Peaceful Transition

Abstract

GA::

This has been possible for a long time in some countries, at least in theory. We are speaking of bourgeois liberal countries, with limited state power under civilian control, and where the armed forces do not interfere in politics. It is not only a matter of universal suffrage, but also one of established democratic institutions. The less these conditions are available, the less it is possible to achieve a peaceful transition, and the more risk there is of removal by force of an elected progressive government.

So you need to achieve a strong democratic consensus in society, you need to win over the hearts and minds of a major part of the armed personnel, in order to avoid a situation like that of Chili, where Allende came to power with majority support, but was toppled by the army backed by the CIA . Of course, there is another strategy influenced by the Paris Commune and Bolshevism that advocates the creation of workers militias to defend the revolution. The choice of strategy must, however, depend on the concrete conditions of each case. There is no universal strategy for revolution.

AA::

These remarks are about historical possibilities, where Marx was wondering if the combination of the great majority of the population getting proletarianized in one way or another, and the vast majority of people are achieving universal suffrage, could be used for transition from capitalism. Marx does not follow these conjectures theoretically, but what he tried to theorize very seriously was the possibility of bypassing the capitalist system and go directly to a post-capitalist system. These questions remained inconclusive. These are speculative questions and belong to a much older historical phase. History itself has also bypassed these phases. Already by the time of Gramsci we have very serious theoretical consideration of the fact that once the bourgeois subjectivity has been created among the masses of people, does the Bolshevik model of revolution making still apply. This is the real question. Unlike some people who try to turn Gramsci into an academic sort of cultural theorist, he was a Leninist. He was trying to rethink Lenin in the condition that was developing in Western Europe. Today, most countries are at a higher level of industrialization than early Soviet Union was, and many countries have gone through parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage. In this situation, the question of the relation between socialism and the parliamentary form cannot be evaded easily.

SR::

The question is, can this vast majority of people who, as you rightly say, are suffering economically, politically, culturally, ideologically and ecologically, be mobilized and organized, and through an electoral process form a progressive government that could represent them? Of course there is no illusion that the capitalist class with its powerful repressive and ideological apparatuses of state would not easily give up, and the majority could also use elements of force to confront them.

AA::

I have two brief responses. Firstly, the use of force and violence is not a theoretical question and is a strategic question, and strategic questions can only be posed in concrete circumstances. They cannot be posed in the abstract. The other thing I want to say is that the revolutionaries have never chosen violence. Violence is the weapon of choice of the rulers and oppressors.

SR::

It is true that oppressors have always used violence, but I am not sure if we can say that the oppressed or the revolutionaries have never used violence.

AA::

I did not say that revolutionaries have never used violence. They often have. My point was that there is no revolutionary history based on having some commitment to violence per se. All revolutionary violence has been counter-violence. And where it should or should not be used is a practical and strategic question.

RA::

I think that, at least, a relatively peaceful transition is almost necessary, because a violent uprising will just be crushed and or lead to a very lengthy civil war that is likely to result in the defeat of the revolution. Of course it’s not that easy to get elected even if you have spent some time trying to build up a counter hegemony, as long as there is a really powerful capitalist class that essentially pays off the politicians, as is happening in the US and to a lesser degree in many other places. One area of reform would be to push for removing the complete domination of big money from the political arena. But ironically, it has been going the other way, particularly in the US, where laws that were constraining the buying off of politicians with millions of dollars, have been removed. One could have a campaign arguing that these changes in the US are a radical loss of democracy in America, a country that has always presented itself to the world as a leading democratic power, and now it can no longer do that. What I mean is that while winning state power through the ballot box would not be easy, in so far as you have an elected government, you have to go that way, even if the elections are not quite fair because of the role of money in them. So I don’t want to have a black and white line between peaceful and violent because you can be peaceful but quite aggressive.

SR::

Of course, street demonstrations, strikes, a general strike, and many other confrontational approaches may be utilized.

RA::

Yes, strikes, particularly general strikes, while they don’t necessarily lead to revolution, they’re a statement about where people are at, and a widely supported general strike could be a significant event.

SR::

What you rightly said has become even more complicated in today’s globalization, and even if progressive forces come to power and take control of the state, they will be faced with very serious problems that can discuss in my next question.

