Victor Wallis, Socialist Practice: Histories and Theories (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), xx + 252 pp. $84.99
Margaret Thatcher once claimed, “there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.” Though it sounds preposterous, Thatcher's apparently offhand remark was deliberate and quite precise. To achieve the Restoration of Imperial Command following the earthshaking events of 1968, any notion of society had to be repudiated. Society is distinct not only from individuals and families, but also from clans, tribes, communities, nations, cultures, or civilizations, in short, from all other designations pertaining to groups of human beings. Society enunciates a substratum of interconnectedness hidden beneath the appearance of incomprehensible and irreconcilable difference. Instead of miracles, mysteries and authority, as Henri Lefebvre once called them, we have constituent elements which, far from immutable, are in constant motion. Instead of god-given or ancestral inevitability are relations of domination and resistance which are objects of rational critique and subject to conscious struggle. This is nothing new. As far back as Plato's Republic, through Thomas More's Utopia and St. Simon's coining of the term socialism, the concept of society has been essential to envisioning a more just order than that which prevailed.
What was new when Engels published Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, was the gathering experience of revolution more and more clearly directed toward liberating all of society. Tracing roots among the Anabaptists and Thomas Münzer, the Diggers of the English Revolution and Babeuf's Conspiracy of Equals, Engels drew upon the efforts of St. Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, to illustrate a process by which society was becoming conscious of itself. As Marx underscored in his introduction to the 1880 version of Engels' pamphlet, this way of thinking sprang to life with the emergence of philosophy in ancient Ionia. That it was possible to explain motion without recourse to gods marked a revolution in thought so profound it is resisted and suppressed to this day. Marx pointed out, however, that no amount of reasoning could overcome the social conditions which, until the development of capitalism, had been obscured by religious, ethnic and hierarchical structures inimical to change. Capitalism broke through all the old obstacles, laying bare the mechanisms by which exploitation and oppression had been maintained for millennia. This enabled both a return to ancient philosophical origins and an advance toward the most recent scientific discoveries in order to realize the potential of humanity unchained.
To a large extent, the revolutions and the socialist practice of the Twentieth Century were guided by this perspective, unfolding to become the subject of Victor Wallis's latest book. It is not coincidental that Socialist Practice makes its appearance just as socialism enjoys a renewal in the United States (and elsewhere). Indeed, socialist renewal can now be seen as arising from the very depredations visited upon us by the system Margaret Thatcher served. And it was Thatcher who famously quipped "there is no alternative" which the ensuing forty years seemed to validate. Yet, as Wallis makes clear, it is not some prophetic genius that makes his book timely. Rather, it is the Marxist method that can penetrate the fog of obscurantism and the confusion ensuing from defeat to arrive at a sober appraisal of our current challenges. Calling attention to this method from the outset is necessary because the book is a compilation of essays written over a period of more than forty years. The consistency and timeliness of even the earliest of these essays is attributable to this approach.
Wallis sets out to accomplish what might appear to be mutually exclusive tasks. On the one hand, to defend the enduring achievements of "first-epoch socialism," while on the other hand, to correctly identify and thoroughly criticize its fatal shortcomings. That these tasks are not mutually exclusive but are in fact mutually reinforcing is intrinsic to Wallis's argument. Displaying a refreshing lack of dogmatism or sectarianism, Wallis evaluates a wide range of experience from the Russian to the Chinese and Cuban revolutions. In between, he visits other controversial episodes including Italy in 1920, Spain between 1936 and 1939, and Chile between 1970 and 1973. Though these are not in-depth studies, they grapple with some of the bitter controversies by which revolutionaries were divided at the time and, to some extent, ever since. The controversies between Stalinists, Trotskyists, and anarchists in Spain, for example, are viewed in a new light. And this light is one of two main themes running through Wallis's book: workers’ self-management.
Wallis writes: "The political expression of this concern is the idea of the 'society of associated producers,' which Marx evokes in Capital vol. 3 as the ultimate negation of capitalist production relations." The society of associated producers is, however, not some lofty, far-off goal toward which socialism strives. Wallis argues that the failure of first-epoch socialism is due in large part to the failure to grasp this concept as a means as well as an end. He criticizes the approach taken by Lenin following the seizure of power in Russia, showing how all subsequent decisions, even those clearly necessitated by war and counterrevolution, were adversely effected by the wholesale adoption of Taylorist work-discipline, management by technicians and political appointees, and the emulation of Western capitalist production standards. While fully cognizant of the difficulties faced – a subject to which we'll return – what emerges from this example is how Wallis approaches first-epoch socialism in all its manifestations. From Lenin in 1920 to Maduro in 2020, overcoming capitalist social relations can only be achieved through workers’ self-management. The contexts shift but the principal lesson remains.
