G.D.H. Cole and S.G. Hobson, did, on the contrary, sketch the institutional outlines of their socialism (Hobson, 1914; Cole, 1920a; Cole, 1920b). Their system involved sectoral ‘guilds’: industrial associations democratically managed by their members, tasked with self-government of their industries, under co-management with the state (Cole 1920a). It was based on cooperation, but without relying on comprehensive social planning in the communist sense. Therefore, it retained money, although competitive markets were abolished, or at least restricted, through guild control over commodity exchange. These works had little concern for the details of allocation and planning, as they were, by and large, contextually bound to the pre-Soviet era (save for, say, Cole’s 1935 work ‘Principles of Economic Planning’).

After the Russian Revolution of 1917 interest in the articulation of schemes was aroused, in the context of the difficulties of ‘war communism’ and the attacks, in 1920, by right-wing liberal Von Mises who had turned Marx’s and Engels’ argument on its head. Where they had believed that prices mystified what could be understood simply and transparently if only labour were executed under direct social association instead of indirectly through market transactions, Von Mises argued that market prices were crucial to economic decision-making. Economic calculation, under socialism, would be impossible, he concluded (Von Mises, 2012). Von Mises’ compelling argumentation encouraged socialists to counter, spawning the so-called ‘economic calculation debate’. The first socialist who sought to tackle Von Mises’ arguments was Neurath, who believed that calculation in-natura, through material input-output tables, was capable of functioning as a rational and objective economic indicator to guide decision-making (Cockshott, 2008). Others, like Lange, Lerner, as well as Taylor, in the 1930s, believed that socialism could operate rationally by means of an ‘artificial’ market controlled by a Central Planning Board (henceforth CPB),8_{within a wider context of public ownership (Lange, 1936; Lange, 1937;}

Kowalik, 1990, p. 147-148).

From 1928 onwards, the Soviet Union enacted central planning, using ‘Five Year Plans’ (Nove, 1992, p. 143). Initially, the centrally mandated mobilisation of resources allowed the Soviet Union to increase industrial output rapidly (Nove, 1992, p. 195) impressively turning it “from being the most backward country in Europe to the ranks of a global superpower” (Schweickart, 2002, p. 58-59). From within the Soviet Union, using the real-world experience of economic planning, Kantorovich developed linear programming, an algorithmic technique to maximise output given a set of constraints. It was used to 8 ‘CPB’ will be used for all planning authorities, whatever the varied form they may assume in

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calculate in physical terms the optimal means to achieve a given plan target (Cockshott, 2008, p. 17-19). However, it could not be used on an economy-wide scale, since resolving the many equations was too complex and, additionally, it would require an estimation of consumer demand beforehand, i.e. the mix of goods that would need to be produced over a given plan period. Nevertheless, initially, the mobilisation of resources was relatively successful, and the complexity of economic planning was mitigated because it dealt particularly with large strategic priorities (raw materials, capital goods, heavy industry).

When the transition to a consumer good and innovation driven economy had to be made, the shortcomings of Soviet-style central planning came to a fore (Nove, 1992, p. 366, 390). Gradually, in the second half of the twentieth century, growth rates declined and stagnated when the benefits of the resource mobilisation strategy wore off (Chattopadhyay, 1994, p. 88; Nove, 1992, p. 389). Even from within the Soviet Union confidence in central planning was waning. Soviet policy makers saw themselves forced to introduce minor ‘market reforms’, in particular in 1965, 1979, and 1987, which attempted (rather unsuccessfully) to increase enterprise or managerial autonomy, among other measures (IMF, 1991, p. 26-27; Nove, 1992, p. 382-383, 394; Whitefield, 1993, p. 44-45, 50; Laibman, 2020b). The dissolution of the Soviet Union and other Marxist-Leninist regimes in the 1990s signified the end of trust in economic planning, including more moderate forms thereof (Heywood, 2017, p. 22). By word of its then chairman Fuwa Tetsuzo, the Japanese Communist Party expressed support for market socialism (Tetsuzo, 2002). Similarly, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) states that “In our view, the socialist economy will be a market economy with strategic planning” (Kscm.cz, 2016).9_{The Communist Party of Greece (KKE), in contrast, still maintains its belief in}

central planning in conjunction with “workers’ control” (Inter.kke.gr, 2016). While no complete data set is available, the KKE appears increasingly isolated on this question among the remaining ‘official Communist Parties’.

