21st Centuary Socialism

In his article “Against the People” Mr. Tucker makes a very good case for examining pluralist democracy in the context of social inequality and global imperialist hegemony. However, his statement that “the formal freedoms and equalities of pluralist political systems exist in the context of the extremes of wealth of liberal capitalism” is not strictly true in every case.

For example, Norway is a pluralist democracy with one of the lowest wealth gaps in the world, mainly because Norway has retained a redistributive social democratic model, and had so far rejected EU prescribed Neo-Liberal reforms. [www.oecd.org]

In fact there is a historic correlation between intellectual pluralism and relative economic wealth and technical development of each society. Karl Marx would not have been able to research Capital in the British Library had Victorian England been less liberal than Czarist Russia. I’m sure that the Czarist police would have stopped Marx in mid flow and thrown him in prison.

Mr. Tucker is correct in writing that some capitalist regimes have turned away from pluralism into deadly repression once the ruling class feared losing popular hegemony to its left wing opposition.

However, in most Western democracies the ruling class has not found it necessary to turn to authoritarian measures, mainly because the majority of Western workers were lifted from absolute poverty. Universal adult suffrage, workers struggle and the threat of Soviet style socialism have contributed towards relative social tranquility in the West by the 1950s.

In the mean time both the industrial working class and those satanic mills have been exported to the authoritarian Third world.

Hi Antonio. Re: the phrase “the formal freedoms and equalities of pluralist political systems exist in the context of the extremes of wealth of liberal capitalism”. I don't think that the example of Norway throws doubt on the general validity of this formulation.

Some thoughts on this issue:-

1) Liberal capitalism is a world system. Norway has its place (at or near the very top in terms of per-capita GDP, but nowhere near the top in terms of global political power) within the extremely unequal distribution of wealth in the overall system.

2) In terms of their internal wealth & income distribution, all countries are unequal, but some are more unequal than others. Norway (a pluralist democracy) has relatively low inequality. Brazil and the USA (pluralist democracies) have very high inequality.

3) Actually, Norway HAS since the 1980s implemented some neo-liberal reforms; with results as per the OECD factbook 2007:

"the Gini coefficients increased (greater inequality) by 10-20% in Norway, Japan, Italy and the United Kingdom..."

[fiordiliji.sourceoecd.org]

I wouldn't rule out that having a liberal pluralist political system may be a protective factor against neo-liberalism and rising inequality, and I'd be glad to see some evidence for that proposition.

Also re: the satanic mills in the "authoritarian Third world". Much of the Third World, eg India & Bangladesh, is under pluralist parliamentary democracy. If Satan paid a visit to some of the textile & clothing factories in these countries, he would probably feel quite at home.

Dear ahab

Political and intellectual pluralism is not a social system, let alone a world system. Capitalism is a global economic and social system, with some repressive and some pluralist political manifestations.

In racist South Africa during the Apartheid era you had some political pluralism for the white population and an authoritarian regime for the black population. Both racial groups lived in a capitalist economic system. But much of the black working class was forced to live under an authoritarian tribal Bantustan regime, while the white workers lived under a more liberal regime.

In 21st Century capitalism you have global Apartheid between the average German industrial worker and the Chinese industrial worker. In China authoritarian repression and discipline helps to keep wages down and profits up. In Germany, years of democratic labour struggle have pushed wages and benefits to such heights that some German capitalists can only generate profits by specialising in cutting edge technology related production, within Germany. While, other German capitalists invest in China and the Third World to take advantage of weak trade unions and lower wages.

Your point that Brazil and Norway are both pluralist countries but have differing wealth distribution is rather surprising. I never implied that pluralist democracy is a kind of magic that can propel Brazil with its colonial legacy of slavery and military dictatorship into Scandinavian level of development.

However, when the workers in Britain did not have the right to vote, British governemnts didn't redistribute wealth nor social benefits. Universal adult suffrage in South Africa since 1994 has not reduce inequality, but COSATU and the Labour Movement may be able to take advantage of the black vote and democracy in order to push for redistributive and anti capitalist agenda.

Recent events in Latin America have shown that Capitalist rule through pluralist democracy does not immunise a country against social revolution. In fact, without some political pluralism in 19th Century England and Germany, we wouldn’t have any Marxist analytical tools to develop a critical revolutionary theory. The more authoritarian Russian police would have silenced Marx, and maybe no one would have heard of him.

Hi again Antonio. I agree with much of what you say, and particularly your points about South Africa and Germany.

However re: some of your other comments including about workers' pay in China, I'm not so sure. Workers wages in 'authoritarian' China have been rising faster than wages in 'democratic' India.

And in regard to living standards and social benefits in 19th Century Britain, and their relation to the right to vote. This is a very interesting matter which is not generally well understood, and your remarks about South Africa under apartheid have some relevance.

The improvement in the conditions of the working class in Britain, including the easing of repression against the trade unions, legal limits on working hours, compulsory education, clean drinking water, better sanitation and other positive changes; these began BEFORE the bulk of the (male) working class were given the vote. Check: [21stcenturysocialism.com]

The 1867 Reform act is often misrepresented as if it gave the vote to the workers in Britain. In fact, even after 1867, only the most wealthy two million, out of a population of 26 million in England, Scotland and Wales, had voting rights. It was through the reforms of 1884 and 1885 that most (male) working class adults acquired the vote. By that time, and this is a point worth considering, the workers in Britain had already won such improvements that they were much better off than the vast majority of the (non-white) people in the British Empire. So from the late 19th Century to the third quarter of the 20th Century, a small privileged white minority in the territory controlled by London could vote in the parliament of that empire, while the black, brown and yellow had no vote.

As for intellectual pluralism, that's not a subject which was addressed in the article. However, as I am sure you will agree, there is never complete freedom of ideas- for reasons both 'good' and 'bad', there are always taboos and legal restrictions on the dissemination of ideas. At a deeper level- this is almost an oxymoron, but it is too rarely acknowledged: the economically privileged are also the intellectually privileged. As the article noted, "The children of the wealthy are better educated and therefore, on average, better able to argue their case than the children of the poor."

Of course, a few of the most insightful children from privileged backgrounds, such as the wonderful Karl Marx, use their position to develop ideas which express the interests of the majority in the world.

Hello Ahab – you assert that conditions for workers in Britain improved before every citizen had the right to vote. But this gradual improvement was happening in the context of a slow process of liberal reforms since the “Great Reform Act” of 1832 that turned British society more pluralist and not less liberal as the 19th Century drew to a close. Though, workers struggle towards universal suffrage at the same period included serious setbacks, and violent repression of working class movements.

You are absolutely correct in contrasting the growing strength of the British Labour movement in the late 19th Century with the ruthless exploitation of labour in the colonies. This supports my view that both authoritarian and pluralist governance can be used by capital at the same time to divide and conquer labour in different locations.

But it’s totally absurd to claim that workers are not better off with a bourgeois democratic order, in contrast to a more repressive authoritarian rule.

Irresponsible sections of the ultra left used to say that fascist coups can help convince the workers to reject reformism and take a revolutionary path. Historic evidence shows us that this position is insane. Between 1933 and 1939 most European labour movements were completely defeated by fascism. Only the Soviet Red Army could have rescued the European working class from many years of fascist slavery.

PS: Ahab, I’m not implying that you subscribe to the ultra leftist nonsense above.

hey buddy,this is one of the best posts that I’ve ever seen; you may include some more ideas in the same theme. I’m still waiting for some interesting thoughts from your side in your next post.

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