The name of Socialism has become a
dirty word. The fault lies with its extreme incarnation, Communism,
as practiced by the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and several wannabes in
Africa and Latin America. Here we will attempt to reconstruct
socialism either in its original meaning or by giving it a new
meaning:
“Since socialism entered English
around 1830, it has acquired several different meanings. It refers to
a system of social organization in which private property and the
distribution of income are subject to social control, but the
conception of that control has varied, and the term has been
interpreted in widely diverging ways, ranging from statist to
libertarian, from Marxist to liberal. In the modern era, “pure”
socialism has been seen only rarely and usually briefly in a few
Communist regimes. Far more common are systems of social
democracy, now often referred to as “democratic socialism,”
in which extensive state regulation, with limited state ownership,
has been employed by democratically elected governments (as in Sweden
and Denmark) in the belief that it produces a fair distribution of
income without impairing economic growth.” [Merriam-Webster
dictionary]
A definition
of socialism is wide open, so we can do with it as we will.
And now, suddenly, out of nowhere,
came a Brooklyn born and bred American Jewish politician, Bernie Sanders,
whose political career bumped into being in Vermont, of all places,
running for president of the United States and calling himself a
“democratic socialist.” Recall that Nobel laureate Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, after a
relatively short stay in Switzerland emigrated to the United States,
to Vermont, of all places. Bernie didn't get the Democratic Party nomination, however, because it was felt, also by Barack Obama, that he had little chance of beating whoever the Republican candidate might be, so he had to defer to Hillary Clinton, who, it turned out, had even less chance of winning over Donald Trump. So Bernie's been around the block. But a truly new representative of Democratic Socialism has encarnated in a young (29) woman from The Bronx who has won the Democratic Party nomination for the House of Representatives. She will surely win.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Rudolf
Steiner were much more attuned to the spiritual and artistic realms of
society than is Bernie Sanders. Nevertheless, they both spoke out
criticizing the socio-political order of things and recommending
solutions. We would be justified in placing them both under the
heading of “Moral Socialism”, however different their
approaches.
Solzhenitsyn was a relentlessly
courageous critic of the Soviet Russian regime and, to the dismay of
the “left of the West”, an opponent of Marxism. Although
he deplored state power, he also criticized western capitalism for
being greedy and materialist. As long as socialism is not state
socialism and reflects religious morality, he would accept it. I
believe it was he who originally coined the term “moral
socialism”.
Rudolf Steiner also abhorred Marxism,
seeing in it the seeds of tyranny and materialism. In his
autobiography he wrote:
"These
people [the leaders of a socialist workers' school in which he taught
history in Berlin] knew physical work and the results it produces.
But they had no idea of the spiritual powers that guide mankind
forward through history. That was why they so readily accepted
Marxism and its 'materialistic interpretation of history.' Marxism
maintains that the only forces at work in history are material and
economic, that is, forces produced through physical work. Any
'spiritual-cultural factors' are considered to be a byproduct arising
out of the material-economic sphere, a mere ideology.”
In the opinion of modern-day Marxists their mentor, Karl Marx,
was right, it only turned out badly in practice because the Russian
Bolsheviks applied it incorrectly, as did the Chinese and everyone
else who tried it. However, although Marx's criticism of capitalism
was more or less accurate, his cure turned out to be worse than
the illness: a so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat”.
A dictatorship of any kind is intolerable, even if meant as a
temporary solution for human egotism and greed, to "wither away" once
mankind has been forcibly purified by the state – a truly
absurd example of wishful thinking. A political state with unlimited
political as well as economic power will inevitably become
authoritarian, whether it calls itself a democracy, a republic, or
not: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, German Democratic Republic,
Democratic Republic of the Congo,
the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea, commonly known as North Korea,
etc. - all brutal dictatorships.