In the 1980s and 1990s we see somewhat of a proliferation on academic literature dedicated to questions of how socialism should be organised economically.10_{The failure of Soviet-style central}

planning forced theorists to re-think their commitment to comprehensive social planning. Some socialist theorists leaned into the criticisms of central planning and integrated market competition into their models, among them Schweickart (2002) and Nove (1991); other theorists were somewhat more reluctant.

9 Translated using Google Translate, January 14, 2020.

10 ‘Proliferation’, here, is relative. Despite the enormous importance of this question to the socialist movement—especially since the collapse of actually existing socialism—discussions of alternatives to capitalism remain very much a niche within a niche: only a handful of socialist theorists have attempted to formulate alternatives (see e.g.: Campbell, 2012). In addition to theoretical difficulties, few people outside of academia pay attention to these discussions. They are ignored by more or less everyone else, including socialist party leaders, theorists and strategists, policy makers, and the general public.

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According to Devine, a conceptual distinction should be made between market exchange and market forces, permitting the former but exuding the latter from his model of ‘democratic planning’ (Devine, 2002, p. 76). His model is probably most similar to that of Albert and Hahnel (1991), which they style ‘participatory economics’ or ‘parecon’, and Laibman’s model of ‘democratic coordination’ (Laibman, 2002a), since their primary allocative mechanism is the iterative negotiation of inputs and outputs. To Albert and Hahnel, production plans should be designed by producers and consumers putting forward proposals on how much they intend to produce and consume each year on the basis of indicative prices, with an ‘Iterative Facilitation Board’ matching supply and demand. After the plan is approved, however, price adjustments based on excess supply or demand will still have to be made, artificially mimicking the mechanisms of the market (Hahnel & Wright, 2016, “How Marketish Are “Adjustments”?”).

Cockshott and Cottrell, both of whom have backgrounds in computer science, articulated a central planning which uses new means of computing technology for strategic and macro-economic planning, with democratic input, in combination with a ‘micro-economic’ artificial market for consumer goods (Cockshott & Cottrell, 1993). The phrase ‘artificial market’—not used by Cockshott or Cottrell—is borrowed from Fotopoulos, who describes his anarchist model of a socialist society as an ‘inclusive democracy’ (Fotopoulos, 1997). In his view, society should be stateless and marketless, but retain non-circulating vouchers whose value is determined by an automatic price mechanism based on supply and demand. An influence on Fotopoulos, Cornelius Castoriadis ([1957], p. 90-155) had, already in the 1950s, formulated a theoretical model of workers’ control over the economy based on economic planning, but he rejected the notion that this would be a complicated challenge and believed that it merely required a simple technical coefficient or two. He too permitted a role for ‘tokens’ and a market for consumer goods in his system.

All these models, and the questions that they seek to answer, can ultimately be reduced to the so-called fundamental economic problem: the manner in which finite resources can be apportioned to optimally satisfy human wants and needs. This problem branches off into a multitude of secondary problems. These secondary problems arise from the manner in which the primary economic problem is dealt with. When evaluating institutional models based on their compatibility with republican values we will evidently also discuss their functional feasibility. The views of Nove that emphasise the need to use realistic and reasonable standards of feasibility are helpful on that front. To quote him at length:

It is my contention that Marx had little to say about the economics of socialism, and that the little he did say was either irrelevant or directly misleading. The word ‘feasible’ is in the title of this book as a kind of flank guard against utopian definitions. One can, if one chooses (and, as I shall show, many have so chosen), define socialism in such a way that economic problems as we know them would not, indeed could not, exist. If one assumes ‘abundance’, this excludes opportunity-cost, since there would be no mutually exclusive choices to make. If one assumes that the ‘new man’, unacquisitive, ‘brilliant, highly rational, socialised, humane’, will require no incentives, problems of discipline and

