Which Way to a New American Radicalism?
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today. The 1950s were a period of political retreat accompanied by a
boom that showed no signs of slowing down. A discussion broke out in
the pages of the radical National Guardian newspaper about the
relevance of Marxism to the new situation. Harry Braverman responded
to the Guardian in the pages of the American Socialist in a manner
that would seem relevant to our situation today which presents the
American left with many of the same sorts of imponderables. Braverman
and co-editor Bert Cochran had split with the American Trotskyist
movement over perspectives following WWII. The party leadership held
the view--alluded to in Harry's article--that "The end of World War
Two was firmly expected to produce a return to the depression of the
thirties." As a corollary, the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party
would recruit thousands if not millions of trade unionists to its
ranks and overthrow the capitalist system. Ironically, the Cochranite
faction not only included the most seasoned trade union militants, but
also the most talented Marxist economists starting with Braverman and
Cochran themselves. The American Socialist was probably the first
Marxist publication to reject the kind of "depression era" mentality
that characterized groups like the SWP as well as the naked
revisionism of groups like the Communist Party and the new left
ideologues who would soon make an appearance. The magazine not only
featured perceptive economic analysis from Braverman and Cochran, but
those from other traditions such as the ex-CP'er William Mandel and
"council communist" Paul Mattick. For the new Marxist left which we
need so urgently in this country, those are the kinds of standards we
should aspire to.]
American Socialist, April 1956
The prolonged period of full employment has shaken the Left's
confidence in Marxist economics, and given rise to all sorts of
"coalitionist" notions in politics. This discussion of socialist
perspectives sets forth a program for the coming period.
Which Way to a New American Radicalism?
by Harry Braverman
BY this time, the fact that the American Left has suffered a serious
decomposition--in numbers, spirit, organization, and ideology--is no
longer anybody's private secret. The problem is being discussed from
time to time in periodicals and organizations of the Left, and even
those groups which try hardest to maintain an outward demeanor of calm
and unruffled composure show signs of a shaken confidence.
As an important example of such recent discussions, the two series of
articles in the National Guardian by Tabitha Petran represented a
healthy reaction against shortcomings of the American radical movement
which have weakened it in its present crisis. The Communist Party took
a heavy and well-deserved slugging for its long-time penchant for
dealing in slogans and maneuvers without regard for their basic
soundness; for its failure to base its work, these many years, upon a
serious and sustained advocacy of socialism in America; for its latest
hapless adventure in the form of a so-called "coalition policy"-- this
last being nothing but a fancy name for a pathetic attempt to become a
tail on a capitalist donkey.
It is widely understood that some of the major causes for the Left's
decline were outside its own control: the stabilization and expansion
of the capitalist economy after World War II, and the red-scare
hysteria connected with the cold war. No tactical recipes can
drastically change our situation, and infuse glowing health and rapid
growth. But what such a discussion can produce, if it is honestly and
fearlessly pursued, is a renewal of perspective, with- Out which no
movement can thrive, and a set of tactics which can meet the most
pressing present problems, restore a secure footing and balance, and
open the way for progress on a small scale today and on a larger scale
when the situation in the country is more favorable.
MUCH of the discussion has rightly centered around prospects for the
U. S. economy. Many reasons been adduced, both on the Left and
elsewhere, why we can no longer expect any serious economic debacle in
America. Government intervention and stabilizers, production, new
industries, have all figured in the argument. But undoubtedly the
weightiest of all considerations has gone unmentioned: the
conservatism of the human mind. Much economic reasoning that passes
itself off as based on deep and technical cogitation rests on no than
the difficulty on the part of the reasoner of conceiving a sharp turn
in a situation which has continued without break for a relatively long
period of time. Realism is a quality of thinking much to be admired
and striven after, but where it lacks an essential leavening of
flexibility and dynamism it tends to see the future as a simple
indefinite continuation of the seemingly solid and impressive trends
of the present. In an epoch which is subject to sharp changes--without
notice--the better prophets have often been the "unrealistic
visionaries."
The truth of the matter is that the long prosperity has shaken the
confidence of many American socialists in Marxist economic analysis.
