FAQAnar:H.3.13 - En quoi le socialisme d'État n'est-il que du capitalisme d'État ?
Catégorie:Pourquoi les anarchistes s'opposent au socialisme d'État ?
For anarchists, the idea that socialism can be achieved via state ownership is simply ridiculous. For reasons which will become abundantly clear, anarchists argue that any such "socialist" system would simply be a form of "state capitalism." Such a regime would not fundamentally change the position of the working class, whose members would simply be wage slaves to the state bureaucracy rather than to the capitalist class.
However, before beginning our discussion of why anarchists think this we need to clarify our terminology. This is because the expression "state capitalism" has three distinct, if related, meanings in socialist (particularly Marxist) thought. Firstly, "state capitalism" was/is used to describe the current system of big business subject to extensive state control (particularly if, as in war, the capitalist state accrues extensive powers over industry). Secondly, it was used by Lenin to describe his immediate aims after the October Revolution, namely a regime in which the capitalists would remain but would be subject to a system of state control inherited by the new "proletarian" state from the old capitalist one (see section 10 of the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?"for details). The third use of the term is to signify a regime in which the state replaces the capitalist class totally via nationalisation of the means of production. In such a regime, the state would own, manage and accumulate capital rather than individual capitalists.
Anarchists are opposed to all three systems described by the term "state capitalism." Here we concentrate on the third definition, arguing that state socialism would be better described as "state capitalism" as state ownership of the means of life does not get to the heart of capitalism, namely wage labour. Rather it simply replaces private bosses with the state and changes the form of property (from private to state property) rather than getting rid of it.
The idea that socialism simply equals state ownership (nationalisation) is easy to find in the works of Marxism. The Communist Manifesto, for example, states that the "proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production into the hands of the State." This meant the "[c]entralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly," plus the "[c]entralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State," "[e]xtension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State" and the "[e]stablishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture." [Marx-Engels Selected Works, pp. 52-3]
Engels repeats this formula thirty-two years later in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by asserting that capitalism itself "forces on more and more the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialised, into state property. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into state property." Socialism is not equated with state ownership of productive forces by a capitalist state, "but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution" to the social problem. It simply "shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into state property." Thus state ownership after the proletariat seizes power is the basis of socialism, when by this "first act" of the revolution the state "really constitutes itself as the representative of the whole of society." [Marx-Engels Reader, p. 713, p. 712 and p. 713]
What is significant from these programmatic statements on the first steps of socialism is the total non-discussion of what is happening at the point of production, the non-discussion of the social relations in the workplace. Rather we are subjected to discussion of "the contradiction between socialised production and capitalist appropriation" and claims that while there is "socialised organisation of production within the factory," this has become "incompatible with the anarchy of production in society." The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that "socialism" will inherit, without change, the "socialised" workplace of capitalism and that the fundamental change is that of ownership: "The proletariat seized the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialised means of production . . . into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne." [Op. Cit., p. 709 and p. 717]
That the Marxist movement came to see state ownership rather than workers' management of production as the key issue is hardly surprising. Thus we find leading Social-Democrats arguing that socialism basically meant the state, under Social-Democratic control of course, acquiring the means of production and nationalising them. Hilferding presented what was Marxist orthodoxy at the time when he argued that in "a communist society" production "is consciously determined by the social central organ," which would decide "what is to be produced and how much, where and by whom." While this information is determined by the market forces under capitalism, in socialism it "is given to the members of the socialist society by their authorities . . . we must derive the undisturbed progress of the socialist economy from the laws, ordinances and regulations of socialist authorities." [quoted by Nikolai Bukharin, Economy Theory of the Leisure Class, p. 157] As we discuss in the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?", the Bolsheviks inherited this concept of "socialism" and implemented it.