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motivation vanish. If it is assumed that all will identify with the clearly visible general good, then the conflict between general and partial interest, and the complex issues of centralisation/decentralisation, can be assumed out of existence. If human beings in society can see ex ante what needs to be produced and the correct way of producing and utilising all products, then there is no need for ex post verification; the indirect and imperfect link between use-value and exchange-value, via exchange relations and the market, can be replaced by direct conscious human decisions on production for use. Division of labour will have been overcome, by ‘brilliant’ multipurpose human beings. ‘While not everyone may be able to paint as well as Raphael, everyone will be able to paint exceedingly well.’ Everyone will govern, there will not be any governed. Since all competing interests will have disappeared, there will be no need to claim rights of any sort, no need for restrictive rules, laws, judges, or a legislature. Of course, there will be no state, no nation-states (and so no foreign trade, or any trade). The wages system will have gone, as well as money. (Nove, 1991a, p. 11)

To Nove, a feasible socialism means that “it should be conceivable within the lifespan of one generation”, “without making extreme, utopian, or far-fetched assumptions” (1991a, p. 12). We will use this broad standard of feasibility as we move forward.

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Chapter II: Public Administration in the Socialist Republic

2.1 The Social Contract and Socialist Constitutionalism

Socialism is based on social ownership of the means of production, which means that the conditions for their use are stipulated by society—or more accurately, the political institutions that are placeholders for society as a whole. The role of political institutions in relation to discussions of the feasibility of a socialist mode of production should therefore not be sidestepped. It is essential that the political institutions in a socialist society remain instruments of self-governance by the citizenry, so that corruption in the republican sense—the capturing of public bodies by particular interests—does not occur. Individual ownership of property cannot provide a degree of security against government encroachment of independence in socialism, since all (productive) property belongs to the political community.11_{According to liberal critics belonging to the Austrian school, this means that socialism}

will inevitably lead down a path toward totalitarianism, or as Hayek put it ‘the road to serfdom’ (Makovi, 2016). Democracy is supposed to be a means to limit state power, while socialism would supposedly require absolute state power in order to subordinate all economic activity to a single authority, making the notion of a ‘democratic socialism’ logically incoherent. One would have to give way to the other: either democracy or socialism would in the end survive.

If political power is usurped by a particular group they would have immediate access to society’s productive resources. The means of production would effectively be monopolised by said group. If the risk associated with socialism is power becoming concentrated in the centre of political authority then republicanism, with its emphasis on freedom secured by self-government and the separation of powers (among other measures), could prove useful in addressing this critique. Socialism would need to integrate republican institutional checks in its public institutions. The objective of a socialist theory of self-government is therefore to find institutional devices that should ensure that political power cannot become concentrated in a particular section of the population and thereby erode socialism. This chapter will discuss the political institutions and complementary practices and procedures that are appropriate to a socialist commonwealth. I will argue that a republican system of government and ‘socialist constitutionalism’ are necessary preconditions to ensure that socialism is sustained. This section will focus on the latter.

Constitutionalism is associated with liberalism, particularly with the founders of the republic of the United States of America (Waluchow, 2018), and not so much with socialism. To moderate republicans influenced by liberalism, such as Hamilton, democracy needed to be limited in order to secure certain natural rights by placing them beyond the scope of democratic decision-making. Constitutional limits on legislation are crucial to this aim, but representation also plays a role. The republican tradition places emphasis on virtue and character, and Hamilton believed that representatives would “most 11 A brief discussion of the property relations will follow in section 3.1.