Solzhenitsyn
wrote:
“
Marxism
is not only not accurate, not only not a science, has not only failed
to predict a single event in terms of figures, quantities,
time-scales or locations (something that electronic computers do
today with laughable ease in the course of social forecasting,
although never with the help of Marxism) – it absolutely
astounds one by the economic and mechanistic crudity of its attempts
to explain that most subtle of creatures, the human being, and that
even more complex synthesis of millions of people, society. Only the
crudity of some, the blindness of others and a craving for faith
on the part of still others can serve to explain this grim humor of
the twentieth century: how can such a discredited and bankrupt
doctrine can still have so many followers in the West. In our country
there are fewest of all left! We who have had a taste of it are only
pretending willy-nilly...”
[Letter
to the Soviet Leaders - 1973]
Solzhenitsyn
was speaking from experience; Steiner, much earlier, predicted the
outcome.
The
conundrum is how to have a state which is truly democratic and is
only concerned with its citizens' rights. The first condition is that
it have no economic power. A Communist state has total economic
power, including the control and administration of all industry,
including agriculture, technically called “means of
production”. In addition to being over-powerful it doesn't
work, because the political state is the epitome of bureaucracy and
inefficiency. Modern capitalistic democratic states do not control
or direct production, although they may make laws - anti-trust laws
for example - to limit the most extreme elements of capitalism. Such
laws are not very effective though.
Let's
take the airline industry as an example. Not long after that industry
was deregulated in the nineteen-seventies under the euphemism of “open
skies”, many once great companies collapsed: PanAm, TWA,
Eastern, Braniff, plus several South American carriers and, the best
airline around, Swissair. And many others. When the bigger guys buy
the smaller ones it is called “consolidation”. There are
many examples, such as Air France-KLM, Lufthansa-Swiss-Austrian, etc.
It seems that in that particular industry, but in many others as
well, Marx's prediction that the bigger guys would eat the smaller
ones until there was only one giant corporation ruling the world, has
come at least partially true.
The
Free Market
Neo-capitalism
still insists that wellbeing for all levels of society will result if
free market forces are allowed to prevail. In practice, however,
there is no such thing as a free market. What they really mean is a
market in which the producers are free to produce what they want, of
the quality and quantity they want, to sell at the prices they alone decide –
whether or not the consumers even need or want the products. It is
true that capitalism functions well if it is efficiently organized
and knowledgeable people with initiative run its organizations,
large, medium and small. But it is often cruel and unjust. The results, the
overwhelming percentage of profits, go to the now infamous “one
percent”, while those 99 percent who actually do the work or
are in need or who live in poverty must be satisfied with the crumbs.
Let's
look at the polarities: Capitalism and Communism
Capitalism
is relatively efficient but unjust. Communism is altogether inefficient and unjust.
Experience has shown that this judgment is true. What is needed,
then, is a system that is efficient and just. We'll call it
Moral Socialism. Rudolf Steiner called it threefold society
The French revolutionists in the 18th century had a great motto: Liberté , egalité,
fraternité. However, they made the fatal mistake of trying to
incorporate all three elements into a unitary political state. The state,
however, should only occupy itself with human and civil rights, that
is, Equality. The economy should occupy itself with the production,
distribution and consumption of goods and services, that is,
Fraternity. The spiritual-cultural sphere should occupy itself with
the artistic creative initiative of each individual alone or in
cooperation with others, that is, Freedom. Therefore, Freedom applies
to the spiritual-cultural sphere(especially education); Equality to the poliical rights-state and
Fraternity (Brotherhood) to the economic sector of society.
Objection:
What does fraternity have to do with the production of goods and
services? Reply: Actually, everything. When a product is made by a
group of people – even in an automobile assembly line –
that product is eventually purchased by someone not involved in the
productive process – the consumer. Therefore, one group is
producing for others, something which is, in essence, a fraternal
process, although not consciously recognized as such.
In
order to correctly configure the economic process (production,
distribution, consumption), groups should be formed in which the
participants in the process make the appropriate decisions: the
producers, the distributors and the consumers. Going back to the air
transport industry as an example, we see that the international
airlines are already associated in the International Air Transport
Association (IATA). Before deregulation, euphemistically referred to
as “Open Skies”, the airlines were allowed to meet within
the IATA confines in order to set fares and conditions of travel.