The end of World War Two was firmly expected to produce a return to
the depression of the thirties. Later, the '49 slump was regarded as
the definitive turn in the economy, and again in 1954 expectations
were renewed. Leaving aside whether analyses--which all on the Left
shared in common were justified at the time they were made and just
what altered the picture in each case, the effect in the Left in every
instance a further weakening of confidence. The hypnotic effect of a
long-sustained boom which began to involve many people on the Left
personally in its workings didn't help matters much ideologically
either, although financially the effect was salubrious in individual
cases.
IN the process, much of the Marxist conviction leaked out and left a
hollow shell of ceremonial phrases filled by a kind of left-Keynesian
content. Many ex-radicals working as research directors for labor
unions may secretly believe that they are surreptitiously bringing
Marxism to America when they throw out a few superficial remarks about
"the worker not being able to buy back what produces" but a serious
American left wing has to grounded on more solid ideas.
Thus the first requirement of a discussion is that we stop nibbling at
the edges of the problem of the American economy and go in for a
thoughtful consideration of core of the problem: Has the fatal
imbalance of the capitalist structure of production and distribution
been corrected, or can it be basically corrected, by the governmental
measures that have been taken or which are in prospect? If that
question is answered in the affirmative then the traditional Marxist
perspective must be set down as no longer valid, and a snail's-pace
program reform put in its place as the only practical course the
indefinite future. In that case, the posture of distinct separation
from liberalism which the Left now maintains ought to be altered, and
the program of merging with liberals in the Democratic Party becomes a
proper or at least a possible course of action.
It has by now become pretty widely accepted in several schools of
economic thought that every capitalist boom period is accompanied by
certain features which lead to its downfall: The boom carries the seed
of its own destruction. The Keynes school saw the trouble in a
"psychological law" by which people don't increase their spending as
fast as their incomes go up during a prosperity; this leads to a
growing gap which investment fails to bridge, and this in turn leads
to a downward spiral. But statistical observation in many periods of
rising income has stubbornly to confirm the existence of such a
"psychological law."
The over-simplified theory of the laborites is that in a boom, profits
rise faster than wages, thus producing a shortage of purchasing power.
While this cuts closer to the heart of the matter, it takes effect for
cause, and fails to dig deeply enough for the underlying reasons. The
theory falls down when one considers that the remedy it
proposes--rising wages--is a feature of every boom period has never
yet succeeded in preventing the collapse.
THE unique feature of the Marxist analysis is that it describes a
basic disproportion in capitalist economy which cannot be lifted out
of the system short of doing with capitalism. Every boom hits its
stride because of a growing strength in purchasing power, but this in
turn produces a frenzy of competition and expansion in industry which
is bound to far outrace the population's consuming power. The
mechanics which force capitalism to this end are not primarily
psychological, although that element plays a role in the later stages
of an upswing, but are directly economic in character. In the anarchy,
planlessness and jungle law of capitalist competition, each capitalist
is forced to fight for his profit position and competitive standing;
the race of technology and productivity grows exceedingly swift; every
possible particle of capital and credit is drawn into the maelstrom in
which money miraculously breeds money; and every encouragement in the
way of a boost in purchasing power drives the boom to more dangerous
speculative heights and over-expansion of industry. To eliminate
depression by a rise in wages adds a trifle of consuming power and
keeps the bubble going a while, but only inflates it bigger in the
long run.
Are we in such a speculative boom today? There is no purpose here to
dive once more into a juggling of figures about the national income,
investment, consumption, etc., as, this material has already been
paraded extensively in the press to the point where people are getting
to know those facts as well as they know their own wages, and, in any
event, what can be drawn from them has a limited value. One feature of
the attack which has been made upon the economic problem is worth
considering, however.
IF we retrace our steps over the analysis which was made by the Left
during the past decade, we find that our starting point was this: The
boom, it was postulated, is due to the vastly expanded military
program which was inaugurated with the cold war. This first axiom was
undoubtedly correct. But from there we went on to others which may not
have been so correct. Take away the expanding war sector, we said, and
the boom will fall as a tree when its trunk is severed. We now have
the experience of the past years in which the budget of Federal
expenditures has leveled off; the boom, instead of collapsing, went on
to a new height.
