Why Socialism?

By Cal Ashnikov

In the left-wing movement, time and time again we are confronted with the same question by detractor and critics: why socialism? Put simply, we choose socialism because historically we have seen what happens when one pursues the “moderate” road. We must learn from events in the past and the comrades who shed blood for our movement in pursuit of socialism, and apply these lessons to our own contexts and times so as not to repeat them.

Historic events have repeatedly shown what happens when a movement pursues electoralism with narrow vision, to the exclusion of the revolutionary seizure of power. When acting within the confines of the class-divided system of global capitalism, electoralism cannot be but subservient to the interests of the ruling class and bourgeoisie interests, who create and design these systems. This is seen currently in the so-called ‘democracies’ of Western nations like Australia and the United States, where elections are but the choice between two sides of the same coin. We see leaders elected who never impart meaningful change against the system that employs them and reflects their own interests. If a movement dares to challenge this corrupt capitalist system by playing by the rules of bourgeois democracy or move outside them, they face the full wrath of the capitalist world order.

To those who would dare call this exaggeration or hyperbole, I present several examples where this has been proven to be the case. When the democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala dared to introduce land reform for the peasants in 1954, he was overthrown in a US-backed invasion that introduced a dictatorship that destroyed Guatemalan democracy for decades. In the newly-formed Democratic Republic of Congo, their first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was in power for less than a year before he was murdered by a US-backed movement after being betrayed by the United Nations. When the National Labour Party leader of Brazil, Joao Goulart, attempted to socialise the profits of large companies in 1964, he was overthrown in a US-backed coup that brought a military junta to power for nearly two decades. When popular Bolivian socialist leader Juan Jose Torres attempted to unite the government with the masses, he was subject to a financial blockage from the World Bank and then overthrown by a US and Brazilian backed coup that brutally suppressed the resultant mass-resistance to impose a dictatorship that lasted for seven years. In 1991, the Aristride government of Haiti was overthrown in a right-wing military coup for attempting to introduce economic reform, end corruption and to impose limits on the terroristic military.

Most famously, when the popular democratic government of Marxist Salvador Allende attempted to achieve socialism through electoral means in Chile, it was destroyed in a haze of bullets and shellfire in a US-backed right-wing coup that installed the dictator general Pinochet to reign for the next 15 years, toying with Chile as a testing ground for neoliberalism. Even in our own country of Australia, in 1975 we saw reactionary right-wing forces mobilised to dismiss the progressive Labour Whitlam government. In more recent years, we’ve seen reactionary forces intervene to try and overthrow the popular governments, such as those in Venezuela and Bolivia. So what lessons can we draw from all of these events for our current context?

The Modern World

In our own time, we are confronted with a new political landscape that separates us from these movements of the past. In the neoliberal era after the ‘end of history’ in the post-Soviet world, there has been a notable lack of new popular revolutionary movements. However, the failures of the neoliberal agenda and the fascistic tendencies of the global powers and reactionary bourgeoisie forces have once again brought revolutionary politics to the spotlight. People are becoming aware that reformism and the liberal agenda does not work. They realise it is the system itself that must be changed. This is seen when the same governments who perform tokenistic Acknowledgments of Country, also order the destruction of sacred sites for a faster highway bypass. This is seen when the racist superstructures and imperialist agendas of the United States are maintained by Presidents, regardless if black or white, Republican or Democrat. In light of this, we are confronted with this enemy of liberal reform.

For as Marx said in the Manifesto, ‘a part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society’.(1) This statement rings as true nearly two centuries later, as we see this class of smiling sympathisers who are willing to stab radical change in the back whilst paying face-value to progressive ideals. These people opt to protect their privileges and interests with a velvet glove rather than iron fist. Hence, we must do away with the perils of the narrow-minded bourgeois liberalism or perverse socialism in our movement to embrace the necessary revolutionary attitude. Indeed, it is the renewed principles of neo-Kautskyism which threaten to derail the image, traction and appeal of our movement to the masses.

The Struggle Ahead

Globally and domestically we have seen what has happened in the past with the failure of electoralism and reform. As Lenin stated more than a century ago, even the most liberal of capitalist states present a facade of proclaimed ‘democracy’ and equality that is countered by the classist injustices that subjugate the vast majority of the population. In our current times, as then, the eyes of the people are opening to the ‘rottenness, mendacity and hypocrisy of capitalism’.(2)

However, the awakening masses are at risk of being misled into the follies of electoral reformism by the neo-Kautskyites and bourgeois, champagne ‘socialists’ who continually co-opt and mislead radical movements. Awakened to this recurring problem in his own era, Engels maintained that communists must uphold their duty to ‘unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists, because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow’.(3)

Overthrowing What Society?

