Revolution and the difficulty of overthrowing capitalism

By Don Milligan

Introduction

Revolutionary Socialism is an emancipatory project, and in order to succeed, it must find positive means of realization and expression, as a precondition to its assumption of state power. For revolutions to succeed be they violent or peaceful, swift or protracted, they must be expressions of social forms that are already emergent or present within a society. Consequently, the outstanding problem for socialists regarding revolution is by what means should they attempt to influence the trajectory of social development? Does this simply involve supporting and stimulating every positive expression of social dissatisfaction so that we might ride the crest of the revolutionary wave towards the shore of a new society, or does it mean considering what ways exist, here, within the bowels of the old society, to contribute towards the elaboration of institutions, of modes of thought, of reforms, which might enable a revolutionary seizure of power to ‘cut with the grain’ of social development, to realize socialism in much the same way that landowners and merchants in England at the end of the seventeenth century made commercial society seem not merely reasonable and just, but necessary for the progress of all mankind.

This does not mean revisiting what Karl Marx called feudal socialism, or the utopian schemes of those who, in the nineteenth century, thought that capitalism could be eclipsed by model communities established to demonstrate, in practice, that socialism was both preferable and possible. Neither does it mean toying with the idea that capitalism can be overcome by the accumulation of reforms, or by the piecemeal expansion of public ownership.

It does mean, however, finding ways for the mass of the population to begin to embrace a concrete desire for social solidarity, and to develop a practical taste for the democratic management of manufacturing and the provision of services. Above all it means fighting to win reforms, which enhance popular participation, mutualism, and cooperation, in the management and control of production, as a precondition to the seizure of state power, by those who would attempt to manage the entire economy by popular democratic methods.

This means that there can be no successful revolutionary development without wresting reforms from the powers that be. It means, also, that there can be no successful revolutionary politics without the development of practical suggestions for improvements in the way capitalist relations are presently regulated and managed – on every question of the day revolutionaries must surely be able to put forward plausible and practical solutions to contemporary problems.

The inability or rather refusal of revolutionary socialists to give some concrete shape and meaning to their conceptions of socialism has condemned them to the margins – prominent in struggles against war and in those to defend wages, working conditions, and welfare, but rarely seen taking a broader interest or a central role in attempting, beyond the level of slogans and newsprint rhetoric, to challenge the competence and capacity of the powers that be in the way that industry is run, wars are fought, houses built, or services provided. This confinement to protest, without engagement, guarantees that the great majority of working people will continue, as they always have, to regard revolutionary socialists as irrelevant.

It is ridiculous to argue that the problems of capitalism are solely the concern of the capitalists, and “nothing to do with us”. This kind of thinking leads socialists into the absurd position of insisting that it is only with the overthrow of capitalism, only after the revolution, that we’re going to know what should be done, and who should do it. This abdication of the present leads to the airy proposition that “It’ll be alright on the night” – it supports those revolutionaries who traditionally refuse to offer any practical perspective on the revolutionary future other than to say – “when the day dawns, the masses will decide”.

This has bequeathed to us a situation in which we refuse practical participation in the political life of the society that we actually live in, in favour of an imaginary life determined by aspirations for a society that does not exist. In the meantime we confine ourselves to noisy outrage at the awful ways working people are treated, and argue the case for revolution, not merely failing to join-up-the-dots between protest and the revolutionary future, but insistently refusing to do so. This is why there is an entire ecology on the left of intimately related revolutionary groups who have excellent minimum and maximum positions, and nothing at all to tie them together, except arcane nonsense about the creation of ‘united fronts’ which are, from time to time, deployed to protect the nascent revolutionary parties from the slippery business of engaging with the here and now. This ensures that the Labour Party, bureaucratized trade unions, UKIP, and the Tory Party, are left to define and police what “politics” means, and are given a free hand to determine the parameters of political debate in society.

It is for these reasons it seems to me we need to overhaul our entire approach to politics and organization. We need to revisit what we mean by class, by exploitation, by democracy, by reforms, and by revolution. We need to get away from the caricature of capitalism we’ve been operating with. It does mean throwing out the baby’s bathwater, but not to worry, the baby hasn’t been in the tub for some time. We need to begin with a thorough interrogation of our rarely visited assumptions, because only when we’re clear about these, will we know what kinds of parties and institutions we need, and what we’ll have to do in order to develop and steer a revolutionary upheaval towards the prospect of success rather than the common ruin it has always brought with it in the past.

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