KA::

If we look at France in 1968 there was, to a great extent, a non-violent movement. Almost all the major institutions, except the military and police, were occupied by mass movements with a revolutionary character. I don’t think one shot was fired. Here the role of the communist party in demobilizing the workers and getting them to accept new elections and a big pay raise was crucial in the movement’s defeat.

Marx talks about electoral changes, as you have quoted in your article about the possibility of workers attaining their goals through peaceful means. But when Marx talks about the possibility of peaceful transition, he adds the qualifier that the peaceful movement might need to be transformed into a forceful one by resistance on the part of those interested in returning to the former state of affairs. The example he gives is the American Civil War , where the rebels were suppressed by constitutional and lawful force. And recall that he regards the changes that resulted in the American Civil War—especially the freeing of the slaves without compensation to the master class, which destroyed it—as revolutionary. But all that came about not because Lincoln intended such a thing. His program was actually very conservative, as he wanted to free the slaves gradually and with compensation. But the force of circumstance, especially the revolutionary subjectivity of African-Americans and the intransigence of the slaveholders, forced confrontation and eventually brought about revolutionary change.

At a general level, I think peaceful transition to socialism is possible, as Marx points out, in countries with a long history of constitutional government rule and democratic processes. But there is a second aspect that we have to mention as a qualifier as a result of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century countries like United States did not have standing armies or large-scale police forces, let alone a national security apparatus (FBI , CIA , NSA, etc.). Today we have a national security state as an aspect of modern capitalism, which those in my Marxist-Humanist tradition term state capitalism. This power is not going away easily; surely it is going to resist and has a lot of levers of power that it can use. Even if as in France in 1968 the revolutionary movement could take over factories, transport, mass media, schools, etc., repressive institutions like the military and the police -- unless they themselves were also internally splintered by the movement—would likely be able to suppress such an uprising.

We can say there is a two-fold process since Marx wrote; on the one hand, as a result of 40–50 years of grassroots social movements, we have greater democratization of society, wider freedom of speech and many other rights throughout much of the world. On the other hand, we have the rise of the power of surveillance, policing, the use of highly sophisticated technology. For example, the Los Angeles police possess the StingRay , a semi-secret device that can get all the cell phone numbers and information of not only the demonstrators but also the by-standers within the immediate area when deployed near a demonstration.

BE::

I believe that any movement for socialism should be nonviolent for three reasons. First, now more than any time in the past, the military power of the state is overwhelming. It is foolish to imagine that we could win an armed contest with the state. Talk of a violent overthrow of the state has no relation to reality. The second point is that in a formally democratic society, the public will regard an armed challenge to the state as nothing more than an attempted coup and a threat to democracy. Thirdly there is the question of ethics, or of what is sometimes called prefigurative politics. A movement for a different kind of society should as far as possible exhibit, in its internal relations and in its external behavior, the values that it would like to see embodied in a better society. Those values should include nonviolence. This is not to say that violence can always be entirely avoided; there is, for instance, the right to self-defense, or defense of the vulnerable. But far too often it seems that those on the left who talk about the need for violence are looking forward to it with anticipation. For the vast majority of people, violence is a serious problem. Enthusiastic talk about violence makes the left appear as part of the problem—or maybe as adolescent.

SR::

While no doubt non-violence should be the basis of a majoritarian movement, there are cases or moments, particularly towards the mature stages of a movement, when balance of power between the repressive state and progressive forces are shifting, in which some use of force might be necessary. These could take different forms, from general strikes, closure or takeover of buildings or infrastructure, or even openly confronting police and the military establishment. I would like to ask you to elaborate on the point you raised in one of your books on nonviolent direct action during the civil rights movement in the US. Although the book, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution, is very clear, it would be good if you would discuss it here.

BE::

Absolutely. I think it is a mistake to rule anything out. I don’t believe that violent confrontations can be ruled out—and in fact they will take place whether we rule them out or not. The usual example is World War Two. Nonviolent direct action would not have had any effect on the Nazis, or on similar regimes. But I also think that to the extent that it is possible, it is important for a socialist or democratic/egalitarian movement to maintain the ethical upper hand and exhibit its values in its behavior. Violence should be resorted to only when absolutely necessary, and not just as revolutionary bravado.

SR::

That is very true. In terms of the electoral process, some argue that since the electoral system in most countries is controlled by big capital and power, therefore it cannot be a means for achieving real social change.

