Democracy In The Socialist Order

1. In setting forth our conclusions we had better begin with the relation between democracy and the capitalist order of things.

The ideology of democracy as reflected by the classical doctrine rests on a rationalist scheme of human action and of the values of life. By virtue of a previous argument (Chapter XI) this fact would in itself suffice to suggest that it is of bourgeois origin.

History clearly confirms this suggestion: historically, the modern democracy rose along with capitalism, and in causal connection with it.

But the same holds true for democratic practice: democracy in the sense of our theory of competitive leadership presided over the process of political and institutional change by which the bourgeoisie reshaped, and from its own point of view rationalized, the social and political structure that preceded its ascendancy: the democratic method was the political tool of that reconstruction.

We have seen that the democratic method works, particularly well, also in certain extra- and pre-capitalist societies. But modern democracy is a product of the capitalist process.

Whether or not democracy is one of those products of capitalism which are to die out with it is of course another question. And still another is how well or ill capitalist society qualifies for the task of working the democratic method it evolved.

As regards the latter question, it is clear that capitalist society qualifies well in one respect. The bourgeoisie has a solution that is peculiar to it for the problem of how the sphere of political decision can be reduced to those proportions which are manageable by means of the method of competitive leadership. The bourgeois scheme of things limits the sphere of politics by limiting the sphere of public authority; its solution is in the ideal of the parsimonious state that exists primarily in order to guarantee bourgeois legality and to provide a firm frame for autonomous individual endeavor in all fields.

If, moreover, account be taken of the pacific—at any rate, anti-militarist—and free-trade tendencies we have found to be inherent in bourgeois society, it will be seen that the importance of the role of political decision in the bourgeois state can, in principle at least, be scaled down to almost any extent that the disabilities of the political sector may require. Now this kind of state has no doubt ceased to appeal to us.

Bourgeois democracy is certainly a very special historical case and any claims that may be made on behalf of it are obviously contingent upon acceptance of standards which are no longer ours. But it is absurd to deny that this solution which we dislike is a solution and that bourgeois democracy is democracy. On the contrary, as its colors fade it is all the more important to recognize how colorful it was in the time of its vitality; how wide and equal the opportunities it offered to the families (if not to the individuals); how large the personal freedom it granted to those who passed its tests (or to their children). It is also important to recognize how well it stood, for some decades at least, the strain of uncongenial conditions and how well it functioned, when faced by demands that were outside of and hostile to the bourgeois interests.

Also in another respect capitalist society in its meridian qualified well for the task of making democracy a success. It is easier for a class whose interests are best served by being left alone to practice democratic self-restraint than it is for classes that naturally try to live on the state.

The bourgeois who is primarily absorbed in his private concerns is in general—as long as these concerns are not seriously threatened—much more likely to display tolerance of political differences and respect for opinions he does not share than any other type of human being. Moreover so long as bourgeois standards are dominant in a society this attitude will tend to spread to other classes as well.

The English landed interest accepted the defeat of 1845 with relatively good grace; English labor fought for the removal of disabilities but until the beginning of the present century was slow to claim privileges. It is true that in other countries such self-restraint was much less in evidence. These deviations from the principle were not always serious or always associated with capitalist interests only. But in some cases political life all but resolved itself into a struggle of pressure groups and in many cases practices that failed to conform to the spirit of the democratic method have become important enough to distort its modus operandi. That there “cannot” be true democracy in the capitalist order is nevertheless an obvious over-statement.8

In both respects however capitalism is rapidly losing the advantages it used to possess. Bourgeois democracy which is wedded to that ideal of the state has for some time been working with increasing friction. In part this was due to the fact that, as we have seen before, the democratic method never works at its best when nations are much divided on fundamental questions of social structure.

This difficulty in turn proved particularly serious, because bourgeois society signally failed to fulfill another condition for making the democratic method function. The bourgeoisie produced individuals who made a success at political leadership upon entering a political class of non-bourgeois origin, but it did not produce a successful political stratum of its own although, so one should think, the third generations of the industrial families had all the opportunity to form one. Why this was so has been fully explained in Part II. All these facts together seem to suggest a pessimistic prognosis for this type of democracy. They also suggest an explanation of the apparent ease with which in some cases it surrendered to dictatorship.