What about the long-standing argument that all socialist countries, but above all the Soviet Union, were under relentless attack from day one? How can we fairly judge the efforts of so many people under such adverse conditions without inadvertently joining the chorus of capitalist naysayers who triumphantly declare the experiment dead on arrival? Wallis takes these questions head-on by dissecting the quality of capitalist opposition to socialism, not only its quantity. The problem is not simply how much suffering was inflicted, or the economic hardships imposed; indeed, these were largely overcome before the collapse of the Soviet Union, or in the case of China, the restoration of capitalism following the death of Mao. The substantive issue is not all the death and destruction caused by an external foe but the inability on the part of socialists themselves to grasp the most profound of Marx's and Engels' insights.
From this critical standpoint, Wallis defends the much-maligned notions of class, class struggle and proletarian internationalism against an array of contending views all of which, however disparate, nonetheless agree that some other category (culture, language, race, gender, human nature, etc.), is more significant to determining the organization of society or at least more pertinent to contemporary political struggle. What invigorates Wallis's approach is a double move, on the one hand exposing the fraudulence of most detractors' use of the term "class," while on the other inextricably binding the notion of class to the dialectical method. Not only do most detractors make of class a static icon little different from poverty or lack of education, but they ignore the dynamic of stratification and domination that runs through all other social relations however they are construed. This error leads to missing both the necessity and the opportunity inherent in an irreducible contradiction: the great majority of humankind engage in labor, a tiny handful exploit, and the antagonism inevitably resulting will persist until its basis is abolished.
While Wallis addresses several other key questions, from "lesser evil" electoral politics to the Black Liberation struggle and mass incarceration, to the US Left in the wake of the 1960s, the second theme central to his evaluation of socialist practices is the ecological or environmental. Again, Wallis is critical of socialist practice and, as with the issue of workers’ control, identifies specific failures that contributed to socialism's defeat. Space does not permit a full account of Wallis's views and readers should also refer to his previous work, Red-Green Revolution, for more detail. Nevertheless, a brief outline will give a glimpse of how criticism helps explain and learn from historical outcomes and need not lead to abandoning the quest or deserting to the enemy camp. This is noteworthy given how many intellectuals did so following the tumultuous Sixties. A great many former radicals, from every corner of the Left, found one way or another to attack socialism, Marx and Engels, and for that matter anything to do with working people.
This is nowhere more apparent than in the environmental movement, which along with the national and women's liberation movements had the greatest impact from the Sixties onward. Wallis is uncompromising in defending Marx and Engels on this subject, calling attention to the fact that many of their detractors have never so much as deigned to read what they wrote. Wallis does not, however, merely repeat a catechism. Delving deeply into those texts, Wallis uses them to make his own critique. He demonstrates convincingly that the failings of both socialist governments and labor unions in the capitalist countries, are attributable not to applying the Marxist method but to abandoning it and accepting uncritically terms set by capitalism. These terms include, of course, the organization of production and distribution. Socialist policies were either ignorant of or ignored Marx's studies of the "metabolic rift" and were instead largely determined by a drive to "catch-up" or compete with capitalist "efficiency." In the capitalist countries this found its complement in the notorious "business-unionism" which tied workers to their bosses' interests, corrupting not only union leadership, but pitting workers against environmentalists in the name of "jobs."
Much of this is well known and recent developments, especially global warming, have already undermined the basis for such myopic thinking. But Wallis goes further to refute the prevailing notion that this was an inevitable consequence of socialism's basic premises or that workers uniformly accepted deals made in their name. Wallis uses examples such as efforts in Cuba and Venezuela, and rank and file movements in the United States, to show that there has long been opposition to these errors and betrayals from within the working class and its organizations. Most importantly, Wallis shows how,
In Marx's understanding, man's species-interest would come to prevail conjointly with the culmination of working-class struggle, that is, through the creation of a classless society. The notion of species questions as being opposed to class questions – rather than as constituting the grounding for (or the culmination of) such questions – could only emerge on the basis of a crude flattening of Marx's approach. Such reductionism has been a routine aspect of bourgeois thought, as the bourgeoisie has always tried to present its own interests as being those of the entire society.
No doubt, there is a great deal more to discuss. The differences between socialism and communism need to be explored, not only in the context of first-epoch socialism but under current conditions as well. The question of organization and leadership at the very moment capitalism is facing its terminal crisis is perhaps even more pressing. The very real prospect that capitalism will destroy human society before human society can destroy capitalism is, in and of itself, of overarching significance. Socialism or Barbarism, Ruin or Revolution, even System Change not Climate Change, all express this pivotal moment. Socialist Practice makes an invaluable contribution to this discussion, extending neither panaceas nor Pollyanna hopes, instead offering thought-provoking interventions that should prove useful to organizers and theorists alike.
Mat Callahan
Bern, Switzerland