BE::

Certainly participation in the electoral system is a problem for the left, especially in the US, with the two-party system. It is very difficult for the left to be heard in this context. But one of the functions of the left is to put pressure on this system from the outside—and having allies within the electoral system make that a lot easier than without them. I would never argue that the left should drop everything else and do nothing but run candidates for office. But the more characteristic mistake of the left is to have nothing to do with elections. In the late 60s and early 70s the electoral system came to be seen by many on the left as nothing more than a trap, and the idea circulated that anyone who was involved in electoral activity was selling out. But for most Americans, politics meant elections. From that perspective, the left was abandoning politics. I think that the question of whether to participate in electoral politics and if so at what level and in what way is a practical question: it depends on the circumstances. When there is room for left participation I think it is a mistake to refuse. The right, by the way, has for decades engaged in both electoral politics and community organizing, and has regarded these activities as complementary, not contradictory. I think we could learn something from this.

AE::

It is hard to answer this, as we have not achieved socialism. We cannot know until we get there. But I believe prospects are better now. We just have to seek winning elections, at the same time expanding people’s public actions, seeing both as one whole process. A recent example we can find in Latin America , where you have this process of continuous education of the people, expanding public action, and winning elections. No doubt this process has its own limitations, partly because losing election often means losing important changes. Note that compared to a revolutionary Blanquist tradition the losses are limited. In those traditions like in the dismantling of Soviet Union the backlash has been much worse. In Russia they have sold most of the public properties, have had horrible results in social policies and have generally lower democratic consciousness. This strengthens the idea that you have to consolidate every move forward democratically. You don’t need to bother about this, if you are a small group of people sitting in a cellar talking about revolution, because then you are dealing with fantasy. But if you are serious about changing society, you have to be very serious about democracy, about bringing people along, building democratic culture, and going forward with serious changes. You cannot change society for the better of people plotting behind their back.

SG::

When we talk of revolutionary change, we have to theorize the state much more carefully. Social democracy tended to assume that once you form the government, you have taken over the state. On the other hand, Leo (Panitch) and I have argued that it is also wrong to reduce the state to an instrument of the bourgeoisie. States have, over time and through their role in managing the contradictions of capitalism, developed unique sets of capacities. States are constrained by depending on capital accumulation to provide jobs, generate taxes, and sustain their legitimacy but they have a degree of autonomy in doing so and this raises very complicated questions about how to actually begin transforming such states. You cannot just ‘smash the state’ since every society needs states in the sense at least of collective administrative institutions but can you view this as a process and take over pieces of it? And what would the role of public sector unions in particular be in any such transformations?

Consider in this regard the position of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions , which represents many long-term care health workers. It is illegal for them to strike but more important, their members are opposed to striking—they don’t want to leave old and disabled people without the service. Moreover, a strike would isolate them publically and most likely weaken their cause. So what do you do? The leader of this section of CUPE posed the possibility of a work-in instead of a strike. The idea is to select a particular site and then, instead of striking, bring in extra workers from other shifts or other hospitals to increase rather than remove the service. This puts management on the spot—would they block these workers from coming in and be blamed for removing a vital service or would they step aside—and essentially allow the union and workers to organize the service? And if that happens what you’re indirectly starting to do is to raise the question of a different kind of state, with workers playing a different role and operating on different principles.

The bigger question you’re raising is that of a frontal assault on states. Given state power and the international context, this would only be possible if we had the most massive, deep and united base. The point is that as soon as you enter a revolutionary situation, divisions will crop up and be exploited by the enemy, and we can’t succeed against the power of the state if we’re in a minority. We cannot write off existing democratic practices as ‘bourgeois democracy’ both because they are in fact more than that and because it carries with it popular legitimacy. We must win this battle through expanding democracy and bring people along with us. Of course, as was evident in Venezuela , you also have to have a base within the army and the police to neutralize them as much as possible. With the broadest base in civil society and divisions in the army and police, their use of force would more likely be constrained. The depth of what we build in civil society is the only protection we ultimately have.

And this gets us back to the intimidatingly difficult question of what happens when you actually come to power. If this involves not just winning elected government but also ‘transforming the state’, what might that concretely mean? Among other things, we need to prepare by moving towards forming councils of workers and clients across various sectors (such as the hospital or social services sectors) that can address a different kind of state—as opposed to leaving unions and clients to express their separate and often competing interests. On the basis of such structures and people mobilized along class lines, the arrival of a friendly government can then be the occasion for putting all kinds of demands on the state to support progressive initiatives and such new forms of organizing, moving the state towards the long-term changes that truly supports and deepens democracy.

