Socialism vs. Government

From time to time, we see posts on DU that quote the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of socialism as advocacy of government control of the economy, and say or imply that the large majority of socialists who do not advocate any such thing are just confused. (For clarity, it is true that many socialists advocate government control in some circumstances, but not as an objective in itself.) I wanted to say something about the ideas of actual socialists about government control. It is, of course, my opinion, but it draws on a lot of reading over about 50 years.

Liberals tend to adopt a Lockean social contract theory, that the government is (ideally) the collective instrument of “the people.” A common expression is “in a democracy, the government is us.” Conservatives seem to think that the government is a parasitical organism feeding on the society, often using Hobbes’ phrase “the Leviathan,” although their view are opposite to Hobbes’. Socialists reject both, seeing government as unavoidably the tool of powerful interest groups. For Marxists and most other socialists, these interest groups are understood to be classes, in a specific nonstatistical sense, so that e.g. anyone who has to sell her or his labor for a wage or salary, for most of the life cycle, or who depends for livelihood on someone who sells labor, is a member of the working class, black or white, well or poorly paid, employed, unemployed, or out of the labor force. Thus, in our period of history, the fundamental power struggle is between the working class and the employing class, and the socialist position is that the working class should control the government. Once this control is established, government control of the economy may be an effective tool for government action on behalf of the working class – or it may not. If markets work better for the working class, the socialist government might rely on markets, but with some form of public ownership: Marxist Oscar Lange and Fabian Sir Arthur Lewis made proposals for market socialism.

Looking back from the late twentieth century, though, some political sociologists argue that in the relatively mature and successful capitalist societies, government has been based on a compromise between the classes. The class compromise begins with social security (in Germany) and some tolerance for labor unions. Of course, a compromise depends on bargaining power. By 1950, the capitalist class had little bargaining power, under the pressure of the Soviet Union and exhausted by the struggle between Fascist and other capitalist countries, and the labor share in the compromise was at its height. But the balance of bargaining power shifted against the working class. The increasing limits on labor unions, the tax cuts that begin with the Kennedy administration, and “the end of welfare as we know it” are consequences of this shift in bargaining power. In the US, the “conservative movement” was and is an effort to cancel the compromise and take everything away from the working class. It has had a measure of success, but not complete success.

What we think of as “liberal democratic society” is part of the compromise: working people get the vote, and the “freedom” of employers to exploit labor is protected. By contrast, earlier capitalist societies had property tests for the vote, so that working people had no vote. Thus, sooner or later, the conservative movement must find a way to take the vote away from the working class. We see movements in this direction in the early twenty-first century where the Republican Party is in power. Two points seem pretty clear from this experience. First, some segments of the working class are more vulnerable to the Republican tactics than others. The evidence shows that Black working people are disproportionately affected, as immigrant workers probably are. But, to succeed in their objective, the conservatives have to take the vote away from the white working class as well. Hey, bubba, if you let them take the vote away from Black people, they will take yours next.

Second, though, this is a dilemma for the employing class. To use an old-fashioned Marxist phrase, the restriction of working-class voting rights is “objectively Fascist.”

The fact is that “liberal democracy” has worked well for the employing class. Right-wing dictatorships have not, and a return to a property test for the vote does not seem realistic. Thus, the employing class seems to have an interest in not letting the unbalance of bargaining power go too far. The Billionaire Class uses human beings as its tools – but when human beings are your tools, the tools may not be under your control. Witness NAZI Germany. There is a real danger to the employing class here.

I have digressed a bit from the role of government. Within the context of class compromise, extension of the workers’ share in the bargain has often meant more government action, but the converse is not so. In some cases, limitations on government power favor the working class, as in the elimination of government repression of labor unions – and in that case “small government” conservatives favor government interference in the economy.

As I say, government action in the economy is a tool, no less for the capitalist class than for socialists, and it is no more than that – not something anybody supports in principle, regardless of the distribution of political power.