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likely” be endowed with “enlightened views and virtuous sentiments” which makes them “superior to local prejudices” (Hamilton, 2007, p. 46). This is more or less the mechanism in contemporary liberal democracy, where professional politicians are supposed to translate popular sentiments into balanced policy proposals, weighing popular demands against financial and constitutional viability. To Hamilton, the structure of the republic was intended as “remedy” against “diseases”, i.e. potential popular demands “for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project”. Should such demands surface, various built-in checks and balances would limit and isolate its spread, immunising the republic from self-defeating popular demands (Hamilton, 2007, p. 46). This conception of representation, constitutionalism, and republicanism as an aristocratic check on the radical temperaments of the working classes is the root of anti-republican bias in socialism (e.g.: Cockshott & Zachariah, [1989], p. 54-57; Chomsky, 1999, p. 47-48). Modified versions of this argument persist today and caution against ‘mob rule’ or ‘ochlocracy’: Unfiltered public sentiment, such as popular prejudice, will cause the majority to disregard and vote away the rights of minorities or pursue economically short-sighted and self-destructive ends (Lewis, 2011, p. 1; Bolton, 2013, p. 1). Democracy is supposed to act as a limit on state power, and conversely, democracy is supposed to be limited by constitutional constraints.

It should be stressed that the republican tradition also emphasises dialogue and deliberation. This does more than merely provide an additional institutional platform to express intolerance or prejudice. By confronting parties with opposing views, it allows room for nuance and toleration. Popular participation, far from amplifying prejudice, will likely help to break it down and facilitate the finding of common ground and enhance public civility (Walsh, 2007, p. 45, 56-57; Weatherford & McDonnell, 2007, p. 196). However, this requires certain preconditions, such as the use of public talk in which conflicting opinions can be mediated and reformulated, or the dissemination of information by experts in a non-authoritarian way (Walsh, 2007, p. 46-47; Weatherford & McDonnell, 2007, p. 210). With sound institutional mechanisms that facilitate deliberation, direct self-government by citizens may well be feasible. The liberal scepticism toward citizens governing themselves directly may be overstated, then. Even so, the rights of minorities and individuals are not guaranteed through deliberative decision-making alone. For this reason, it would nevertheless be necessary to place certain fundamental rights beyond the scope of immediate democratic control through constitutional constraints on legislation. While we may entrust the citizenry with considerably more political authority than they are endowed with in liberal democracy, we should not advocate unchecked direct democracy either.

Let us turn to the role and scope of political institutions in society in general, and in relation to socialism in particular, which will clarify the proposition above more clearly. A republican socialism will stress the need for centring citizenship. It is important that individuals do not relate to one another merely as consumers and producers, regarding others as means to their own immediate economic interests, but instead consider themselves part of a greater community. The particularism of narrow

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material self-interest would otherwise shape their outlook at the expense of the common good. The political community will therefore have to play a pivotal role in a republican socialist society and economy.

Fotopoulos correctly criticises the Albert-Hahnel model (introduced briefly in chapter I) for relying exclusively on producers and consumers for decision-making. In their model, the principal (in fact, the only) decision-making bodies are producer and consumer councils. However, Fotopoulos argues, since “people as workers may have conflicting ideas, views and possibly even interests with people as consumers”. Thus, a public body is required to express the general interest, which, in inclusive democracy, is a general community assembly within the context of a stateless society, while “the particular interests [are expressed] by workplace assemblies, education establishments’ assemblies, etc”. This supposedly transcends “the division between the general versus the particular interest”, which implies that social conflict of this nature cannot arise (Fotopoulos, 2003, p. 439). In a stateless commonwealth, the legislative powers of political institutions would be limited to decision-making regarding collective infrastructure and public goods—the ‘administration of things’, rather than rule over people, ‘the administration of people’. This conception is shared by Marxism and anarchism. For example, according to Bordiga, a Marxist theorist, there is no need for a state “when society as a whole becomes the master of its conditions of existence”, i.e. communistic, since it is no longer “torn by internal antagonism” (In Crump, 1987, p. 134). Regulation of the social activities of citizens would be tantamount to state power. Instead, social activities in a stateless society would be self-regulated, although not ‘anarchically’, but instead on the basis of mutual social trust, free agreement, reciprocity, and association (Holterman, 1980; Holterman, 2012, p. 10-13)—more or less what Proudhon saw as a voluntary ‘social contract’ (Proudhon, [1851], p. 562-564).