SR::

This question becomes far more complex when you deal with societies that are not democratic, there are no independent progressive parties, and workers have no unions and if there are unions they are mostly yellow unions organized by government and others. We have had the experience of revolution and our failures. The discussion of a non-revolutionary path becomes even more difficult in dictatorial systems. Any idea what can be done?

SG::

This is the kind of thing we have to learn from you because you have that experience, though there might also be lessons from our own earlier history in the 30s, before unions were legitimated and established. Two points seem especially crucial. First, a lot of the work has to be done in the community outside the workplace; class exists beyond the walls of where the work is done. Where the work is concentrated in one place but the workers themselves are dispersed across large urban spaces, this creates additional problems. Second, where does the confidence come from to overcome present circumstances? Here the 30s are very relevant. In those circumstances, workers on their own tended to see unionization as a crazy, impossible idea. Communists played an absolutely critical role overcoming this. They had an analysis of capitalism, a vision, the international ties, which reinforced a sense of being part of a larger struggle, were part of an organization that helped overcome inclinations to individual demoralization. All this and their commitment to the long-term contributed to their seeing unions as being possible in spite of the ‘reality’. Workers did not become communists in any significant numbers, but the readiness of communists to take on the fight gave workers the confidence to join the struggle. Even were anti-communist, when asked (as I once did of one retiree who had been there in the 20s) how workers as far back as 1928 came to attempt to form a union in Ford Motor Company, gave credit to communists as the only ones who were crazy enough to think it was possible.

Another important point was that a lot of the organizing ended up being with the unemployed, which seemed in a sense counter intuitive, because you needed the power of those with jobs. But as it happened, many of the unemployed eventually became leaders and as they got jobs they extended their organizing into the workplace. In South Africa , organizing in the townships was critical in part so that the townships would not become places to recruit scabs to replace unions militants. And so too it was important to organize in schools, where students eventually entered the workforce and their previous struggles affected their workplace organizing. In Brazil , during the dictatorship, the church became a crucial organizing space. The point is that the kind of organization that is needed is one with feet inside the workplace so it is grounded in sites where workers have potential economic power, but also with feet planted outside the workplace so as to avoid the trap of thinking only in terms of particularist union concerns. So organizing can be done in communities, in schools, among the unemployed and not necessarily just in the work place. I think those things were very important.

SR::

These are most interesting examples of organizing under different conditions.

PH::

I think there is a bit of conflation of two issues in this question. There is no question that Marx in different passages in the last decades of his life envisaged the possibility of a socialist government coming to power without violent revolution in England, US or Holland . But I think that is a different question than suggesting that Marx felt that a socialist society could come into existence without violent struggles. I think these are distinct issues. The country Marx in particular thought faced such a possibility, because of having the closest thing to universal male suffrage at that time, was the United States . In relation to the United States he emphasized how the southern aristocracy waged a most violent counter-revolutionary war against Lincoln. Marx felt that the working class could come into power through democratic non-violent means in some instances, but if the slave owners made such a violent counter-revolution, what would the capitalists do when it comes to maintain their property rights over labour power and private property in the means of production? He had no illusions that a counter-revolution would very quickly follow a democratic socialist government coming to power; he said it is likely there would be 10, 20, 30, 40 years of civil war. So I think Marx was very skeptical about a peaceful achievement of socialism. What he wanted—in contrast to the anarchists was for working class movements to be trained in the exercise of political power, so that they could organize the mass of the populace to fight such a counter-revolution. Unfortunately, history has proven him to be right. I am not an advocate of violence, but I think it is hard to conceive that the bourgeoisie would ever kneel down and accept a socialist program, simply because a majority of people are in favour of it. This happened to Allende in Chile, and even is happening in Venezuela , which is not even a truly socialist government (it is more of a social democratic welfare state).

