Hal Draper

The Two Souls of Socialism

Sophie Shrimpton

“What then is the meaning of socialism when it first came into the world? From the very beginning, it was divided between the two souls of socialism, and there was war between them.” 

This is the best thing I have read in a long long time. At the end I found I had copy-pasted most of it into my notes to include in this review. In a mere forty pages Hal Draper addressed my biggest concerns about Marxist theory/socialist praxis, and through a distinction I already believed in but had never fattened out. There is nothing more satisfying than finding a text that articulates and elucidates a core framework you see the world through. It is as simple as the distinction between Socialism-from-Above and Socialism-from-Below. He has provided a rigorous blueprint for critical engagement with any person who claims to be a "socialist". It is always about worker self-emancipation, and never about an "Educational Dictatorship" or any other form of equating statification and socialism. 

My "notes" (aka half the book):
There are not enough characters so I will continue quotes in my comments. 

Front-footing the Six Strains of Socialism-From-Above as they are a helpful framework:
- Philanthropism (Socialism/freedom is to be handed down, in order to Do the People Good, by the rich and powerful out of the kindness of their hearts)
- Elitism (socialism is the business of a new ruling minority, non-capitalist in nature and therefore guaranteed pure) (an Educational Dictatorship by benevolent despots or Saviour-Leaders) (“with up-to-date terms and new verbal screens which can be hailed as fresh social theory as against “nineteenth-century Marxism.”)
- Plannism (Socialism is reduced to social-engineering)
- Communionism (“craving to dissolve the Self into communion with Something Greater.” “those yearning with a mixture of religious mysticism and animal gregariousness for human solidarity.” “seeking for submersion in a Totality, seeking to lose himself in the bosom of a substitute for God.”)
- Permeationism (“permeating the centers of power in the existing society in order to metamorphose it – gradually, inevitably – into a statified collectivism” “based on a theory of mechanical inevitability: the inevitable self-collectivization of capitalism from above, which is equated with socialism”) (in contrast to overthrowing the present, capitalist hierarchical society in order to replace it with a new, non-capitalist type of hierarchical society based on a new kind of elite ruling class)
- Socialism-From-Outside (change from outside the social struggle at home.) (in war, through military invasion, in peace, through socialism-by-model-example e.g. communes or through success in other nations) 

Marx started as a “leading spokesman of liberal democracy” before becoming a socialist! “When this leading spokesman of liberal democracy became a socialist, he still regarded the task as the championing of democracy – except that democracy now had a deeper meaning. Marx was the first socialist thinker and leader who came to socialism through the struggle for liberal democracy.” 

"In another part of the world picture, there are the Communist states, whose claim to being “socialist” is based on a negative: the abolition of the capitalist private-profit system, and the fact that the class which rules does not consist of private owners of property. On the positive side, however, the socio-economic system which has replaced capitalism there would not be recognizable to Karl Marx. The state owns the means of production – but who “owns” the state? Certainly not the mass of workers, who are exploited, unfree, and alienated from all levers of social and political control. A new class rules, the bureaucratic bosses; it rules over a collectivist system – a bureaucratic collectivism. Unless statification is mechanically equated with “socialism,” in what sense are these societies “socialist”?"

"The social democracy has typically dreamed of “socializing” capitalism from above. Its principle has always been that increased state intervention in society and economy is per se socialistic. It bears a fatal family resemblance to the Stalinist conception of imposing something called socialism from the top down, and of equating statification with socialism."

"What unites the many different forms of Socialism-from-Above is the conception that socialism (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) must be handed down to the grateful masses in one form or another, by a ruling elite which is not subject to their control in fact. The heart of Socialism-from-Below is its view that socialism can be realized only through the self-emancipation of activized masses in motion, reaching out for freedom with their own hands, mobilized “from below” in a struggle to take charge of their own destiny, as actors (not merely subjects) on the stage of history."

"It is the conception of Socialism-from-Above which accounts for the acceptance of Communist dictatorship as a form of “socialism.” It is the conception of Socialism-from-Above which concentrates social-democratic attention on the parliamentary superstructure of society and on the manipulation of the “commanding heights” of the economy, and which makes them hostile to mass action from below."

"...the yearning for emancipation-from-above is…. the permanent promise held out by every ruling power to keep the people looking upward for protection, instead of to themselves for liberation from the need for protection."

"The history of socialism can be read as a continual but largely unsuccessful effort to free itself from the old tradition, the tradition of emancipation-from-above."

"In our pre-history there is a collectivist tendency without democracy, and there is a democratic tendency without collectivism but nothing yet which merges these two currents."

Babeuf origins of socialism from above: This means a temporary dictatorship, admittedly by a minority; but it will be an Educational Dictatorship, aiming at creating the conditions which will make possible democratic control in the future. (In that sense we are democrats.) This will not be a dictatorship of the people, as was the Commune, let alone of the proletariat; it is frankly a dictatorship over the people – with very good intentions."

Saint-Simon: a movement-from-below to effectuate a Socialism-from-Above. But power and control must remain where it has always been – above.

The Utopians: The [popular movement] was the flock to be tended by the good shepherd. It must not be supposed that Socialism-from-Above necessarily implies cruelly despotic intentions.
- Utopianism was elitist and anti-democratic to the core because it was utopian – that is, it looked to the prescription of a prefabricated model, the dreaming-up of a plan to be willed into existence.

Marx synthesised the line of the Socialist Idea and the line of Democracy-from-Below. “the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself.” “This is the Law; all the rest is commentary.”
"one of his first immunizations was achieved by catching the most pervasive disease of all, the illusion of the Savior-Despot"

“Superstitious authoritarianism”

Marx: “The minority ... makes mere will the motive force of the revolution, instead of actual relations. Whereas we say to the workers: ‘You will have to go through fifteen or twenty or fifty years of civil wars and international wars, not only in order to change extant conditions, but also in order to change yourselves and to render yourselves fit for political dominion,’ you, on the other hand, say to the workers: ‘We must attain to power at once, or else we may just as well go to sleep.’”