Yet, of course, the polity, in the name of the general interests of society, should at times overrule the particular interests of the workplace or local community. Even in socialist society people will express competing perceptions of the common good or put forward mutually exclusive particular interests, which will have to be mediated, but also ultimately enforced if need be. In this respect a republic is better suited than a stateless community, which will more likely rely on ad hoc methods of enforcement or customary law, and is therefore more susceptible to arbitrary uses of power.12_{A republic, by contrast,}

has its codes of civil conduct established clearly, uniformly, transparently, and enforced by an accountable public body.

It is conceivable that the polity will place demands on a sectional organisation which the members of said organisation consider unreasonable and excessive, which is a source of social conflict. When the 12 We have no experience with large-scale, urbanised, or multicultural communities that are primarily governed by customary law. It would be more difficult in such a community to distil coherent and widely practised customs that could function as the basis for law. This could lead to a patchwork of jurisdictions—since disparate customs are situated in close proximity—and therefore arbitrary power.

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conflict cannot be mediated it could cause strike action by workers, as happened in socialist Yugoslavia: Logically,

In a purely competitive and ‘free’ self-management system, workers would have no reason to strike against themselves. In practice, nonetheless, the high degree of government intervention in enterprise affairs provoked adverse reaction in workers. Workers were striking not against enterprise, but against government policy. (Liotta, 2001, p. 6)

Evidently, the Yugoslav state was not an arena in which the common good could be established through deliberative dialogue by citizens since they had “no real influence—despite the claims of the (one-party Marxist) state—on decision making, production process, or social policy” (Liotta, 2001, p. 8). Nevertheless, even in a political community ruled through deliberative and participatory decision-making by the citizenry we might realistically expect that workers in a given production unit will occasionally object to stipulations of the community without a possibility for reconciliation. Without means to enforce a final decision, taken by a legitimate public body which takes into account both particular and general interests, such a polity may quickly become dysfunctional.

To emphasise this further, let us turn to another example. In libertarian socialism local bodies would operate autonomously and their decisions would be coordinated and enforced by voluntary association alone, i.e. the ability to opt out. Interdependency and reciprocity between so-called ‘free associations’ of communities and workplaces would be the glue that holds the system together (Van der Walt & Schmidt, 2009, p. 67-70). Decentralisation, however, cements inequality between communities. If one community possesses access to particular resources, natural or otherwise, which benefit an entire society, then they might potentially have the ability to hold the rest of society hostage: such resources could effectively be monopolised by one community. This is far from a hypothetical scenario. For instance, in the Russian Revolution:

Railways which ran on wood-fired steam engines had acquired plantations of trees to supply fuel. Local peasants seized the plantations as part of ‘their’ village’s land; and by doing so stopped the railways. Some decisions can be and should be taken locally. In relation to others, attempting to take local decisions is, in fact, for the locals to decide for everyone else that there shall not be a railway, or electricity supply, or an internet, or whatever the large-scale infrastructure item involved is. (Macnair, 2005)

A degree of centralisation is required to ensure that resources needed by all are controlled by the political community, as representative of the common interests of society as whole. Central control by a public body would be an effective safeguard against particular interests threatening the coherence of the system. At the same time, it is not necessary that all decision-making should pass through the centre, of course, since this would be inefficient. Socialists have tended to advocate the subsidiarity principle instead (e.g.: Devine, 2002, p. 75). Subsidiarity is the principle that decisions should be made at the most immediate scale at which they affect matters—i.e. local matters locally, regional matters regionally, central matters centrally. Some central decisions should be binding on all regional and local

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public bodies in order to achieve the aims of the decision. In such circumstances a republican regime has at its disposal (constitutionally defined and limited) tools to enforce a final decision after independent arbitration. Thus, in terms of the scope and role of political institutions, there should be both a public body which exercises stewardship over the general interest and the means to enforce final decisions.