SR::

You are absolutely right and there is no doubt that capitalists and their functionaries would not give up easily and will resort to violence. But in a real Marxian revolution, “the mass of the populace” is organized to “fight the counter-revolution”, as you clearly elaborated in your reference to Marx’s analysis of the American Civil War . The other point relates to the problem of socialism in one country to which we will come back to later. Also I would like to add a point here about Marx’s view of socialists coming to power. As I mentioned in my article, Marx in response to a Dutch socialist, Nieuwenhuis, says, “…there is nothing specifically ‘socialist’ about the predicaments of a government that has suddenly come into being as a result of popular victory”. This is in line with what you said earlier. But in the same letter, referring to the Paris Commune , we see a significant departure from Marx’s earlier views on the Commune, where he declares it non-socialist and says they should have made compromises. In other words, shifting from criticism of the communards not smashing the state machinery, to criticism of not compromising.

PH::

I don’t see contradiction in that letter, which I like very much and have referred to several times. I don’t think that Marx changed his mind about the Paris Commune . Even when he was very enthusiastic about the Commune in 1871, he realized that it could not be considered a socialist revolution, because you cannot make socialism in one country, let alone in one municipality. He saw the limits of the Paris Commune in that it remained in one locale and did not spread to other areas, and in a sense was doomed to failure one way or another. Marx never expected that the Paris Commune would by itself produce a socialist transition. What he thought the Commune created, was a non-state form of functioning politically, a sort of dictatorship of the proletariat. It is important to note that for Marx, as he explicitly states in the Critique of the Gotha Program, the dictatorship of proletariat is not a stage of socialism, it is a political form that comes in between capitalism and the initial phase of socialism or communism. It is a system that still has value production, you still have capitalism but the working class has obtained political power over the state because it has obtained effective power over society. He also did not think of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a phase of socialism, because under socialism there is no proletariat. The proletariat would be abolished with the abolition of classes—which is the essence of socialism.

SR::

We will discuss this further in another question dealing with features of socialism.

PH::

Marx explicitly refers to a “political” form that comes between existing capitalism and a future socialist/communist society. The dictatorship of the proletariat is not a transitional society. I find no evidence in Marx’s work that he ever believed in a transitional society to socialism. He thought the dictatorship of proletariat is a transitional phase that is a political form, not a stage of socialism itself. It does not constitute by itself the creation of alternative economic system. So Marx sees this period of the dictatorship of proletariat in a much more limited sense. Of course the problem is that now this term is not a useful one because of the way it has been abused by post-Marx Marxists; Marx did not mean dictatorship in the way we use the term today, as the despotic control of the state over society. He meant by it the complete opposite—the freely-associated control of society over the state!

UH::

I would like to believe that it is possible, and in my daily activities I behave on the basis that I believe that it is possible: the Corbyn phenomenon, Die-Linke phenomenon, Podemos , Syriza , and others are all good indications in Europe. But let us look at history: Chile, Iran, and elsewhere. Capitalism is brutal, and does not give up easily. There is also increasingly a kind of complicated slippage between how people are treated in their capacity as citizens, and in their capacity as workers. In the latter case they are treated more brutally in many ways. One of the tricks of globalization is increasingly to disconnect the two. You have an increasing number of immigrant workers with no voting rights, working in the capitalist heartland, alongside the work activities that are exported from the capitalist heartland to countries that do not have universal suffrage or established democracy. All along the value chain, you see that disconnection is happening between citizenship and employment. This also sets people as citizens against those who are not seen as citizens. Denmark is a very clear example of that; they boast to have the best democratic system in Europe but they also have the most racist immigration policy. This is a contradiction of the European social democratic model. The UK is at the other extreme, having very little in terms of social rights, but relatively open borders (although of course still with a savagely racist immigration policy). We see it in the southern United States where Mexicans have very few rights. This relates to a research that I am doing now on ‘crowdsourcing’ which enables employers to employ people across borders, ignoring any labour protection regulation. There are many examples that show the dismantling of what is left of the social regulations that the workers movements of the twentieth century had managed to negotiate at the national level, through suffrage, through national institutions of democracy, and the social democratic gains in different areas such as pensions, safety regulations, working hours regulations, and health services. So these are the realities of our time, and people who thought that these gains were steps towards a socialist future are disillusioned now.

SR::

That is true, and the question remains as to what are the real alternatives and how to move toward them, that I hope you would discuss in other questions.

ML::

We cannot mystify universal suffrage. We have universal suffrage in the US and many other places and we see how they are fooling the people. There is universal suffrage, but at the same time we have capitalist domination of the media, police, the judicial system, etc. Universal suffrage by itself cannot be a solution, and it is only one aspect of the process. Marx argues that while in contrast to the revolutionary path, it might be possible for the working class to come to power electorally in some countries, he was not saying it is the way.