This vision of society in which the lives of the population are controlled by "authorities" in a "social central organ" which tell the workers what to do, while in line with the Communist Manifesto, seems less that appealing. It also shows why state socialism is not socialism at all. Thus George Barrett:
"If instead of the present capitalist class there were a set of officials appointed by the Government and set in a position to control our factories, it would bring about no revolutionary change. The officials would have to be paid, and we may depend that, in their privileged positions, they would expect good remuneration. The politicians would have to be paid, and we already know their tastes. You would, in fact, have a non-productive class dictating to the producers the conditions upon which they were allowed to use the means of production. As this is exactly what is wrong with the present system of society, we can see that State control would be no remedy, while it would bring with it a host of new troubles . . . under a governmental system of society, whether it is the capitalism of today or a more a perfected Government control of the Socialist State, the essential relationship between the governed and the governing, the worker and the controller, will be the same; and this relationship so long as it lasts can be maintained only by the bloody brutality of the policeman's bludgeon and the soldier's rifle." [The Anarchist Revolution, pp. 8-9]
The key to seeing why state socialism is simply state capitalism can be found in the lack of change in the social relationships at the point of production. The workers are still wage slaves, employed by the state and subject to its orders. As Lenin stressed in State and Revolution, under Marxist Socialism "[a]ll citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state . . . All citizens become employees and workers of a single country-wide state 'syndicate' . . . The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labour and pay." [Lenin, Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 312] Given that Engels had argued, against anarchism, that a factory required subordination, authority, lack of freedom and "a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation," Lenin's idea of turning the world into one big factory takes on an extremely frightening nature. [Marx-Engels Reader, p. 731] A reality which one anarchist described in 1923 as being the case in Lenin's Russia:
"The nationalisation of industry, removing the workers from the hands of individual capitalists, delivered them to the yet more rapacious hands of a single, ever-present capitalist boss, the State. The relations between the workers and this new boss are the same as earlier relations between labour and capital, with the sole difference that the Communist boss, the State, not only exploits the workers, but also punishes them himself . . . Wage labour has remained what it was before, except that it has taken on the character of an obligation to the State . . . It is clear that in all this we are dealing with a simple substitution of State capitalism for private capitalism." [Peter Arshinov, History of the Makhnovist Movement, p. 71]
All of which makes Bakunin's comments seem justified (as well as stunningly accurate):
"Labour financed by the State -- such is the fundamental principle of authoritarian Communism, of State Socialism. The State, having become the sole proprietor . . . will have become sole capitalist, banker, money-lender, organiser, director of all national work, and the distributor of its profits." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 293]
Such a system, based on those countries "where modern capitalist development has reached its highest point of development" would see "the gradual or violent expropriation of the present landlords and capitalists, or of the appropriation of all land and capital by the State. In order to be able to carry out its great economic and social mission, this State will have to be very far-reaching, very powerful and highly centralised. It will administer and supervise agriculture by means of its appointed mangers, who will command armies of rural workers organised and disciplined for that purpose. At the same time, it will set up a single bank on the ruins of all existing banks." Such a system, Bakunin correctly predicted, would be "a barracks regime for the proletariat, in which a standardised mass of men and women workers would wake, sleep, work and live by rote; a regime of privilege for the able and the clever." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 258 and p. 259]
Proudhon, likewise was well aware that state ownership did not mean the end of private property, rather it meant a change in who ordered the working class about. "We do not want," he stated, "to see the State confiscate the mines, canals and railways; that would be to add to monarchy, and more wage slavery. We want the mines, canals, railways handed over to democratically organised workers' associations" which would be the start of a "vast federation of companies and societies woven into the common cloth of the democratic social Republic." He contrasted workers' associations run by and for their members to those "subsidised, commanded and directed by the State," which would crush "all liberty and all wealth, precisely as the great limited companies are doing." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 62 and p. 105]
