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VOICE OF
ELECTRICITY WORKERS
TASK FORCE ON POWER
Issue: In,
Market Socialism, your critique centers around the ideology that rises from
market relations. You argue that this ideology is totally at odds with socialist
values and ways of thinking regardless of who controls the market mechanism, the
tool or whatever we call it.
BO: It’s important
to see that I arrive at this conclusion by laying out what goes on in market
exchanges of all sorts. Given how often those exchanges occur and how early they
begin, I try to show that what we actually experience here leads to certain
ideas about oneself, money, products, social relations, and the nature of the
society. These ideas, which have to do with individualism, freedom to choose,
the power of money, greed, competition, and mutual indifference form the core of
bourgeois ideology. On the whole, radicals have given too much attention to what
Marcuse called the “consciousness industry” – schools, media, church, etc. –
where we passively imbibe these ideas, and too little to those activities, like
buying and selling, where we can be said to live them and where these ideas get
confirmed on a daily basis. These ideas as well as, their accompanying emotions
are the exact opposite of those - like cooperation, solidarity, and mutual
concern - that are required by life in socialism, that is, if such a society is
to work.
BO: It’s important
to see that I arrive at this conclusion by laying out what goes on in market
exchanges of all sorts. Given how often those exchanges occur and how early they
begin, I try to show that what we actually experience here leads to certain
ideas about oneself, money, products, social relations, and the nature of the
society. These ideas, which have to do with individualism, freedom to choose,
the power of money, greed, competition, and mutual indifference form the core of
bourgeois ideology. On the whole, radicals have given too much attention to what
Marcuse called the “consciousness industry” – schools, media, church, etc. –
where we passively imbibe these ideas, and too little to those activities, like
buying and selling, where we can be said to live them and where these ideas get
confirmed on a daily basis. These ideas as well as, their accompanying emotions
are the exact opposite of those - like cooperation, solidarity, and mutual
concern - that are required by life in socialism, that is, if such a society is
to work.
There are some things, in other
words, that mix and can be mixed easily. Salt and pepper are two; there is no
problem mixing salt and pepper. But there are other things that don’t mix - for
example, fire and water. If you try to mix them, either the fire is going to
cause the water to become steam or the water is going to put out the fire. I
believe mixing the market, any kind of market, with socialist institutions is a
mixture more like fire and water than it is like salt and pepper. They are
simply not going to be able to maintain the durable equilibrium that market
socialists want and believe possible.
You referred to it
as a “tool or whatever we call it.” It’s terribly important what you call it,
just because most people do think of the market as a tool. Tools generally
function as they do because of who is holding them and how he or she chooses to
use them. Basing themselves on this metaphor, many on the left think of the
market as a kind of can opener. It’s in our hands and we can use it to open cans
if we want. However, if we change the metaphor from can opener to meat grinder
and instead of seeing ourselves holding it we view ourselves as being inside it,
all of a sudden the market appears to be doing something quite different. Rather
than moving in ways we direct, it is us that gets moved about according to its
rhythm, and it will eventually turn us into ground meat. This is a really the
best metaphor with which to think of the market. The market is not an instrument
in our hands like a can opener.
It’s more like a meat grinder and we’re inside it.
It doesn’t follow that we should try to abolish the market over night. I think
we should make serious inroads on the market as soon as we have the chance to do
so, expanding public ownership and creating a democratic central plan for
producing and distributing our most important goods. That wouldn’t include
everything. It is terribly important, however, that we keep clearly in mind the
ultimate goal of doing away with private ownership and market exchanges
completely, that public education for it – particularly as the crucial step in
overcoming alienation – never falters, and that the pace toward attaining this
goal remains steady.
Issue: What are the
most pressing questions in Marxist theory?
BO: There are many,
but here’s my short list, and therefore, too questions that I have tried and am
still trying to address. First, state theory. Marx wanted to do a systematic
study of the state, particularly of the capitalist state, but, as with so much
else, didn’t get around to it. There’s a lot in his writings that gives us an
idea of what he thought, but the systematic theory of the state - something
comparable to what he gave us on value - is still to be done. My own work in
this area has been mainly on the role of dialectics in constructing the changing
boundaries of the state and the part played by alienation and ideology in state
functioning. My main writings on these topics appear in Dialectical
Investigations and, my most recent book, Dance of the Dialectic.
Another important
set of questions relate to the communist future. Again, Marx didn’t give us a
detailed picture of what socialism and communism would be like, but there’s not
work of any size that doesn’t offer some information on this subject. In my
book, Social and Sexual Revolution, I try to bring most of Marx’s comments on
socialism and communism together to get an idea how full and detailed his views
in this area were. I am currently working on a book on communism, the main aim
of which is to lay out the elements of the dialectical method that Marx used to
study the socialist and communist future inside the capitalist present. In
spelling all this out, I not only want to show what Marx did and how he did it,
but to help us to do it – and to do it more often and more effectively – with
the capitalism of our day.
