The current adminiatration and now the "Occupy" movement have been accused of leaning as far left as it is possible to do, which means Marxism aka Communism aka International or Global Socialism, or alternatively National Socialism or Anarchism. But how can anyone decide if there is any truth in that accusation, or even determine if it is good or bad for America, if they don't know what those terms mean?
This is part two of my effort to explain how these extremist movements have become what they are in America today. It is based on my fifty years of studying history and thirty-four years of teaching it full time at the college level.
Marxism: Revolutionary Socialism
In order to consider all the significant modifications in Marxist philosophy and methodology since the late 1800s, we first need to establish a framework which explains different possible approaches to changing the capitalist economies from private ownership of the means of production (land, tools and machines, from which Marx believed all new wealth was created when labor was applied to them) to public control or ownership.
Perhaps the simplest way to get an overview of "the system" is to look at groups in society in terms of power. Landowners, craft masters and factory owners had power over workers because the workers needed the land, tools, skills and machines to make things for their own survival, or the wages the employer would give them for their labor so they could buy what they needed to survive.
So a simple heirarchy of power in the modern industrial free market might be
Employers
l
Workers where power is greater above.
Marx believed that whenever workers had tried to gang up on employers in strikes, if employers themselves had not hired replacement workers, government would step in to arrest protesting workers and announce an injunction threatening arrest of strikers in order to get workers back to work for the employer. In other words government always had and always would consistently side with employers, because government itself was made up of people sympathetic to and/or influenced by the employers.
So in the Marxist outlook, the heirachy of power had a third, top level based on the authority of government
Government
l
Employers
l
Workers
Now there are two possible avenues to go to deal with perceived exploitation and injustice exercised by those on the upper levels of power against the workers. You can either gain control of the superior power above you and then improve the relationship through that control, or overthrow it and use the power you get from that to change things. In other words, (1) gain control, or (2) overthrow and eliminate.
If they tried to deal only with employers and strike, management-friendly government would crush them. Clearly to Marx, then, the best way to change the system was for workers to band together, take over control of the government in a violent revolution, and then impose Communist reforms on the whole economy by eliminating the employers as a separate class by seizing the source of their power, the means of production. The means of production would then be owned by all the people, and operated by the workers themselves for the benefit of all.
As we have noted, Marx thought this process was inevitable, because the exploitation of the workers' labor by the employers (also known as the "bourgeoisie") would increase until the workers finally realized (1) how badly they were being screwed over by their bosses, (2) that the process of exploitation involved all the employees, (3) that government was controlled by employers, and so (4) the only way to stop their exploitation was to take over the government by force and end the private control of the means of production by which the exploitation process occurred.
Marxism's Repellant Features
While Marx's "scientific" (because he used his understanding of the past and present with his version of "reason" to try to explain human society's operation) analysis of the causes of many "class conflicts" was popular among many intellectuals and disgruntled workers, his projection of the solution and especially how to get there seemed troublingly rigid, violent, and perhaps worst of all, slow. It might take generations before most nations would be dominated by the advanced industrial production state with the high level or urbanized exploitation of labor which Marx said would be necessary before revolution could occur.
Even more potentially discouraging was Marx's projection that after the revolution there would be an uncertainly long period when the new Communist government would have to be even more totalitarian than the one it overthrew in order to defend the new system against all the remaining non-Communist nations of the world which would be bent on reversing it.
A third consideration was the rise of labor unions. Their increasing success in gaining legal recognition and even government support in their negotiations with management by the 1890s appeared to be completely at odds with Marx's prediction that, as a tool of management exploitation of workers, government would always side with management against labor.
Syndicalism and Evolutionary Socialism
Among the first "revisions" of Marxism were those of Edouard Bernstein and Albert Sorel. Each came to different conclusions. Sorel believed the workers or "proletarians" need not have a violent political revolution to achieve communist society. Instead, Sorel placed his faith in well-organized unions conducting massive coordinated strikes. These "syndicates" of union workers would paralyze the economy and force management to do the bidding of the "Syndicalists."
There were a few attempts to execute such strikes, the most successful in Paris in 1926. But they all eventually failed when government troops came in and forced workers to go back to work, just as Marx had predicted. But neither Marx nor Sorel had predicted that among those most prominently involved in supporting the government's efforts were many French workingmen and women who opposed Syndicalism's goals and methods.
Bernstein's "Evolutionary Socialism" eventually became more popular. Bernstein believed Communist revolution could be accomplished nonviolently by taking advantage of the growth of democracy in European nations during the nineteenth century.
In Bernstein's view, rather than wait for the economic exploitation of workers to develop to the brink of violent revolution, Communists could help Communism "evolve" in society by voting in socialist changes until government was powerful enough to simply abolish the private control of the means of production.
Evolutionary Socialism became popular because it said Communists could achieve at least modest parts of their goals at virtually any time simply by taking advantage of the spread of democratic institutions and universal suffrage, which meant all adult males (and eventually after the 1920s women as well) had the right to cast votes for representatives in government legislatures. Workers could use their voting power to elect Communist representatives.
The Rise of Nationalism and National Socialism
However, a new problem for Communism was the rise of stronger nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century. The nations of Europe in particular vied with each other for top power status, and consequently their belief in and support for their own nation and nationality intensified. As a result, Marxism's long range goal of eventually ending nation state governments and the wars they caused became increasingly unpopular within the growing ranks of nationalists.
Probably the most famous early manifestation of the new "National Socialism" or government control of the economy by national government as a goal in itself was at the end of World War I, when young German army veteran Adolph Hitler became member number seven in the "National Socialist German Workers' Party," or NSDAP.
As National Socialist (or Fascist, named after the axe-in-rod-bundle symbol of authority known as the "Fasces" in Ancient Rome, which another national socialist, Benito Mussolini of Italy, revived) parties grew after World War I, they increasingly clashed with Marxist International Socialists, whose support also grew after World War One because their internationalism offered a seemingly much more peaceful alternative to continuing to divide humanity into rival national groups.
Europe's House Divided
After a Communist revolution occurred in Russia in 1917, and Fascist revolutions of sorts occurred in Italy in 1922 and Germany in 1933, Europe again became divided, this time on more polarizing ideological terms than merely siding with friendly nations against unfriendly ones.
To summarize: although Syndicalism's mass strikes ultimately failed to achieve anything close to economic equality for workers with their bosses, the rise of legal unions, universal suffrage democracy and fanatical nationalism all worked against the plausibility of Marx's expectations that only violent Communist revolution could improve labor's position. But while the rise of nationalism created a rival brand of "national" socialism which totally rejected any ultimate internationalist or global government goal, unionization and especially universal suffrage democracy seemed to offer Communists relatively peaceful yet effective alternatives to violent revolution.
NEXT TIME: How American "Progressives" adopted Evolutionary Socialism, and eventually grew so strong that Progressives were elected President in 1904, 1912 and 2008.
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