Why did the boom walk so easily past the grave we had ready-dug for
it? The answer, apparently, is that, like every boom in capitalism,
when once under way it had a great internal power to exhaust by its
own natural development. We forgot what the Marxists since Marx have
always readily admitted: that capitalism in its upswing disposes of an
enormous expansive force which revolutionizes production and
consumption for the duration of that part of its cycle. That there was
no inherent reason why this was no longer possible in mid-Twentieth
Century America has now been substantially proven, although it may
well have been impossible without the priming effect of the huge war
program to get it started.
Actually, the war program, by devouring the speculative surpluses
thrown off by the boom, may have restrained the feverish excesses for
a while. There is much evidence to show that this is so, and there is
also evidence which may indicate that the pattern of the twenties is
only now beginning (see: "Is the Boom Losing Its Balance?" American
Socialist, March 1956). Corporations, having attained the necessary
glow of reassurance which is always most dangerous in a boom, are
starting a competitive expansion and modernization of their plants
which the consumer-government markets do not appear to warrant.
OUR purpose here is not to deny that the laws of capitalism may be
modified in their action. The laws which Marx discovered are the
skeletal bones of the structure; they have been repeatedly modified.
Britain's long Nineteenth Century stranglehold of the world market
postponed the operation of the basic trend in that land, and the
Marxists were forced to take account of that. The broad growth of
imperialism in the three decades preceding the first World War, by
coercing into existence a vastly profitable field of trade,
investment, and super-exploitation of colonial labor and markets,
brought about still another and bolder modification of Marxist
economics, brilliantly accomplished by Lenin, Rudolph Hilferding, and
others. The special circumstances making possible the flowering of
American capitalism in the twenties when world capitalism was already
in decay, again forced a re-adjustment of Marxism, although this last
has never been accomplished in the U. S. as well as it should. In
every case, there were many who wanted to throw out the entire Marxist
system, and made their revisionist pronouncements to that
effect--generally just before the new economic collapse.
In any case, Marxism is not a ready-made slot-machine dogma, but a
broad theory of social development which requires application and
re-interpretation in every period. In the present period, we are up
against the problem of the effect of a permanent war economy upon the
evolution of capitalism. Such a big war sector as we now have can
bring a great boom into existence where none was before; that we have
already seen in action. But there is no evidence to show that the
continuation of a big war sector at a maximum level can suspend the
basic laws of the system entirely. On the raised plateau to which the
war sector has lifted it, the economy develops the same contradictions
and disproportions as previously, as we are now beginning to witness
in the U. S. If it is argued that a new slump can be fought 'by
another increase in the government sector, that can only mean the
ever-increasing governmentalization of the economy. Should this occur
in the form of ever-greater war spending, then sooner or later a
devouring of the people's living standards by the demands of Moloch
begins. And should the attempt be made in the form of welfare spending
of major proportions, that would involve a great political struggle
which would inevitably become a struggle for socialism, as the
capitalist class will never submit to that road without an all-out
battle.
What's in the cards? Probably the extremes of a continuously rising
war budget which will pauperize the people while the factories are
going full blast, or a huge welfare program to save capitalism, are
both out as realistic present perspectives. More likely we will see
the present level of government expenditures maintained or expanded
somewhat, and, on the basis of this high plateau, the laws of
capitalism begin to reassert themselves and, sooner or later, cause an
economic decline even while the government sector remains large.
There is no attempt here to exhaust the question under discussion, as
there is much more to it. An economic theory which has been so
brilliantly confirmed over a period of a century in so many countries
should not be discarded as a result of the experience of a half-dozen
years in one country--that is the main proposition for Marxists to
keep a firm grip on. Taking this as the basis for our discussion, we
at once confront some further questions, the first of which is: What
will be the effect of a serious and prolonged weakening of the economy
upon politics?