The enforcement of law, in republicanism, is legitimate insofar as it tracks the interests of the affected citizenry, as we noted in chapter I. If legal regulations reflect the preferences of voters then libertarians (of both the left and right-wing variety) might object that enforcement would be redundant. If law truly reflects the preferences of individuals then they should not have to assume legal force: Individuals would voluntarily act in accordance with their own preferences—or else they would not be their preferences. Republicanism could be charged with paternalism and elitism, therefore, by implying that the true preferences of the citizens are known by legislators and not by citizens themselves.

However, we have to take into account that human psychology is somewhat more complex. To illustrate this I will draw on the concept of the ‘higher-order volition’. Also known as second-order preferences, they entail one’s preferences about one’s preferences. For example, an addict’s first-order preference or lower-order volition may be for continued use of their substance; but a higher-order volition or second-order preference may be to not have this preference in the first place (Frankfurt, 1971). Similarly, predictably irrational choices are widely observed (Hama, 2010). One example includes a pension scheme with an opt-in and opt-out variant. When employees in a firm were given the option to opt into the pension plan, few did. This may be taken as an indication that they made the measured choice for another option elsewhere. When the same employees were all signed up to the plan by the default and asked to opt out if they disagreed, few again did so. While these employees would benefit from a pension plan (a second-order preference), this experiment indicates that they are scarcely willing to expend the mental energy to follow through on their higher-order volition (Thaler & Benartzi, 2007). ‘Paternalistic’ provisions of universal social security—which can be effectively achieved within the context of a state—would fulfil the second-order preferences of citizens but universal coverage would not follow from individual free choice alone. The uncontrolled exercise of lower volition preferences would likely result in a society with lower public welfare; and, crucially, not as a matter of preference, since the citizens of such a society would prefer a different outcome (a society with more stability, security, longevity, and so on, through the universal provision of certain social services).

In relation to socialism, we might argue the following. In a model of socialism which retains market competition, the members of a workers’ cooperative may pursue the relative maximisation of income by behaving competitively in an aggressive market, since this is the means by which they can assure their livelihood. They prefer, therefore, to take part in competition—and thereby reproduce the system of free competition—over the immediate other alternative also available to them: operating at a loss,

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and in due time, bankruptcy. One might superficially conclude that this is a matter of free choice (and, moreover, that it is the economically sensible thing to do), and should hence not be interfered with. Yet, a higher-order volition of all workers may be the preference for a system in which their livelihood does not depend on competition but on cooperation instead. In a competitive market, workers would be structurally or institutionally compelled to behave competitively to guarantee their livelihood but that is not to say that they prefer these institutional rules that shape their choices in the first place.13_{Even if}

cooperation is preferred over competition by all, or at least the majority of society, it may not be the outcome of the aggregate of individual decisions, therefore.14

In a socialist model based on voluntary cooperation, capitalism may re-emerge in a similar manner. Members of a wealthy cooperative may at one point sub-contract unemployed workers and attempt to undercut other cooperatives to expand their wealth further. In this way they could, at least momentarily, benefit from both competition (by undercutting their competitors) and cooperation (insofar their competitors are, for the moment, still committed to cooperation). The fragile cooperative equilibrium would collapse and stimulate a race to the bottom. Even if it is not consciously willed by the majority in society, many would feel forced to take part in it to assure their livelihood.

It would be necessary to enforce cooperation—a second-order preference—at the central level through a pact that is binding on all associations and communities. The conditions of this pact, which ought to be included in the constitutional order, will need to be formulated by the members of society themselves through direct legislation and subject to periodic re-deliberation. This pact is only effective insofar as the citizens themselves formulate the conditions, to guarantee that it tracks their interests, and to prevent particular interests (e.g. those of bureaucrats) from capturing public bodies.15_{This is the}

nature of the ‘social contract’ under a socialist constitutional-republican order: It does not exist as an aristocratic check on democracy, nor as a means to gain security in exchange for surrendering absolute freedom, but rather as a means to secure socialism. This is necessary since the outcome of the sum of individual choices cannot guarantee the durable reproduction of socialism. Socialist constitutionalism can hence be regarded as a non-elitist answer to liberal constitutionalism. The next section will address how citizens may feasibly formulate the laws of their society through direct legislation.