2. The ideology of classical socialism is the offspring of bourgeois ideology. In particular, it fully shares the latter’s rationalist and utilitarian background and many of the ideas and ideals that entered the classical 8 What should be said is that there are some deviations from the principle of democracy which link up with the presence of organized capitalist interests. But thus corrected, the statement is true both from the standpoint of the classical and from the standpoint of our own theory of democracy.

From the first standpoint, the result reads that the means at the disposal of private interests are often used in order to thwart the will of the people. From the second standpoint, the result read: that those private means are often used in order to interfere with the working of the mechanism of competitive leadership.

doctrine of democracy. So far as this goes, socialists in fact experienced no difficulty whatever in appropriating this part of the bourgeois inheritance and in making out a case for the proposition that those elements of the classical doctrine which socialism is unable to absorb—the emphasis on protection of private property for instance—are really at variance with its fundamental principles. Creeds of this kind could survive even in entirely non-democratic forms of socialism and we may trust the scribes and pharisees to bridge by suitable phrases any gap there may be between creed and practice. But it is the practice that interests us—the fate of democratic practice as interpreted by the doctrine of competitive leadership. And so, since we have seen that non-democratic socialism is perfectly possible, the real question is again how well or ill socialism qualifies for the task of making the democratic method function should it attempt to do so.

The essential point to grasp is this. No responsible person can view with equanimity the consequences of extending the democratic method, that is to say the sphere of “politics,” to all economic affairs Believing that democratic socialism means precisely this, such a person will naturally conclude that democratic socialism must fail. But this does not necessarily follow.

As has been pointed out before, extension of the range of public management does not imply corresponding extension of the range of political management. Conceivably, the former may be extended so as to absorb a nation’s economic affairs while the latter still remains within the boundaries set by the limitations of the democratic method.

It does follow however that in socialist society these limitations will raise a much more serious problem. For socialist society lacks the automatic restrictions imposed upon the political sphere by the bourgeois scheme of things. Moreover, in socialist society it will no longer be possible to find comfort in the thought that the inefficiencies of political procedure are after all a guarantee of freedom. Lack of efficient management will spell lack of bread.

However, the agencies that are to operate the economic engine—the Central Board we met in Part III as well as the subordinate bodies entrusted with the management of individual industries or concerns—may be so organized and manned as to be sufficiently exempt in the fulfillment of their current duties from interference by politicians or, for that matter, by fussing citizens’ committees or by their workmen. That is to say, they may be sufficiently removed from the atmosphere of political strife as to display no inefficiencies other than those associated with the term Bureaucracy. And even these can be much reduced by an appropriate concentration of responsibility on individuals and by a system of well-chosen incentives and penalties, of which the methods of appointment and promotion are the most important part.

Serious socialists, when off the stump and in a responsible mood, have always been aware of this problem and also of the fact that “democracy” is no answer to it. An interesting illustration is afforded by the deliberations of the German Committee on Socialization (Sozialisierungs Kommission). In 1919, when the German Social Democratic party had definitely set its face against bolshevism, the more radical among its members still believed that some measure of socialization was imminent as a matter of practical necessity and a committee was accordingly appointed in order to define aims and to recommend methods.

It did not consist exclusively of socialists but socialist influence was dominating. Karl Kautsky was chairman. Definite recommendations were made only about coal and even these, arrived at under the gathering clouds of anti-socialist sentiment, are not very interesting.

All the more interesting are the views that emerged in discussion at the time when more ambitious hopes still prevailed. The idea that managers of plants should be elected by the workmen of the same plants was frankly and unanimously condemned. The workmen’s councils that had grown up during the months of universal breakdown were objects of dislike and suspicion.

The committee, trying to get away as far as possible from the popular ideas about Industrial Democracy, 9 did its best to shape them into an innocuous mold and cared little for developing their functions.

All the more did it care for strengthening the authority and safeguarding the independence of the managerial personnel.

Much thought was bestowed on how to prevent managers from losing capitalist vitality and sinking into bureaucratic ruts.

In fact—if it be possible to speak of results of discussions that were soon to lose practical importance—these socialist managers would not have differed very much from their capitalist predecessors, and in many cases the same individuals would have been reappointed. We thus reach, by a different route, the conclusion already arrived at in Part III.