SR::

There is no illusion about the democratic systems of today. The reason why I ask this question is that the focus for vast majority of Marxists have been on the revolutionary take over, but Marx also envisaged an electoral possibility, through which the working class can transform the democratic institution of the bourgeoisie from a “means of deception” to a “means of emancipation”. I am particularly interested to ask you, as a supporter of the Bolivarian Revolution of Chavez who came to power through universal suffrage and electoral process. Also in Socialist Imperative you discuss three perspectives on democracy that would be great if you discuss it.

ML::

The argument of the three perspectives on democracy was to first of all reject the perspective that dominates in capitalist society, the perspective of consumer choice, where the concept of democracy is that everyone is free and as an atomistic individual is free to choose. I argued that this is not real democracy and contrasted that to two other perspectives. In one, I used the analogy of the orchestra conductor, which refers to a society run by vanguards at the top who make the decisions and transmit these decisions to below through various transmission belts. In this situation democracy is seen as an opportunity for others to comment on plans and decisions made above. I argued if people are limited to commenting on decisions coming from above, they cannot develop their capacities. You know my focus has been what kind of people are developed under certain relations. I gave some examples from Cuba, where they have enormous participation in discussing the proposals that come from the top, but very little opportunity for the people to come up with proposals from below. And finally I contrasted these two with the third perspective which is my focus and deals with human development, and with creating the instruments and the means and forms in which the people can develop their capacities. This is the characteristic of the concept of democracy that is discussed in Latin America as Socialism for the twenty-first century.

SR::

Does the human development process that you rightly emphasize happen during the capitalist period or after that, or both? I am particularly interested in the period prior to the post-capitalist society.

ML::

It is a continuous process that happens before and after. In Socialist Imperative I discuss the future of socialism and the state and in the concluding chapter I make the argument that we have to make the state from below, and for this we have to build the institutions that develop human capacity. This has to happen before, but if it does not happen before [the end of capitalism], it has to happen after that. For example, take Venezuela where I spent several years. Before Chavez there were many local practices and organizations that developed people’s capacities, and it is out of these local institutions, ideas and struggles that Chavez comes. The new Venezuelan constitution emphasized the centrality of participation and protagonism as the only way which you can develop people’s capacity, both individual and collective. Once that Constitution was adopted, it acted like a signal that local organizations referred to and stressed human development, and led to some further experiments in local decision-making. These experiments led to the creation of the communal councils subsequently enacted as a law which became an encouragement for the areas that had not developed such institutions. These experiments played a very important role in developing people’s capacities. Further, when Chavez emphasized the importance of the communal councils, he said these councils are the cells of the new socialist state. Obviously these neighbourhood councils had to link with others and create something larger, which became the concept of the commune. These became a mechanism for coordination, but from below. Finally, one of the last things that Chavez talked about in one of his last speeches was that he asked why some ministers have not made the communes as the center of their focus. In the televised cabinet meeting, he told Nicolas Maduro , I entrust to you my life and the communes—Comuna o nada (without communes, nothing). This statement generated an enormous interest in the communes, and enormous movements from below that we don’t hear about it in the media. So developing people’s capacities does not need to be fully achieved before the change. Obviously you need the old state; that is why I came up with the idea of “dual state socialism”. The old state engages in policies which are fighting capital and deals with national and international issues, until such time that the new state has developed its capacities to take over. What is important in the Venezuelan experience is how the top stimulated the bottom, how it created conditions for building a new state from below. We need to understand this as dialectic between old and new state.

SR::

Your notion of dual state as distinct from “dual power” is a novel and very important concept that hopefully should be developed further. I also wanted to make few points regarding what you discussed earlier about the three perspectives on democracy. You rightly criticized the conductor-conducted relations. But at the same time, we cannot deny the need for coordination, particularly in large organizations, both horizontally and vertically, and from below and above. Some of the notions stressed by the so-called autonomists or some anarchists, such as horizontalism or non-hierarchical organizations are too idealistic and out of touch with reality. There is no possibility of having a non-hierarchical large organization., without vertical division of labour.