2.2 The Political Institutions and Practices of Self-Government

Socialists and republicans have generally shared a commitment to self-government. Marx and Engels saw in the First French Republic as well as the Paris Commune, and more generally the democratic

13 This is of course a theoretical argument, not an empirical one.

14 Engels similarly stated: “For what each individual wants is obstructed by every other individual and the outcome is something that no one wanted” (Engels, [1890], p. 35).

15 To reiterate, in republicanism: “The promotion of freedom as non-domination requires, therefore, that something be done to ensure that public decision-making tracks the interests and the ideas of those citizens whom it affects; after all, non-arbitrariness is guaranteed by nothing more or less than the existence of such a tracking relationship (Pettit, 2002, p. 184).

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republic, with its institutions of democratic participation and direct legislation, a prefiguration of the transitional regime—which may be called the “dictatorship of the proletariat” or “social republic” (Leipold, 2020b, p. 175). According to Engels, communists were right to celebrate the French Republic under Jacobin rule (Engels, [1845], p. 2); to Marx, the proletarian regime begins with “the self-government of the commune” and would encompass the entire population of a given nation (Marx, 1874).16_{They characterised the democratic republic as “the specific form of the dictatorship of the}

proletariat” (Engels, [1891b], p. 227) and identified Jacobin-rule during the French Revolution and the short-lived Paris Commune as such revolutionary dictatorships (Engels, [1845], p. 2; Marx, [1847], p. 320; Marx, [1871b]; Engels, 1891a). In their view, however, the ‘social republic’ is a tool for proletarian class supremacy, and once the social transformation has been consolidated, the institutions of self-government lose their coercive functions and become free and voluntary associations that administer things rather than people (Engels, [1880], p. 321).17_{Communism, at least according to}

Marxist theory, is a stateless society. However, even in the absence of class antagonisms, as I have argued, society will require political authority. This political authority will—in addition to being defined and limited by a constitutional framework—need to reflect the general interest as understood by the citizenry themselves. Thus, political institutions will require that they facilitate direct legislation. It remains necessary in any case to design public policy and carry out public administration. Marx and Engels believed that in bourgeois society elected public officials were captured by private commercial interests, which meant that government turned from the servant of society into its master (Marx, [1871a], p. 486-487; Engels, [1891a]). To remedy this, they adopted the proposals of radical republicans and socialists. All public functions would need to be elected by universal suffrage; all elected public officials would need to receive an average worker’s income; elected officials would need to be bound by fixed mandates; and recall procedures would need to be available to constituencies (Engels, 1891a). These are some of the mechanisms proposed by democratic and radical republicans to ensure the accountability of government to its people as well (Mouritsen, 2006, p. 30; Leipold, 2020b, p. 177-178). Socialists have generally advocated “radical democracy based on popular participation” (Heywood, 2017, p. 41). Thus, we find that socialist theorists, like Marx and Engels before them, tended to take up the republican proposals of direct legislation. Citizen assemblies, such as those in the French Revolution, are usually taken as the standard model (e.g.: Bookchin, 2015, p. 50, 53). After the Russian Revolution ‘soviets’, or ‘workers’ councils’, came to be widely regarded as the revolutionary form of working class political authority (e.g.: Shipway, 1988; Ness & Azzellini [eds.], 2011). Kautsky, on the contrary, believed that parliamentary forms were an outgrowth of the absence of servile labour. 16 The commune being an administrative division at the municipal level of the French Republic. 17 Indeed, “dictatorship” was borrowed from Roman law, where it referred to a constitutional proviso

which allowed for the temporary concentration of power to quell civil unrest—essentially, a state of emergency (Draper, 1987, p. 11-13). A ‘dictatorship’ is by that definition a temporal rather than a ‘timeless’ regime, and so, then, is the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat (Marx, [1875], p. 95).