The socialist approach

CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK

Socialism is also to be distinguished from and contrasted with communism, and the Marxist concept of socialism. Communism is a state of social perfection in which the principle ‘from each according to his ability and to each according to his need’ shall apply. On its advent, the dictatorship of the proletariat would come to an end, the ‘State’ everywhere would be replaced by ‘Community’, and the talents of each citizen would be so highly developed, that in his skills, he would far transcend the capitalist technology of micro-division of labour and acquire the all-embracing communist technology which would make it possible for him ‘to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic’.

In the views of Marx and Engels, the State and freedom are antithetic. Under the bourgeoisie, a State is an instrument of arbitrary coercion and oppression, and its executive’ is but a committee for managing the affairs or the whole bourgeoisie’ in their ruthless exploitation of the working class Under the proletariat, the State becomes the instrument for holding down its adversaries, the bourgeoisie. Says Engels in Letter to Bebel, ‘it is pure nonsense to talk of a free people’s State.’

But when communism is attained and the ‘State’ everywhere is replaced by ‘Community’, each individual would then have ‘the means of cultivating his gift in all directions.’ ‘Only in the Community, therefore’, declare Marx and Engels, ‘is personal freedom possible.’

It will be seen that, in the views of Marx and Engels, socialism is an intermediate stage between the era of capitalism and that of communism. The principle of socialism is from each according to his ability and to each according to his deed’, and its high-water mark, as we have seen, is the dictatorship of the proletariat under which the bourgeoisie – the capitalists – are suppressed and finally exterminated.

Our own concept of socialism is entirely different from communism and the Marxian concept of socialism. We believe that the State is an absolute necessity in human evolution from primeval crudity to physical, intellectual, and spiritual perfection. We believe that it is only within the State that man can enjoy personal freedom and live a full and happy life. We believe that to these ends the economic forces within the State and in the world at large must be brought under complete control, tamed, and humanised for the benefit of all.

Any system, therefore, under which either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat uses the State as an arbitrary and partisan instrument of coercion against the other, offends our own concept of the dialectic and is bound to fail, because, since it is grounded in mutual hatred, it contains within it the germ of its own eventual dissolution. We believe that if a slogan were to be coined for socialism, it would have to be in the following terms: ‘From each according to his ability and to each according to his deed or need as the case may be.’ This is more embracing and equitable than the other two which we have quoted before. The procedure for achieving our brand of socialism can now be stated.

First, the goal must be quite clearly declared; and second, the method of attaining the goal must be carefully worked out, bearing in mind always that the touchstone of any economic, or for that matter any social, policy, which has any chance of progressive and harmonious success and of benefitting all those whom it affects, is love.

Beginning then with the statement of objectives, we declare that the aims of socialism are social justice and equality, and a state of affairs in which the resources provided by Nature belong to all the citizens equally, and the products of the union of land and labour are appropriated to labour of all gradations and skills through the media of good wages, respectable standards of living, abolition of unemployment, free provision of social amenities such as education, health, etc.

These objectives may be stated in more concrete terms. They are: (i) the abolition of rent, dividend or profit, interest and inheritance; (ii) the legal elimination of the rentier class; and (iii) the recognition that all the able-bodied citizens of the State are workers or labourers of various gradations and skills, and that this being so all able-bodied citizens who work or render services to the State are entitled to remunerations only in the forms of salaries or wages of various scales.

By ‘work for or services to the State’, we mean all such work or services as can count towards the calculation of the State’s Gross Domestic Product, including domestic and military services. In a socialist State, only the person who does a good day’s work in the services of the State sits on the throne: anyone else who does is a usurper and impostor.

(We would like to say in parenthesis that it does require some kind of skill to be a good messenger, street sweeper, wood cutter, or water drawer.) Our reasons for these objectives are obvious from what we have said in Chapters 6 and 7.

Rent, in the main, is unearned and, in so far as it is a return on capital in the form of dividend or profit, it is unjustified, having regard to the nature of land and the manifestly unfair reward which goes to it under the forces of supply and demand. Dividend or profit to an absentee shareholder, on accumulated capital which, as Marx rightly puts it, is ‘crystallised robbery’, or on new capital which is incipient theft, is grossly unjust.

In the case of an entrepreneur-shareholder, dividend or profit in addition to his salary is absolutely unjustified. Since savings are either deliberate or inevitable, they do not require special inducement in the form of interest. Inheritance of wealth from any of these sources is palpably ill-gotten.

CONTINUES NEXT WEEK

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