Understandably
perhaps, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many on the left – including a
lot of people who had always been critical of the USSR – have been struck with a
kind a shyness when it comes to discussing to the kind of society that we want.
Yet, criticisms of capitalism, no matter how apt, have never been enough. If
people are to get involved in the terribly difficult work of overturning
capitalism, they need to know, at least in a general way, what will replace it.
And this is probably more true now than ever, when Margaret Thatcher’s infamous
mantra – “There is no alternative” – bombards us from all sides. And the chief
place to look for the evidence and signs of this alternative society is in the
unrealized potential (what Marx referred to as the “germs”) of our own
capitalist society, and not – as so many communists did earlier – in the model
of socialism born in altogether different conditions on the other end of the
planet. The whole debate on market socialism, whatever position one takes on it
– and you’ve heard mine, is at least right on target in focusing on what we can
build using what we’ve got here, in capitalism, rather than trying to draw on
less than relevant experiences elsewhere.
Still another
pressing question in Marxist theory has to do with class interests and their
role in the development of class consciousness and in the kind of political
activities people engage in. Again, despite its importance, this is a subject
about which Marx said very little. People’s motivation is obviously very
complex, but, for the big questions and over the long and even the middle term,
the pressures coming from our class interests determine what most of us want and
do – for the price of ignoring them is a much lowered quality of life that can
even threaten our survival both as individuals and as a class. It is not
surprising, therefore, that in all class societies, the ruling economic class
does its best to construct relations in every sphere of life that serves its
class interests, whatever that happens to be. Better than anything else, this
explains the past (at least in broad outline), our present (again, in broad
outline – even taking account of all the differences between capitalist
countries), and our likely future.
As regards the
future, the question is often asked – would workers make the kind of changes in
a socialist society that we Marxists expect them to? My answer is that the
workers would act no differently than have earlier ruling classes, which is to
say that they would do whatever is necessary to serve their class interests. And
I think, in this period, their main interest as a class would be to do away with
the conditions that underlay their common exploitation as workers. Besides
taking over the means of production, this could only be done by developing
democracy to the point where no group – even among the workers – would be in a
position to establish a new form of exploitation. This move toward a
thoroughgoing democracy would coincide with a rapidly growing equality, in large
part because equality is necessary for democracy to work. Taken together –
perfecting democracy and expanding equality because this is in the interest of
the entire working class – is the best answer to the criticism we often hear
that a socialist society will only replace one form of exploitation with
another.
Today,
unfortunately, many otherwise committed Marxists do not give class interests the
attention that it deserves. Partly, this is a result of accepting a overly
narrow definition of “workers” that places most of the people who work for a
living under other labels (rather than seeing that most Blacks, women, Moslems,
gays, etc. are still – and also – workers); and partly it is a result of the
real but explainable difficulties most workers in the advanced capitalist
countries have had in becoming class conscious. Thus, for example, while some of
the most creative work by Marxists in recent years has been in the area of
ecology, most of these scholars seriously underplay the role of class interests,
both in studying who suffers most from the destruction of the environment and in
developing an effective political strategy to stop it. This neglect usually
follows from prioritizing human interests over class interests. Clearly,
capitalists and other non-workers are human beings and have the same human
interests that workers do. But it is not human interests that are decisive in
determining how most people act economically and politically, at least as
regards to the most pressing questions in their lives. And in any clash between
human interests and class interests, it is almost always class interests that
win out. Just examine how the great majority of capitalists act whenever their
class interests are at stake, no matter the cost to their human interests. And I
think this is the case with workers as well, even though the gap between class
and human interests is not as great here. But if this is so, then Marxists must
put class interests back into the center of their analysis, and not just for the
problems of the ecology.
Finally – and this
is only on my short list – there is dialectics. The political disappointments of
the last two decades have driven a small but growing number of Marxist scholars
to reexamine dialectics not just as a worldview but as a method for doing
research. In the mid-1980s, I co-edited a three volume work called Left Academy:
Marxist Scholarship on American Campuses, in which Marxist professors in twenty
three different disciplines reported on the Marxist work going on in their
areas. While much of this work was extremely impressive, the understanding of
dialectics in the American academy was shown to be very limited. But it is only
with dialectics that one can achieve an adequate grasp of the complex
interactions in society, as they have evolved, are even now evolving and are
likely to evolve in the future. Therefore, only dialectics can consistently
avoid the one-sided and static caricatures of reality that constitute such a
large part of bourgeois ideology. I would go so far as to say that most of the
shortcomings found in Marxist analysis today - a few of which I’ve noted above -
can be traced to the neglect or misuse of dialectics. In short, a lot rides on
getting dialectics right, but we must also be able to explain this difficult
subject in ways that most people can understand, something that may be even
harder to do than getting it right. Most of my theoretical writings, including
Alienation, Dialectical Investigations, and – most recently – Dance Of The
Dialectic: Steps In Marx’s Method have been shaped by these dual aims.
(Courtesy:
Political Affairs March:2004) |