Simply put, if workers did not directly manage their own work then it matters little who formally owns the workplaces in which they toil. As Maurice Brinton argues, libertarian socialists "hold that the 'relations of production' -- the relations which individuals or groups enter into with one another in the process of producing wealth -- are the essential foundations of any society. A certain pattern of relations of production is the common denominator of all class societies. This pattern is one in which the producer does not dominate the means of production but on the contrary both is 'separated from them' and from the products of his [or her] own labour. In all class societies the producer is in a position of subordination to those who manage the productive process. Workers' management of production -- implying as it does the total domination of the producer over the productive process - is not for us a marginal matter. It is the core of our politics. It is the only means whereby authoritarian (order-giving, order-taking) relations in production can be transcended and a free, communist or anarchist, society introduced." He goes on to note that "the means of production may change hands (passing for instance from private hands into those of a bureaucracy, collectively owning them) with out this revolutionising the relations of production. Under such circumstances -- and whatever the formal status of property -- the society is still a class society for production is still managed by an agency other than the producers themselves. Property relations, in other words, do not necessarily reflect the relations of production. They may serve to mask them -- and in fact they often have." [The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, pp. vii-vii]
As such, for anarchists (and libertarian Marxists) the idea that state ownership of the means of life (the land, workplaces, factories, etc.) is the basis of socialism is simply wrong. Therefore, "Anarchism cannot look upon the coming revolution as a mere substitution . . . of the State as the universal capitalist for the present capitalists." [Kropotkin, Evolution and Environment, p. 106] Given that the "State organisation having always been . . . the instrument for establishing monopolies in favour of the ruling minorities, [it] cannot be made to work for the destruction of these monopolies. The anarchists consider, therefore, that to hand over to the State all the main sources of economic life -- the land, the mines, the railways, banking, insurance, and so on -- as also the management of all the main branches of industry . . . would mean to create a new instrument of tyranny. State capitalism would only increase the powers of bureaucracy and capitalism." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 286] Needless to say, a society which was not democratic in the workplace would not remain democratic politically either. Either democracy would become as formal as it is within any capitalist republic or it would be replaced by dictatorship. So, without a firm base in the direct management of production, any "socialist" society would see working class social power ("political power") and liberty wither and die, just like a flower ripped out of the soil.
Unsurprisingly, given all this, we discover throughout history the co-existence of private and state property. Indeed, the nationalisation of key services and industries has been implemented under all kinds of capitalist governments and within all kinds of capitalist states (which proves the non-socialist nature of state ownership). Moreover, anarchists can point to specific events where the capitalist class has used nationalisation to undermine revolutionary gains by the working class. The best example by far is in the Spanish Revolution, when the Catalan government used nationalisation against the wave of spontaneous, anarchist inspired, collectivisation which had placed most of industry into the hand direct hands of the workers (see section I.8). The government, under the guise of legalising the gains of the workers, placed them under state ownership to stop their development, ensure hierarchical control and so class society.
A similar process occurred during the Russian Revolution under the Bolsheviks. Significantly, "many managers, at least those who remained, appear to have preferred nationalisation (state control) to workers' control and co-operated with Bolshevik commissars to introduce it. Their motives are not too difficult to understand . . . The issue of who runs the plants -- who makes decisions -- is, and probably always will be, the crucial question for managers in any industrial relations system." [Jay B. Sorenson, The Life and Death of Soviet Trade Unionism, pp. 67-8] As we discuss in the next section, the managers and capitalists were not the only ones who disliked "workers' control," the Bolsheviks did so as well, who ensured that it was marginalised within a centralised system of state control based on nationalisation.
As such, anarchists think that a utterly false dichotomy has been built up in discussions of socialism, one which has served the interests of both capitalists and state bureaucrats. This dichotomy is simply that the economic choices available to humanity are "private" ownership of productive means (capitalism), or state ownership of productive means (usually defined as "socialism"). In this manner, capitalist nations used the Soviet Union, and continue to use autocracies like North Korea, China, and Cuba as examples of the evils of "public" ownership of productive assets.
Anarchists see little distinction between "private" ownership of the means of life and "state" ownership. This is because the state is a highly centralised structure specifically designed to exclude mass participation and so, therefore, necessarily composed of a ruling administrative body. As such, the "public" cannot actually "own" the property the state claims to hold in its name. The ownership and thus control of the productive means is then in the hands of a ruling elite, the state administration (i.e. bureaucracy). Thus, the means of production and land of a state "socialist" regime are not publicly owned -- rather, they are owned by a bureaucratic elite, in the name of the people, a subtle but important distinction.
