Socialism

I

Introduction

Socialism, concept and party-based political movement, originally based in the organized working class, generally antagonistic towards capitalism. While the final aim of socialists was a communist or classless society (see Communism), they increasingly concentrated on social reforms within capitalism. As the movement developed, the concept itself acquired different meanings in different times and places.

The term began to be used in the first half of the 19th century by radical intellectuals who considered themselves to be the true heirs to the Enlightenment. The principal early theorists were Robert Owen, Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, and Charles Fourier. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels later dubbed them “utopian socialists”, regarding them as the forerunners of their own conception of “scientific socialism”. The term “utopian socialism” came to designate those thinkers who expressed discontent with the social and economic institutions that arose out of the triumphant bourgeois order, but were unable to provide a theoretical explanation of its operations (see Economics). Inevitably, the utopian socialists appeared in history as if their tasks had been to pave the way for their modern socialist successors, hence the terminology often employed: early socialism, proto-socialism, Frühsozialismus, pre-Marxian socialists, and so on.

II

Early Socialism

Like their followers and successors, the utopian socialists objected to capitalism on ethical and practical grounds. Capitalism, they claimed, was unjust: it exploited workers, degraded them, transformed them into beasts or machines, and enabled the rich to get richer while the workers faced misery. They also maintained that capitalism was an inefficient and irrational mechanism for the development of society’s productive forces. It underwent cyclical crises caused by overproduction or under-consumption, did not provide work for all, allowing human resources to be unused or under-utilized, and produced luxuries instead of necessities.

At this early stage socialism could be seen as a reaction against the alleged emphasis of liberalism on individual achievements and private rights at the expense of collective welfare. Nevertheless, socialism was also a direct descendant of liberalism. In common with liberals, socialists were committed to the idea of progress and the abolition of aristocratic privileges; unlike them they denounced liberalism as a façade behind which capitalist greed could flourish unimpeded.

Nevertheless, the early socialists did more than set out utopian plans. They were the first to assemble a critique of industrialization from the perspective of modernity rather than from a longing for the society of yesterday. Industrial society, they claimed, was here to stay and could, if regulated according to certain principles, be a true civilization, that is a system of artificial (in the sense of non-natural or man-made) rules for associated civil life. They recognized that there was something deeply unjust in contemporary society: the existence of a new type of poverty amid considerable wealth, the ever-increasing isolation of individuals, and the unceasing and heartless competition prevailing among them. However, such moral outrage at poverty, individualism, and competition was not the prerogative of socialists. It was embraced with equal or even greater energy by writers and thinkers as diverse as Honoré de Balzac, Thomas Carlyle, and Benjamin Disraeli. What distinguished the early socialists from these and other conservative or “reactionary” thinkers, or from anarchist radicals who harked back to the primitive communism of idyllic agrarian society, was an optimistic and positive view of industrialization. The question was not to return to a pre-industrial order, or seek to protect and alleviate the sufferings of the “losers” thrown onto the scrap heap by economic progress. The point was to understand the need for a new organization of society.

III

Industrialization and Marxist Socialism

With Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, socialism acquired a theory of history and a theory of exploitation. Marxism held that capitalism was the result of a historical process characterized by a continual conflict between classes. History proceeded through stages. Each stage consisted of a specific economic system to which corresponded a particular system of power and hence a specific ruling class. The capitalist stage was not everlasting, they claimed, but a temporary historical phenomenon bound to die. By creating a large class of propertyless workers, capitalism sowed the seeds of its own demise. It would eventually be succeeded by a communist society.

Though superior to the socio-economic systems that preceded it, the present capitalist system, Marx and Engels argued, was unfair. The relations between entrepreneurs (capitalists) and the proletariat (the workers) appeared as a contract between equal parties, since there is no compulsion to sell one’s labour. The workers sold their labour and received wages in return. In reality this contract, they claimed, disguised a profound inequality since the capitalists “cheated” the workers by appropriating far more than they paid out in wages and other necessary production costs. This appropriation, which they called “surplus-value”, gave the owners of capital great wealth and control over the economic development of society. They thus appropriated not simply wealth but also power.

Marx and his followers regarded the working class as fundamentally homogeneous. All workers were united “in essence”. They had, as the concluding remarks of Marx’s and Engels’ 1848 Communist Manifesto put it, “nothing to lose but their chains”. Their common aim was to try to improve their conditions of life under capitalism, struggle against the existing social order, and overcome it by bringing about a new stage of history in which there could be real equality. Consequently, workers were urged to organize themselves into political parties and trade unions, and reject any attempt to divide them. Socialists disregarded other differences among workers, be they of religion, ethnicity, nationality, and gender. All these, they argued, played into the hands of the established powers, for a divided working class was the surest way to ensure the continuation of capitalist rule. In practice, of course, such differences could hardly be ignored and socialists were constantly having to make adjustments to their doctrine in order to remain in touch with the working class.

