‘Let us face the future,’ said a famous manifesto. But how exactly, at any actual time, are we supposed to do that? Facing the present is usually quite enough for most people, and even in active politics within the electoral timescale, four or five years is usually as far as the future goes. Most people want to change our present social and economic conditions, but it’s noticeable how many of the words we use to define our intentions have a reference to the past: recovery, rehabilitation, rebuilding. In fact ideas of a better past and of a better future have chased each other through all modern political thought. Many early radicals believed that there had been a better and happier time, just before recent disastrous changes, and that was what they had to recover or restore. At the same time, though, others were talking of the much happier future that we could devote our lives to achieving. The morale of generations of struggle was sustained by the belief that the future was ours. It is not often like that today. Actual majorities, including very many young people, have lost this conventional hope, from the experience of repeated political failures and long-term economic decline. Our future is now regularly defined in terms of dangers; the threat of nuclear war; the probability of large-scale structural unemployment; the steady working through of ecological crisis. Many of us still respond actively, and propose different ways forward. But this change in thinking about the future is taking its toll. Fear and apathy breed in these shadows, and are the grounds for a politics of hard and selfish competitive advantage: the propaganda of the ruling hard Right.
The traditional confidence of socialists has had two sources. The first, more influential than we care to admit, came out of older religious ideas of a millennium: a moment in history when the world would be changed. ‘Shall we live to see it?’ people could be heard asking, ‘shall we live to see socialism?’ The way the idea was being used could be most easily recognized in the middle of some discussion of an actual problem, when there was always someone to say ‘under socialism it will be different,’ though usually in some quite unspecified way. Why was it always under socialism, I remember asking, only to be met by the half-pitying, half-contemptuous look reserved for those who lack faith. But the point of ‘under socialism’ was that it assumed some near-miraculous general condition, within and under which all the irritating practical difficulties would be resolved. Well, we have a millennium coming, in the year 2000. But like many others I can feel the sadness that nothing of that kind is being expected to happen. The second kind of confidence in the future was in some ways similar, in others very different. Modern scientific socialism had discovered the laws of movement of history. From a basis in actual history, epochs were known to succeed each other: notably feudalism, capitalism and then socialism. We have all learned so much from the actual historical analysis that went into this outline that it seems ungrateful to object that all we can know for certain is the succession of actual crises and developments that have already occurred.
There is no problem in following the outline to our own day, in the contemporary crisis of capitalism. Why then is there not the old confidence in the necessary next stage, the socialist future? Is it only that we expect history to move more quickly than it ever can? Is it that we have been in the crisis of capitalism for so long, and seen the damage and danger and confusion so often, that we have reason to doubt whether there can be any peaceful and practical way out of it? Or if we say, as some do, that there are versions of socialism already powerfully in existence, showing that this next stage has been and can be reached, must we not also say that the contemporary struggle between two world-systems – as our time is continually presented to us – is no simple transition from one general stage to another but with the technology of nuclear weapons is as likely to be the end of all the stages: the end of human history itself?
The irony then is that the kinds of thinking about socialism which used to produce a confidence in the future now typically produce, in all but a few of us – stranded utopians and sectarians – the exact opposite, despair and pessimism; the millennium as apocalypse; the final crisis as nuclear holocaust. Some of the best people of our time speak now only in this dark language. Their grave voices have to compete with the jingles of happy consumption, the only widespread form of contemporary optimism. Is it then to these sad warnings, as against those chirpy superficialities, that socialists must settle? In practice, no. What is most surprising about contemporary socialism, haunted as it is by these dark ideas, is the resilience, the energy and in surprising ways the confidence of those most committed to it. The reasons for this are important. The central reason is that however much we may have been affected by these other ideas – of the coming millennium or of a historically inevitable socialism – we have always drawn our real strength from very different sources: from our actual relationships and class experiences in our own lives. To understand this, intellectually, we have to make a difficult distinction between the idea of socialism and the related but still different idea of progress.