They were exempt from anti-trust laws because air transportation was
considered to be a necessary public service. With deregulation,
anti-trust exemption ended, so the airlines were no longer able to jointly
set fares and conditions and the “free” market took over
in a war of all against all until only the largest and strongest
survived. Airline travelers who are old enough to
remember will not have to be told about the sharp decline in
passenger service, the increase in delays, missed connections, etc.,
despite much improved technology.
I
am not suggesting a return to the old monopolistic fare-setting
system. There was, after all, abuse. Although customer service was
far superior, fares were uncomfortably high as well. But if the state
is incompetent to control the process and usually corrupt as well,
and a so-called free market turns the process over to the giants who
engage in a game of thrones to the detriment of the consumer, why not
turn the control process over to those who are directly engaged in
the process itself, including those who, until now, have had neither
voice nor vote in what they pay for: the consumers – (in the air
transport industry the passengers and cargo shippers).
Process
Groups consisting of Producers, Distributors and Consumers would be
organized according to the product to be distributed and consumed. In
the air transport industry these would be representatives of a) the
airlines, b) the travel agents and c) the passengers. (The
latter would certainly insist on being treated as human beings rather
than sardines in Economy Class.) In the automobile industry:
manufacturers, dealers, users. Almost all industries already have
trade organizations at two levels: Producers and distributors; only
the consumers are not organized. Theoretically, their interests are
defended by the state, which in practice defends the interests of the
highly-organized producers with their armies of well-funded lobbyists.
These Process Groups would have to be
put in place by law, because it is unlikely that the producers would
agree to having their power reduced. It should be understood that the
same people – owners, managers, CEOs, etc, - would continue to
run their companies, so personal initiative would not be affected.
The Process Groups would decide on prices and quality. If
the airlines want a certain price for transportation from New York to
Tokyo, for example, or a manufacturer wants a certain price for a
car, they must justify this figure to the Process Group. The
consumers´ representative would tend to want a lower price, the
distributor would tend to be neutral because lower prices mean more
sales, but higher prices mean higher
commissions. The price, in other words, must be fair, reasonable and acceptable to the consumers.
One area which would not come under the
Process Group's purview is staff/employee
remuneration. This comes under human rights. That today CEOs and top
managers earn so many times more than lower level staff is unjust and should be
regulated by law. It is the responsibility of the
rights-state to correct injustice.
Freedom in culture
The point on which Solzhenitsyn and
Steiner agree is the need for freedom in the cultural sphere. This
means that everyone should be free from both political and economic
coercion. If you prefer to be a poet or a musician rather than an
accountant or a lawyer, and are prepared to exist at a minimum but
decent level of physical comfort, you should be able to do so, but
not at a starvation level. The initiative being
considered in several European countries at this time for the
rights-state to provide every inhabitant within its borders a
Universal Basic Income is a method which would eliminate
poverty and make unemployment bearable.
The most essential aspect of the
spiritual-cultural sphere is education, which is erroneously thought
to be a legitimate function of the political state. The fact is that state-run education has been and is a dismal failure the world over. Private
schools, generally speaking, do much better, but by definition they
are elitist and not accessible to the great majority.
Schools at all levels and in all places
should – logically and practically – be in charge of
those who are most responsible for results: the teachers. The state
must finance education as long as it collects taxes, but it should
not control them nor decide on how much of the public
budget is for education. Education is a function of the
spiritual-cultural section of society. It's characteristic is
freedom, meaning freedom from political and economic manipulation.
In our newly reconstructed definition of
Moral Socialism, we have three relatively autonomous spheres
of organization:
the economic sphere, characterized
by Fraternity
the
rights-state sphere, characterized by Equality
the spiritual-cultural sphere,
characterized by Freedom
Moral Socialism accepts the positive elements of Socialism and Capitalism and rejects the negative ones.
This is a mere sketch, a general
outline of what Moral Socialism could mean if a serious attempt were
made to put it into practice.
Letter to the Soviet Leaders by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
Basic Issues of the Social Question by Rudolf Steiner
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