So where does the need for socialism come into play? The need for socialism comes from the fact that the current capitalist system upholds, maintains and creates the overwhelming inequality that confronts and degrades working people every day.

So why do we want to overthrow the current capitalist society? In short, to end the exploitation of the working class and the planet by a ruling class of privileged elites who give primacy to competition and profit. At length, there are many reasons that socialism must overthrow capitalism in the 21st century. The neoliberal era has brought in the trend of financialisation which has seen the collapse of industry in the Western world as manufacturing and commodity trade is moved offshore to countries with lax safety laws and more welcoming to exploitative conditions. Similarly, the casualisation of the workforce has seen the greater extraction of surplus value from the working class, wherein growing productivity of workers has been met by stagnating wages without the protections of full-time employment. Furthermore, the collapse of union strength and membership and the merging of the union establishment into the labor bureaucracy has left workers without the protections and support they require to fight exploitation in the workplace. The trend of monopolisation has seen business empires grow and absorb small businesses that would have offered competitive prices and different perspectives, with monopolies reigning supreme in everything from Disney in the media through to Woolworths over groceries. In the education sector, we are increasingly witnessing the privatisation of all elements, from primary school tutoring through to the gutting of universities and tertiary institutions, as seen in the stripping away of TAFE funding and the casualisation of tutors.

“Across the board, we witness the over exploitation of resources in the pursuit off profit, with fossil fuel usage and environmental degradation occurring on a massive scale”

All of these factors have prompted growing class antagonisms at the rampant inequality evident in all walks of life. In the U.S. alone, the distribution of wealth has become so gross that the three richest individuals - Bezos, Gates, Buffett - own more wealth between them than half of the U.S. population. Millionaires and billionaires such as these, not content with stealing the unpaid wages of their exploited workers, horde their wealth in offshore tax havens and are comforted by lenient tax laws on the rich, ensuring that not a single dollar dares to filter back into supporting the public. In the meantime, working people suffer from ever-rising costs of living, forced to choose between rent, food or entertainment in the little spare time they have between multiple jobs.

For those who dare to challenge this gross inequality, there is the burden and threat of intrusive mass surveillance, tracking everything from your online spending habits through to your Opal card history and social media accounts. This invasive surveillance apparatus has been increasingly used to continue the trend of mass incarceration of working people for petty crimes, whilst the largest corporate, social and environmental criminals walk around free and chair management boards and government offices. Erstwhile, this apparatus accommodates, encourages and facilitates the resurgence of fascism within its own forces and amongst the broader population, suppressing voices that dare challenge it and giving protection to those who spread hate. Not merely confined to the domestic level, this extends internationally, with Western nations repeatedly being bogged down in permanent imperialist wars, waged for the exploitation of foreign lands and peoples so as to profit off the resources they are unlucky enough to contain. Meanwhile, across the board, we witness the overexploitation of resources in the pursuit off profit, with fossil fuel usage and environmental degradation occurring on a massive scale with minimal intervention from the world’s governments. In light of these facts, we are confronted with the need to drastically establish a counter-model to the global beast of exploitation that is capitalism. And the fact of the matter is that this alternative must be socialism.

Why Socialism?

Knowing all this, we are confronted with two main conclusions from which we draw our solution. First, that the current neoliberal world order and its enforcers and supporters in individual states are incapable of, and unwilling to, address the grievances of working people across the world. Secondly, that the change required to address these grievances is not achievable through electoralism or reformism by the institutions this ruling order has in place. So what conclusion do we draw from this?

When confronted with the exploitation of monopoly capitalism and the bourgeois, neoliberal state in all their forms across the globe - and all of the ills they inflict upon society and the planet - the same remedy should be prescribed for this disease. This remedy is socialism. For as Lenin stated in State and Revolution, ‘the supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution’.4 For an inherently expolitative system that is built on and maintained by violence, the idea that elections and reforms are enough to address these embedded and inherent issues is idiotic. It is the equivalent of applying a band-aid to an amputated leg. The monopoly on violence currently held by the ruling system must be countered by true socialists and true socialism. This is not resorting to terrorism, but simply defending our communities, our planet and our interests. So when asked ‘why socialism?’, we answer: for the future of the people and the planet.

References

1 - Marx, K. and Engels, F., 2020. Manifesto Of The Communist Party. La Vergne: Weyland Easterbrook.

2 - Lenin, V., 1918. The Proletarian Revolution And Kautsky The Renegade. Moscow: Kommunist Publishers.

3 - Engels, F., 1969. The Principles Of Communism. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

4 - Lenin, V., 1992. The State And Revolution. Norwalk, Conn.: Easton Press.