The idea of socialism, as the word itself indicates, is based on the idea and the practice of a society. This may seem, at first sight, to do nothing to distinguish it from other political ideas, but that is only because we haven’t looked closely enough. The very idea of a society – that is, a definite form of human relationships in certain specific conditions at a particular moment in history – is itself comparatively modern. Society used to mean mainly the company of other people. The idea of a society was to distinguish one form of social relationships from another, and to show that these forms varied historically and could change. Thus, in thinking about the longstanding problems of virtue and happiness, people who began from the idea of a society did not immediately refer the problems to a general human nature or to inevitable conditions of existence; they looked first at the precise forms of the society in which they were living and at how these might, where necessary, be changed. The first uses of socialist, as a way of thinking, were in deliberate contrast to the meanings of individualist: both as a challenge to that other way of thinking, in which all human behaviour was reduced to matters of individual character and more sharply as a challenge to its version of human intentions. Was life an arena in which individuals should strive to improve their own conditions, or was it a network of human relationships in which people found everything of value in and through each other?
This is by now an old argument, but unlike many more marginal definitions its positions, and its challenges, have still a startling contemporary relevance. Of course it was possible, given the idea of a changeable society, to link it up with the idea of progress: conditions could be and were made better. But we nave since seen, very clearly, that the two ideas are not necessarily connected. Capitalism, in all its restless stages, has always attached itself to the idea of progress, of course in its own versions. To find more modern ways of making and doing things, to break down the resistance of old customs and settlements, has been a constant theme of capitalism down to our own raucous day.
Working men and women experienced both sides of this process. Cleaner and lighter ways of doing and making things were whole-heartedly welcomed (it was they, after all, who had been closest to the dirt and the darkness). But the breakdown of their customs and settlements? That, to this day, is quite another matter. Progress, for the capitalist, is more profitable because of more efficient production, through which selected individuals, perhaps all individuals, can enrich themselves. And for the socialist? For a long time, there seemed no real problem. At the end of the modernization, socialism was waiting, and the fruits of greater production would at last be fairly distributed. Except that along the line of that version of progress a surprise was in store. So much progress could be made, in making and doing things, that there was now no real need of many or even most of the people. And what then should socialists say, socialists who believed that people found everything of value in and through each other?
Modern socialism has been through this process of shock. It found, for example, that an increase in gross national production didn’t necessarily, as was once believed, abolish poverty. We had only to look across the Atlantic, at the richest capitalist society, to see how poverty persisted in it, and how some of it was even caused by the very developments that were making others wealthy. Then socialism found, or perhaps is only now really finding, that there were traps waiting as this reality was admitted.
The first trap is very tempting. If improved methods of production make many people redundant, should we not stop looking to improve our methods? It is a difficult question, especially when it is separated out into the many diverse actual kinds of work. But there is no socialist answer on capitalist terms, which tend to abstract production as such. Beginning and never shifting from an idea of a society, socialists can not afford an evasion in either direction. We can neither fail to produce enough to keep our whole society well provided. Nor can we agree to kinds of production, and kinds of monetary and trading relationships, which make whole groups of our people, whole regions and communities, redundant. And then it is no use pretending that there are simple answers which fulfil both these aims. The practical transformations that we need are immense, and their procedures will be found only in detailed, informed and fully contemporary analysis. Yet whether we do this analysis, and go on to act on it, still depends on our basic ideas, and on the perspectives that follow from them, It is here that we must re-examine what we still, by habit as well as by conviction, call socialist values.
The central socialist value is an idea of sharing. This follows from the emphasis on the well-being of a whole society. But here too there is a trap. There is an idea of sharing which is based only on consumption. It draws its strength from an idea of fairness, or more traditionally of charity, in the distribution of what has been produced. It is the fairness of the meal after work, the feast after labour. As such we have to hold to it, but all real sharing begins well before that. Neither what is called a welfare state on its own, nor what are called aid and charity to the Third World, begin to measure up to the real challenge of sharing. It is at a much earlier stage, where in certain specific ways the work has to be done, responsibility taken, care given, that the need for sharing really arises. Moreover, if we do not meet this real challenge, capitalist economics and bourgeois society – the most uncaring and irresponsible systems in modern history – can easily pick us off as sentimental idealists and evaders.