LP::

Marxism is not a proven theory of revolution; its greatest contribution is to help us better understand capitalism. Marx as a politicized journalist brilliantly analyzed some revolutionary moments, particularly in France. But I think we need to stop getting ourselves into these situations of discussing these questions and debating these questions only on the basis of this or that quotation from Marx, and that was my point about being historical materialist means understanding different conditions under which we need to be discussing these things. How could Marx foresee, when he listed the Netherlands, Britain and United States , which other countries would end up after 1945 being liberal democracies. Because it wasn’t until after 1945 that more than handful countries that even had secured mass suffrage and competitive elections in a stable way.

SR::

The point is that if the working people, the majority of people have the capability of really getting their true representatives in the parliament and influence policy, then there might not be a necessity for abrupt political revolution.

LP::

But only under conditions that the party organization which makes them representatives is also capable of making them accountable, open to recall, as well as capable of ensuring they remain cadre and organizers rather than professional politicians who are careerist ‘parliamentary representatives’. If I have made any contribution I think it really lies in this. We now can see after over a century of such parliamentary activity that the elected representatives of social democratic parties became enmeshed in the structures of the state and they lost their role as developers of the capacities of the people who put them there. Roberto Michels predicted all of this a hundred years ago in his Political Parties: The Iron Law of Oligarchy, a book that far too few socialists whether reformist or revolutionary, have read. We have to believe that we can develop peoples’ capacities so that you have a genuine democracy. It is not enough to say what if workers have ‘true representatives’ in parliament. What kind is true? There have been moves in this direction in the last 30 years. The Green Party in Germany made up of many people who were kicked out of the Social Democratic Party in the 70s; initially strongly made a case for recall, the circulation of parliamentarians, etc. Similarly, the Workers Party in Brazil was based on the notion that when people get into the parliament, get in to the state, their main role has got to be to continue to be organizers.

SR::

It is beside the point that even the German Green Party when got larger and more influential, put aside many of their 70s organizational arrangements, but you are absolutely right and there is no illusion about today’s representations in liberal democracies. The question is how socialists and progressive people can use democratic mechanisms to push for their agenda, and how to change these institutions. In one of your works you refer to the Marxism’s traditional failure to address the necessary institutions for democratic socialism, this is very important.

LP::

I often feel uncomfortable when people label me as a classical or orthodox Marxist, just because I have retain my socialist commitment and because I think certain aspects of Marxism, even without deploying much of his value theory, help us understand the dynamics of the capitalist system. I have always been like this. When I was young, one of the first articles I published (in Capital and Class in 1978, and subsequently included in my Working Class Politics in Crisis book in the mid-80s) was about the limitation of Marxism in relation to delimiting specifically the institutions necessary for a transition to socialism. I argued that Marx and Engels swept all of the difficult questions—well, at least most of the difficult questions—under the carpet with terms like the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, the ‘smashing of the state’, and so on. I think that it is incumbent upon both our generation as well as the next generation of people who remain committed to a socialist future beyond capitalism and are trying to prepare for it institutionally, to develop a Marxist institutional analysis , so as to understand better both the limitations of the institutions of capitalism, whether corporate organization or state institutions, and also of working class institutions, including the ones who were engaged in and the new ones thrown up by revolutionary struggles.

SR::

Because of the influence of Leninism, much of socialist institutional analysis has been based on Leninist type organizations.

LP::

Well we need to be open-minded about this. As I said earlier, I have never been a Leninist. But I do recognize that many of the most committed, knowledgeable and impressive cadre, many of the best organizers very often came out of Leninist organizations. I don’t think that this can be replicated easily today. Yet, as I also said, often their commitment to the Bolshevik model of revolution made them much less effective—sometimes made them actually very ineffective—than they might have been as working class organizers. My father was a Social Democrat, as well as a workplace activist that at one point was elected president of his local trade union, and who saw first hand that the Communist leaders of the union often made a hash of things by following the ‘party line’. But at the same time I saw that my aunt, who was a Communist who had joined the Party out of the sweatshops, had an understanding of exploitation that was deeper than my father ever got from the CCF—Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (which was the social democratic forerunner of the NDP in Canada). No doubt, there were all kinds of defects of both types of parties that we would want to learn to avoid. I think if we are going to try to develop this new institutional strategic thinking, it has to be based on recognition of the advantages and limitations of both types of organization we have known in the past, but not to replicate them, as they have run their historical course. We need to be creative institutionally, understanding that institutions arise also in the context of different historical conditions.