It has been argued (by the Communist Party and others) that radicalism
would not benefit from a depression, that fascist and McCarthyite
demagogues would be the chief beneficiaries. Even were this so it
would not prevent a depression if one were in the cards. But this is a
claim that flies in the face of all historical experience. One need
only recall Europe in the twenties and thirties, when the breakdown
and stagnation of capitalism produced a mass radicalization which has
persisted and deepened to the present day, or America in the Great
Depression. The German experience showed that it was only after a
prolonged period of hardship, during which the working-class parties
proved incapable of resolving the crisis, that fascist demagogues,
born also of economic troubles, and preaching their brand of "idiot's
socialism," were given their chance by middle classes crazed by long
desperation.
In the last decade of his life Frederick Engels brought to bear a
truly admirable realism and objectivity upon the perspectives held in
earlier years, and concluded that many vistas had been foreshortened
in the minds of the founders of scientific socialism. For England, he
attributed the slowness of development to the "share" in the benefits
of "England's industrial monopoly" which fell to the working class.
But, he concluded in a sentence which he was able to quote
triumphantly seven years later, "With the breakdown of that monopoly,
the English working class will lose that privileged position; it will
find itself generally--the privileged and leading minority not
excepted--on a level with its fellow workers abroad. that is the
reason why there will be socialism again in England." The same
proposition holds here. Socialism will come again to America only when
economic conditions prepare the way.
The Communists insist in their polemic with the National Guardian that
with this view the Left would seem to favor a worsening of the
conditions of the workers an aid to the Left. But Marxists are
irrevocably committed--so long as they remain Marxists--to the
proposition that the capitalist system is running up against its
limits of progressive development, and will increasingly produce an
intolerable situation for the mass of the people. That is the raison
d'être of modern socialism as a mass movement and not just an ideal in
the minds of men good will. To discard all that and try to masquerade
as simple citizens, kindly puzzled souls, and community-conscious PTA
members who expect nothing but good from capitalism and will be rudely
shocked by anything else, a bit too disingenuous. It means to abandon
our role as critics of the present order and prophets of a new on and
dissolve our thinking to the level of light-weight liberalism; doing
this would court more of the same kind of disaster for the Left as it
already has met with.
Our argument that capitalism in America still faces economic crises of
its classic sort, while it forms the basis for a perspective, does not
automatically solve the tactical problems of the present. For the fact
remains that between the present and a future breakdown of American
capitalism there lies an interval of time--no one can pretend to know
how long. For a period, the present isolation of the Left will
persist, and socialists need an approach to the problem of what to do
now. . .
THERE has been no attempt here at an exhaustive survey of the job of
the Left. Much good work is open to us on the civil liberties front,
in the fight full equality for the Negro people and in the fight for
peace; but these are areas of general agreement and at any rate not
the core of the problem of the present discussion. If we review our
basic conclusions, we find the following: The socialist movement needs
to revivify Marxist economic perspectives, instead of permitting them
to become weakened by disuse and diffused by too much concentration on
the small-scale and immediate as against the long-term trend. We need
a re-dedication to the task of socialist education, and a bold
approach to converting youth in particular to socialism. We need to
identify selves with a labor party perspective for the unions, try to
make a mark for that perspective wherever possible inside the unions,
instead of a pro-Democrat adventure. We are convinced that this is the
correct approach re-creating a virile, principled, and confident
socialist cadre in America.
Louis Proyect
The Marxism List is at: http://www.marxmail.org
Michael Gavin
>
<snip>
For the record I'd like to point out that as early as 1947 Tony
Cliff rejected the catastrophism your describe above. Admittedly
his article "All that glitters isn't gold - A reply to Germain's
'From ABC to Current Reading: Boom, Revival or Crisis?'" appeared
in the Internal Bulletin of the Revolutionary Communist Party and
not in the open party press, but from the very beginning this
perspective influenced the "Socialist Review" Group, forerunner
of the SWP. This article is contained in T. Cliff, "Neither
Washington nor Moscow - Essays on revolutionary socialism",
Bookmarks, London 1982.
BTW the article looks very interesting. I'll read it carefully.
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David Stevens
> ...
>
> For the record I'd like to point out that as early as 1947 Tony
> Cliff rejected the catastrophism your describe above.
That would make it one year prior to his gushing citation of
collaborator General Vlasov's "anti-Stalinist programme" ...
"objectively" speaking.
-- David Stevens
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