Clearly he got some things right, and his theories provide a good account of why crises occur and the exploitative nature of wage labour. However, the idea of Marxism as "scientific" has drawn a lot of criticism - most notably from Karl Popper, who distinguishes theories like Marxism from science on the grounds that the former is unfalsifiable, but not everyone agrees with this claim. As stated, I am no expert and if I start making conclusions about Marxism's scientific credentials having read nothing more than the Communist Manifesto and half a volume of Capital then I'm going to start offending people (looking at you Dom Curran!).The essence of science is experiment and falsifiability, not grand philosophical theorizing. Grand theoretical thought has its place in science, but most often in order to design experiments, to create falsifiable hypotheses.
Libertarian socialism is a true "scientific" socialism, not in terms of its theoretical basis, but in its practice - by calling for spontaneous cooperation and organisation along with radical decentralisation, it allows myriad experiments - a practical science of social organisation. By overturning the sterile uniformity of the state, an anarchistic society could see areas alongside one another using different models of social and economic organisation - mutualism, syndicalism, communism.
Possibilities for experimentation abound: communal versus individualist settlements; highly automated industrial regions versus agrarian eco-communes and religious societies; decisions by consensus versus democratic voting versus networks of small, non-institutional affinity groups.
Without compulsory political communities people could choose the system, or non-system to live under, communities could learn from one another and the track records of different approaches could be looked at scientifically. A radical shift in society's social, economic or democratic organisations would no longer need us to wait for years to elect new representatives to decide how tens of millions of people are or are not allowed to live and cooperate. John Stuart Mill got something right when he talked about limiting government to allow "experiments in living" - the problem was that he didn't go far enough, failing to challenge property rights or the existence of a centralized territorial state.If you believe Marxists, there has never been a society "truly" organised on Marxist lines - the USSR and other "communist" societies are widely accepted to have been nothing of the sort. On the other hand, we have clear instances of libertarian-leftism in action - Maknovista Ukraine, anarchist Catalonia (read Dolgoff's The Anarchist Collectives), cooperative economic institutions, factory occupation and self-management movements, small Intentional Communities (communes), the student movements of 1968, Occupy Wall Street and so on. Thousands of written accounts exist documenting the successes and failures of these movements and institutions.
So, do you agree that libertarian socialism is the only true scientific socialism?
Good piece. Have you read Peter Marshall's 'Demanding the Impossible'? Enjoyable and detailed history of anarchist experiments, philosophy, and main thinkers.
ReplyDeleteShame the libertarian variant of socialism has such little coverage in the mainstream and political science, given that it has given us some of the most inspiring and successful examples of societal organisation. Even the simple fact that humans, for most of their existence, haven't lived under the modern state or anything like it is little appreciated.
About 60 pages into it now, just started so partially why LibSoc was in my mind to write about. Seems like a good book, lots of ammunition for debates as well!
DeleteIndeed, it does seem to be a neglected ideology - most people haven't heard of left-libertarianism and typical response me saying libertarian socialist is that libertarian is capitalist/small state so how can I use the word for socialism. Nevermind that the word libertarian has been left wing for centuries...
Going to be fun next year - "Radical Politics and the Struggle for Democracy in Europe 1918-39", going to do a 4,500 word on anarchism in the Spanish Civil War for 50% of the credit!
"humans, for most of their existence, haven't lived under the modern state or anything like it" - but Connor, they were primitives, savages - anarchism simply can't work in a modern industrialised society, right? ;-) (except the rapid industrialisation of Catalonia under CNT control, Ukraine, cooperatives, the fact that "primitive savages" actually had more enlightened concepts of gender than the modern west e.g. Native American "Two-Spirit People", highly complex societies etc!)
It's decent, probably not worth reading it cover to cover but pick interesting chapters. Ah doing a history module, I'm doing Africa and the Cold War which looks really interesting too.
DeleteIndeed, you're more eloquent than I am in your defence of the practicality of libertarian socialism!
Thanks. Africa and the Cold War should definitely be good as well. I'll have a go at reading the whole book, but I may get bored before 700 pages and take the chapter-choosing approach.
DeleteAlso, fair to point out that a lot of the ideas for this came from a paper I read a while ago - not just off the top of my head.
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