SR::

This is very important particularly in relation to the present globalisation. In the past, the Left attempted to create national organizations with the hope of establishing socialism in their respective countries. Now, with globalization more obstacles are created that we will discuss in the question.

CS::

Unfortunately I don’t believe in the possibility of peaceful transition to socialism. Even the experiences such as those of Chili’s Allende , or Portuguese revolution of 1973 and similar cases point to the failure of such attempts: the combination of repressive (military) coup and of massive corruption or integration within the system gives a vast range of means for the dominant classes to break democratic revolutionary processes.

But there is an additional difficulty, linked to recent developments. The capitalist system in its last phase is confronted with major structural crises, combined with the crises of the world order. Incapable of resolving the crises through social progress for the masses, it has resorted to the use of the crises to increase social attacks and, for that reason, it needs the suppression of democracy. Even in countries where they have established parliamentary system, we witness that main decisions (on socio-economic issues) are taken outside parliaments and without the intervention of elected members—which themselves are not really controlled by the electors after elections. There is a big crisis of representative and parliamentary democracy (abstention becomes the dominant “vote” and elections mean nominal changes without real changes). I don’t mean that the answer is to suppress parliamentary system, but we need to transform democracy and combine it with radical political, social and economic changes dealing with property and human rights. The big questions of daily life of the people, the question of employment, the question of dignity, the question of access to public services and so on, which are the questions of democratic choice, are less and less taken within parliaments. Even we see it in European countries, where we witness more and more what is called Ordoliberalism , which seeks to impose market competition on the constitutions through powerful non-elected institutions. This prevents any democratic debate on economy, or on social issues—without speaking of property. Multinational firms try to protect themselves against new nationalizations, social and political control, while all social protections tend to be removed from constitutions and labor codes. All the past gains are in the process of being destroyed. There is also the transformation of the armies into militias and private armies and the criminalization and repression of resistance. So, more than ever before, I don’t believe in the possibility of a peaceful movement for social and democratic rights without major class confrontations with the dominant classes that are in control of all kinds of international and national repressive institutions. The answer is more than ever also, the mass movement, the self-organization of the mass movement and the capacity of the self-defense of the mass movement—and of political, moral de-legitimation of the 1 percent powerful rulers who destroy social rights, human rights and environmental rights. Of course the movement has to consolidate its legitimacy in the democratic process and in new constitutions and the articulations of international rights and institutions—linked to the protection of nature, health, human rights, dignity, etc.

SR::

We don’t of course have any illusions about problems of the present democratic systems in Europe, North America, or elsewhere, all of which are to different degrees dominated by big capital and rich interest groups. The idea is to struggle for real and deepened democracy with genuine representation of the majority of citizens. If we put aside the parliamentary way of coming to power, we have to resort to political take over, which depends on whether we have strong support and mass base among the majority of people, that we discussed in the question related to what kind of revolution, by whom, and how.

CS::

We have a big mass of population, women, youth and workers who are suffering under the capitalist system, and we have to find allies within different parts of the population, and find ways of organizing—around concrete issues concerning daily life, and the alternatives that need to be found. These need to be articulated from the local to the national, continental and global levels. We can take the case of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. The answers to radical social assaults of capital have been general strikes and mass national movements on very concrete issues, like health, housing, and so on. But strikes and struggles have not been sufficient to stop the assaults. The traditional political parties have been discredited. The dispossessed are suffering from inequalities in all fields and have become “indignatos” (indignant) often rejecting parties. But they need to transform their upsurges into a political force, raising the issue of changing the “power” of making laws and giving people constitutional rights. There have been movements in squares, in streets, even self-organized network of the 99 percent in the US, but these have been insufficient and needed to be transformed into organized political movements—like Syriza in Greece, and Podemos in Spain. Podemos, in particular, coming after the spontaneous movement of the “Indignatos ” (reflecting a crisis of political representation through parties), expressed the idea that it is not enough to be against, but you also need to be for something, and that you need to win the elections. So you can criticize the limits of elections, of parties and of parliamentary democracy that are reduced to elections, but you have also to win the legitimacy to change the laws and to organize an alternative, which can be a Constituent Assembly that would enact new laws for the establishment of a new democratic system. So you need a combination of fighting within the system and against the system.

SR::

This is exactly what I was raising earlier about parliamentary change.