Proudhon: anti-semitic, racist, loves war, thinks women belong in their place, hates unionism, wants to suppress all opposition groups, press and elections, wants to condemn people to forced labour. Thinks the masses are corrupt and hopeless. He elaborated a detailed scheme for a “mutualist” business, cooperative in form, which would spread to take over all business and then the state. Schemed about being a dictator of that business.

Bakunin: Also schemed about being a dictator

Anarchism is ;n principle fiercely anti-democratic, since an ideally democratic authority is still authority. …its unlimited freedom for each uncontrolled individual is indistinguishable from unlimited despotism by such an individual, both in theory and practice.

Laselle: the prototype of the state-socialist – which means, one who aims to get socialism handed down by the existing state. Built a mass movement from below to achieve a Socialism-from-Above. Lassalle sees socialism arising “from the ‘state aid’ that the state gives to the producers’ cooperative societies and which the state, not the worker, ‘calls into being.’” Marx derides this. “But as far as the present cooperative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of the workers and not proteges either of the government or of the bourgeoisie.”

Marx made no fetish of “total planning.” He has so often been denounced (by other Marx-critics) for failing to draw up a blueprint of socialism precisely because he reacted so violently against his predecessors’ utopian “plannism” or planning-from-above. “Plannism” is precisely the conception of socialism that Marxism wished to destroy.

"The thread that unites this whole spectrum, through all the differences, is the conception of socialism as equivalent merely to state intervention in economic and social life."

Fabianism: bureaucratic collectivism. managerial, technocratic, elitist, authoritarian, “plannist.”
They thought of themselves as a small elite of brain-trusters who would permeate the existing institutions of society, influence the real leaders in all spheres Tory or Liberal, and guide social development toward its collectivist goal with the “inevitability of gradualness.”
The people, who should be treated kindly, were fit to be run only by competent experts.
Supported Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin

He likes William Morris!
“that individual men cannot shuffle off the business of life on to the shoulders of an abstraction called the State, but must deal with it in conscious association with each other ... Variety of life is as much an aim of true Communism as equality of condition, and ... nothing but an union of these two will bring about real freedom.”
“... people will have to associate in administration, and sometimes there will be differences of opinion ... What is to be done? Which party is to give way? Our Anarchist friends say that it must not be carried by a majority; in that case, then, it must be carried by a minority. And why? Is there any divine right in a minority?”

Eduard Bernstein: reversion to Socialism-from-Above (“die alte Scheisse”) had to be presented as a “modernization”, a “revision”. “revisionism” found its socialism in the inevitable collectivization of capitalism itself. Equation of Statification = Socialism is not the invention of Stalinism; it was systematized by the Fabian-Revisionist-State-socialist current of social-democratic reformism.
negative definition of democracy as “absence of class government.” (No need for workers democracy)
Imperialist
“the class struggle softens into harmony as a beneficent state gently changes the bourgeoisie into good bureaucrats” (led to nazi Germany lol)
Rosa Luxemburg as legit socialism-from-below

America - 
Laurence Gronlund - “Administration by the Competent,” as against “government by majorities,” 
Edward Bellamy, - the army as the ideal pattern of society – regimented, hierarchically ruled by an elite, organized from the top down, with the cozy communion of the beehive as the great end
the transition as coming through the concentration of society into one big business corporation, a single capitalist: the state
assumption that the elite will be superhumanly wise and incapable of injustice
Technocracy

Charles P. Steinmetz. - America and the New Epoch Congress has been replaced by direct senators from DuPont, General Motors and the other great corporations as the ultimate in industrial efficiency

Eugene Debs as socialism-from-below
“ I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds that there is nothing you cannot do for yourselves.”

The New Deal, often rightly called America’s “social-democratic period,” was also the liberals’ and social-democrats’ big fling at Socialism-from-Above, the utopia of Roosevelt’s “people’s monarchy.” The illusion of the Rooseveltian “revolution from above” united creeping-socialism, bureaucratic liberalism, Stalinoid elitism, and illusions about both Russian collectivism and collectivized capitalism, in one package.

“the revolutionary-democratic advocates of Socialism-from-Below have also always been a minority, but the chasm between the elitist approach and the vanguard approach is crucial, as we have seen in the case of Debs. For him as for Marx and Luxemburg, the function of the revolutionary vanguard is to impel the mass-majority to fit themselves to take power in their own name, through their own struggles. The point is not to deny the critical importance of minorities, but to establish a different relationship between the advanced minority and the more backward mass.”

“effective democracy requires the right to vote, but the reduction of democracy merely to the right to vote once in a while makes it a fraud.”

“the separation of planning from democratic control-from-below makes a mockery of planning itself; for the immensely complicated industrial societies of today cannot be effectively planned by an all-powerful central committee’s ukases, which inhibit and terrorize the free play of initiative and correction from below”

“The tendency toward the collectivization of capitalism is indeed a reality: as we have seen, it means the bureaucratic collectivization of capitalism. As this process has advanced, the contemporary social-democracy has itself gone through a metamorphosis. Today, the leading theoretician of this neo-reformism, C.A.R. Crosland, denounces as “extremist” the mild statement favoring nationalization which was originally written for the British Labor program by none other than Sidney Webb (with Arthur Henderson)! The number of continental social democracies that have now purged their programs of all specifically anti-capitalist content – a brand new phenomenon in socialist history – reflects the degree to which the ongoing process of bureaucratic collectivization is accepted as an installment of petrified “socialism.”

The Two Souls of Socialism

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