But we are now in a position to link up this conclusion with an answer to the problem of democracy in socialism. In a sense, of course, the present-day forms and organs of democratic procedure are as much the outgrowth of the structure and the issues of the bourgeois world as is the fundamental principle of democracy itself.

But this is no reason why they should have to disappear along with capitalism General elections, parties, parliaments, cabinets and prime ministers may still prove to be the most convenient instruments for dealing with the agenda that the socialist order may reserve for political decision.

The list of these agenda will be relieved of all those items that at present arise from the clash of private interests and from the necessity of regulating them.

Instead there will be new ones. There will be such questions to decide as what the volume of investment should be or how existing rules for the distribution of the social product should be amended and so on. General debates about efficiency, investigation committees of the type of the English Royal Commissions would continue to fulfill their present functions.

Thus the politicians in the cabinet, and in particular the politician at the head of the Ministry of Production, would no doubt assert, the influence of the political element, both by their legislative measures concerning the general principles of running the economic engine and by their power to appoint which could not be entirely absent or entirely formal. But they need not do so to an extent incompatible with efficiency.

The Minister of Production need not interfere more with the internal working of individual industries than English Ministers of Health or of War interfere with the internal working of their respective departments.

3. Operating socialist democracy in the way indicated would be a perfectly hopeless task except in the case of a society that fulfills all the requirements of “maturity” listed in Part III, including, in particular, the ability to establish the socialist order in a democratic way and the existence of a bureaucracy of adequate standing and experience. But a society that does fulfill these requirements—I shall not deal with any other—would first of all command an advantage of possibly decisive importance.

Democracy cannot be expected to function satisfactorily unless most people in all classes abide by the rules of the democratic game.

At present the latter condition fails to be fulfilled. So many people have renounced, and so many more are going to renounce, allegiance to the standards of capitalist society that on this ground alone democracy is bound to work with increasing friction. At the stage visualized however, socialism may remove the rift.

It may reestablish agreement as to the tectonic principles of the social fabric. If it does, then the remaining antagonisms will be exactly of the kind with which the democratic method is well able to cope.

It has also been pointed out in Part III that those remaining antagonisms will be further decreased in number and importance by the elimination of clashing capitalist interests. The relations between agriculture and industry, small-scale and large-scale industry, steel-producing and steel-consuming industries, protectionist and export industries will—or may—cease to be political questions to be settled by the relative weights of pressure groups and become technical questions to which technicians would be able to give unemotional and unequivocal answers.

Though it may be utopian to expect that there would be no distinct economic interests or conflicts between them, and still more utopian to expect that there would be no non-economic issues to disagree about, a good case may be made out for expecting that the sum total of controversial matter would be decreased even as compared with what it was in intact capitalism. There would, for instance, be no silver men. Political life would be purified.

On the face of it, socialism has no obvious solution to offer for the problem solved in other forms of society by the presence of a political class of stable traditions. I have said before that there will be a political profession. There may evolve a political set, about the quality of which it is idle to speculate.

Thus far socialism scores. It might still be argued that this score can be easily balanced by the importance and likelihood of possible deviations. To some extent we have provided for this by insisting on economic maturity which among other things implies that no great sacrifices need be required of one generation for the benefit of a later one. But even if there is no necessity for sweating the people by means of a Gosplan, the task of keeping the democratic course may prove to be extremely delicate.

Circumstances in which the individuals at the helm would normally succeed in solving it are perhaps no easier to imagine than circumstances in which, faced by a spectacle of paralysis spreading from the political sector all over the nation’s economy, they might be driven into a course of action which must always have some temptation for men beholding the tremendous power over the people inherent in the socialist organization.

After all, effective management of the socialist economy means dictatorship not of but over the proletariat in the factory.

The men who are there so strictly disciplined would, it is true, be sovereign at the elections. But just as they may use this sovereignty in order to relax the discipline of the factory, so governments—precisely the governments which have the future of the nation at heart—may avail themselves of this discipline in order to restrict this sovereignty. As a matter of practical necessity, socialist democracy may eventually turn out to be more of a sham than capitalist democracy ever was.

In any case, that democracy will not mean increased personal freedom.

And, once more, it will mean no closer approximation to the ideals enshrined in the classical doctrine.