In 1864 Marx and Engels, in co-operation with British and exiled continental labour leaders, founded the International Workingmen’s Association, generally known as the First International. It was a largely ineffectual committee split between British reformists, the more radical continentals, and various anarchist groups. Marx moved its headquarters to New York to remove the anarchists. It was eventually wound up in 1876.

By the end of the 19th century Marxist socialism had become the leading ideology of all working-class parties in industrial countries, with the exception of the labour movements in the Anglo-Saxon countries, where it never established itself.

The transformation of socialism from a doctrine held by a relatively small number of intellectuals and activists into the ideology of the new mass working-class parties coincided with the industrialization of Europe and the growth of the proletariat between 1870 and 1890. Most European socialist or social democratic (the terms were interchangeable) parties were created in those years and, in 1889, their representatives met in Paris to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution, and form a new association, the Second International, to replace the First. While each party was centralized and nationally- based, the International was a loosely organized confederation, upholding a form of Marxism popularized by Engels, August Bebel, the leader of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), and Karl Kautsky, its chief theorist. Following Marx, they held that capitalist relations would eliminate small producers until only two antagonistic classes, capitalists and workers, would face each other. A major economic crisis would eventually open the way to socialism and the common ownership of the means of production.

What gave the socialist movement its winning edge over other rival currents of thought within the working class movement (such as anarchism) was that it had a better organization and a more realistic approach to political strategy. Socialism appeared to be better adapted than its rivals to the mode of organization of the working class into ever larger units of production. Huge factories and plants gave those employed in them a feeling of solidarity and a common resentment against their bosses which was less likely to develop in small workshops. Socialism, unlike millenarian movements, looked optimistically towards the future, though little more definite was said about it other than vague generalities about the end of class society and the withering away of the State. Only after the Russian Revolution would it be possible to point to a model of “actually existing” socialism.

By the beginning of the 20th century, socialist parties, in alliance with the trade unions, fought for a minimum programme of reforms to be obtained in the short or medium term while maintaining that their final goal remained the elimination of capitalism and the birth of a socialist society. This two-stage conception was enshrined in the manifesto of the Second International and in the programme of the most important and successful socialist party of the time, the German SPD (founded in 1875). This programme, approved at Erfurt in 1890, and drafted by Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein, provided a summary of Marxist theories of historical change and exploitation, indicated the final goal, namely communism, and established a list of “minimum” demands that could be implemented within capitalism. These included major political reforms, such as universal suffrage, equal rights for women, a social protection system of national insurance, pensions, a universal medical service, the regulation of the labour market aimed at introducing the eight-hour working day, and the full legalization and recognition of trade unions.

The prestige of social democracy in Germany meant that its internal theoretical disputes would be a matter for debate throughout European socialism just as, years later, the internal vicissitudes of the Bolsheviks would have a correspondingly wide impact on the rest of the international communist movement. The orthodox Marxist position represented by Karl Kautsky came to be challenged by Eduard Bernstein in a series of articles published in the late 1890s. Bernstein’s position was that capitalism had reached a new stage not foreseen by Marx and had developed a structure capable of avoiding crises. The advent of parliamentary democracy, he claimed, enabled the working class to struggle in conditions of legality; power could thus be achieved peacefully within the existing State. Though Bernstein and his supporters were in a minority virtually everywhere, his “revisionist” views came eventually to dominate the social democratic and socialist parties of Western Europe after 1945.

IV

Socialism in the Early 20th Century

The hegemonic role of the German SPD in the European socialist movement at the turn of the century was due to a combination of factors: the prestige and importance of Germany, the prestige of its intellectuals, its superb organization, and above all its electoral strength and the weakness of socialist parties in countries of comparable importance such as France and the United Kingdom. In 1890, when the German Reichstag (Parliament) desisted from renewing laws restricting the activities of the SPD, the party became, in percentage terms, the largest in Germany. By 1912, in spite of an unfavourable electoral system, it had also become the first party in the Reichstag with 110 seats. By 1914 it had 1 million members.

Before 1914 socialists assumed that all their demands could be achieved peacefully in democratic countries, and that violence might be necessary where despotism prevailed (as in Tsarist Russia). They all ruled out participation in “bourgeois” governments. The majority assumed that their task was to build up the movement until the eventual collapse of capitalism would enable socialism to be established. Some, such as Rosa Luxemburg, impatient with this wait-and-see attitude, advocated the use of the mass general strike as a revolutionary weapon to be deployed when required.

Though the German SPD provided the main organizational and ideological model for other socialist parties, its influence was less pronounced in southern Europe where French influence was more significant. The French socialists, however, could not offer a model to rival the SPD in spite of the importance and prestige of the French revolutionary tradition. It was ideologically weak and organizationally divided. The painful and difficult revival of working-class activity in France after the crushing of the Paris Commune in 1871, and the persecutions that followed, failed to help the socialist movement to cohere and develop. By 1911 France had only 1 million organized workers, while the British and German trade unions each had around 3 million members.