In this fashion, decisions about the allocation and use of the productive assets is not made by the people themselves, but by the administration, by economic planners. Similarly, in "private" capitalist economies, economic decisions are made by a coterie of managers. In both cases the managers make decisions which reflect their own interests and the interests of the owners (be it shareholders or the state bureaucracy) and not the workers involved or society as a whole. In both cases, economic decision-making is top-down in nature, made by an elite of administrators -- bureaucrats in the state socialist economy, capitalists or managers in the "private" capitalist economy. The much-lauded distinction of capitalism is that unlike the monolithic, centralised state socialist bureaucracy it has a choice of bosses (and choosing a master is not freedom). And given the similarities in the relations of production between capitalism and state "socialism," the obvious inequalities in wealth in so-called "socialist" states are easily explained. The relations of production and the relations of distribution are inter-linked and so inequality in terms of power in production means inequality in control of the social product, which will be reflected in inequality in terms of wealth.
In other words, private property exists if some individuals (or groups) control/own things which are used by other people. This means, unsurprising, that state ownership is just a form of property rather than the negation of it. If you have a highly centralised structure (as the state is) which plans and decides about all things within production, then this central administrative would be the real owner because it has the exclusive right to decide how things are used, not those using them. The existence of this central administrative strata excludes the abolition of property, replacing socialism or communism with state owned "property," i.e. state capitalism. As such, state ownership does not end wage labour and, therefore, social inequalities in terms of wealth and access to resources. Workers are still order-takers under state ownership (whose bureaucrats control the product of their labour and determine who gets what). The only difference between workers under private property and state property is the person telling them what to do. Simply put, the capitalist or company appointed manager is replaced by a state appointed one.
As anarcho-syndicalist Tom Brown stresses, when "the many control the means whereby they live, they will do so by abolishing private ownership and establishing common ownership of the means of production, with workers' control of industry." However, this is "not to be confused with nationalisation and state control" as "ownership is, in theory, said to be vested in the people" but, in fact "control is in the hands of a small class of bureaucrats." Then "common ownership does not exist, but the labour market and wage labour go on, the worker remaining a wage slave to State capitalism." Simply put, common ownership "demands common control. This is possible only in a condition of industrial democracy by workers' control." [Syndicalism, p. 94] In summary:
"Nationalisation is not Socialisation, but State Capitalism . . . Socialisation . . . is not State ownership, but the common, social ownership of the means of production, and social ownership implies control by the producers, not by new bosses. It implies Workers' Control of Industry -- and that is Syndicalism." [Op. Cit., p. 111]
However, many Marxists (in particular Leninists) state they are in favour of both state ownership and "workers' control." As we discuss in more depth in next section, while they mean the same thing as anarchists do by the first term, they have a radically different meaning for the second (it is for this reason modern-day anarchists generally use the term "workers' self-management"). To anarchist ears, the combination of nationalisation (state ownership) and "workers' control" (and even more so, self-management) simply expresses political confusion, a mishmash of contradictory ideas which simply hides the reality that state ownership, by its very nature, precludes workers' control. As such, anarchists reject such contradictory rhetoric in favour of "socialisation" and "workers' self-management of production." History shows that nationalisation will always undermine workers' control at the point of production and such rhetoric always paves the way for state capitalism.
Therefore, anarchists are against both nationalisation and privatisation, recognising both as forms of capitalism, of wage slavery. We believe in genuine public ownership of productive assets, rather than corporate/private or state/bureaucratic control. Only in this manner can the public address their own economic needs. Thus, we see a third way that is distinct from the popular "either/or" options forwarded by capitalists and state socialists, a way that is entirely more democratic. This is workers' self-management of production, based on social ownership of the means of life by federations of self-managed syndicates and communes.
For further discussion, see Kropotkin's discussion of "The collectivist Wages System" in The Conquest of Bread and selections from the British Anarchist Journal Freedom about the wide-scale nationalisation which took place after the end of the Second World War entitled Neither Nationalisation Nor Privatisation: An Anarchist Approach.
Notes et references
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