That is why there are distinctive socialist forms of the idea of sharing. There are two linked forms – popular democracy and common ownership. These are the only practical means of genuine social sharing. In the language of the old social order, they are the means of sharing power and wealth. In the language of a new social order they are the means of sharing our decisions and our livelihoods. The link between socialism and popular democracy is literally the key to our future. Without it, the practice of socialism can degenerate to bureaucratic state forms or to the political and economic monopolies of command economies. Yet, if socialism is seriously to carry through the idea of sharing, it has to go beyond the limited forms of representative political democracy, which have been, historically, the liberal modifications of absolutist states, and which as such have been properly supported and where necessary defended by democratic socialists. To move on to real sharing in all the decisions that affect our lives, not by some all-purpose mandate to others, but by direct participation and by accountable delegation, is the historic task of socialist democracy.
Socialist democracy necessarily challenges these reserved areas, to give all members of a society a practical share in the most fundamental organization of our common life. In practice this sharing has to begin in the organization of our most basic social forms – those of work and of community. The power of private capital to shape or influence these decisions is replaced by active and often local social decision, in what is always in practice the real disposition of our lives. Within all the arbitrary consequences of large-scale capitalism, and in spite of the confusions by pseudo-socialist state and bureaucratic forms, there is an immense and widespread longing for this kind of practical share in shaping our own lives. It has never yet been fully articulated politically and it is our strongest resource, if we can learn to deal honestly with it, for a socialist future. Many of the signs are good.
Modern information systems make the processes of common inquiry and decision more practical than they have ever before been (even small-scale face-to-face democracy, in earlier times, was limited only to particular groups). A century of general education, still needing major extensions, has greatly improved the necessary human skills. The social energy that comes through, whenever people now feel that they are organizing something for themselves, has often to be seen to be believed. If, with these historic advantages, socialists fail to push through to a practical working democracy, through attachment to older ideas, or through compromise with the limits of a capitalist state, we shall have no future.
It is still the ideas that require our analysis. It is clear that any transition, however limited, from capitalist to socialist forms, requires some strong central organizations – in finance, in external trade, in foreign policy and in the management of existing state forces. These have been the historical justifications for a command economy, and in any transitional period they can not be avoided. At the same time, for the basic purposes of the transition, moves to genuine self-management of workplaces and communities are similarly indispensable. The greatest challenge, now, to democratic socialists is to find the linking and intermediate institutions between these otherwise different forms.
An example can be given at this point. A socialist economy does need a general plan, but there is no socialist reason why this has to be monopolist. Instead of one state planning group there could be alternative public planning centres, offering different analyses and proposals, different mixes of priorities, for public discussion and decision. The immediate defensive functions of centralized power could be retained, but development and growth should be put out, from the beginning, to a wider process of decision, and not about half-formed intentions, but about detailed and costed alternatives. This is what sharing would really mean. Older socialists had a simple equation for planning – rationality plus public interest. This led often to the arrogance of monopoly. For it is a matter of everyday experience that rational people arrive at different conclusions, and that the public interest is not singular but is a complex and interactive network of different real interests. A sharing plan begins from this acknowledgement of diversity, and encourages the true social processes of open discussion, negotiation and agreement.
It is as well to face the difficulties, but only as a challenge. The future that is otherwise in store for us is, as always, uncertain but can be reasonably predicted. There are major dangers if we continue the reckless exploitation of our natural environment. This case is beginning to be heard. But there are equal and perhaps greater dangers in what is now being done to people: in the cruelties of dislocation and redundancy; in a disruptive poverty; in the simultaneous exploitation and repression of the ways people then react. The social forces now active are so dynamic and so diverse that literally nothing can control them, short of destruction, unless shared popular directions are found.
A sharing socialism is the only probable and hopeful direction. Limited and chastened by disappointments and failures, some socialists, including some socialist leaders, back away from this challenge. Yet, against the odds, there are many signs of a more general resilience, learned more from ourselves under pressure than simply from ideas. In this sense we can face the future as we really get to know ourselves in the present: a confidence in ourselves that is always our leading resource.