Strong trade unions, however, did not necessarily entail strong socialist parties. The powerful British trade unions created a separate Labour Party only in 1900, well after the rest of Europe—and not until 1918 did the Labour Party give itself a socialist goal enshrined in Clause IV of its constitution. Until 1900 the British trade unions preferred to influence the Liberal Party in order to secure their basic rights. Trade unions in the United States too were unable or unwilling to form a separate party of any significance. The wave of immigrants seeking work there, and the widespread persecution the unions were subjected to, made it difficult to do more than lobby the existing political parties.

On the eve of World War I all socialist parties were united in at least one aim—the prevention of the impending war. When this did erupt, however, the two most important socialist parties of the time, the French and the German, opted to support their own governments. Many saw this as a betrayal. In reality, this “social patriotism”, as it was dubbed by its opponents, was not just a form of opportunism (for the war was, at least initially, popular among the workers). In both France and Germany, socialists had acquired a stake in the existing social order; universal or near-universal male suffrage had given them some degree of representation in parliament, and with this some negotiating strength to secure civil rights and social reforms. Where socialists had made little or no gains, or were banned and persecuted, as in Russia, there was no ground for patriotism.

The war thus effectively broke up the limited unity that had kept together Europe’s socialists. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a further body blow against socialist unity. It separated the supporters of the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, from reformist social democrats, most of whom had backed their national governments during the war. Most communist parties were formed in the years immediately following World War I by Lenin’s supporters within the socialist parties. In all instances, however, throughout the years leading to World War II, the socialist parties and not the communists remained the dominant current in both the European labour movement and in the electorate as a whole, under a variety of names: the Labour Party in Britain, the Netherlands, and Norway; the SPD in Germany; the Social Democratic Labour Party in Sweden; the Socialist Party in France and Italy; the Socialist Workers’ Party in Spain; and the Workers’ Party in Belgium. In the Soviet Union and, later, in the communist countries which emerged after World War II, the term socialism indicated a transitional phase between capitalism and communism, the phase Lenin had called the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Communists remained committed to a centralized and authoritarian view of socialism whereby all the main decisions would be taken by the Communist Party as the unelected representative of the working class. Communists everywhere owed their primary allegiance to the Soviet Union and followed uncritically all the twists and turns of Soviet policy. Socialists rejected such concepts and accepted all the basic rules of liberal democracy: free elections, civil rights, political pluralism, and the sovereignty of parliament. The rivalry between socialists and communists was interrupted only occasionally, as in the mid-1930s, in order to join forces against fascism. After World War II Soviet control over the more powerful communist parties, such as the Italian, became less pronounced, and, in such cases, the distinction between socialism and communism became less apparent.

Between the wars socialists were able to form governments, usually in coalition with or supported by other parties. They were thus able to be in power, albeit intermittently, in the 1920s in Britain and Germany, and in the 1930s in Belgium, France, and Spain. In Sweden, where social democrats have been more successful than elsewhere, they governed without interruption from 1932 to 1976. The first experiences of government of socialist parties ended in failure. In Spain the Popular Front government (1936-1939), a coalition of left-liberals and socialists, supported by the communists, provoked a fierce reaction from clerical and military circles led by General Francisco Franco. The ensuing Spanish Civil War was concluded with Franco’s victory and the establishment of a dictatorship that lasted until 1975.

In France a similar popular-front government, elected in 1936, was more fortunate. It introduced significant social reforms but was effectively ousted from power after less than a year. In Germany, after the military defeat of 1918, the SPD was able to form a government and introduced significant social legislation, including the eight-hour day, the promotion of full employment, unemployment legislation, social insurance, housing reform, universal suffrage, civil rights, and a constituent assembly—in other words, they fulfilled the “minimum” programme enshrined, some 30 years before, at Erfurt. However the SPD was not able to consolidate these gains and remained out of power for most of the 1920s. By the beginning of the 1930s the consequences of the Wall Street Crash had brought about such an increase in unemployment and a wider social discontent that the road was opened not to a socialist revolution in Germany, as the communists had hoped, but to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (see National Socialism).

The 1930s were in fact grim years for the European socialist parties and for democracy in general. When World War II broke out in 1939 the only European countries that could still be deemed democratic were Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland . Everywhere else authoritarian regimes of the right and, in the Soviet Union, of the left, held sway.

World War II offered a new chance to European social democracy. Although the main resistance in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany and its allies tended to be led by the communists, the socialist parties emerged from the war as the main party of the left almost everywhere. In Western Europe only in Italy, France, and Finland were the communists stronger. In Eastern Europe, under Soviet influence and/or occupation, the socialists amalgamated with the communists, usually against their will, and, in effect, became banned.