The impossibility of socialism in the mind of a gene. posted by Richard Seymour

The workplace, traditionally the easiest place to convince a person that she is being exploited and oppressed with crushing regularity, was the site of a spectacular attack on socialism this week. For imagine - someone had got wind of this "selfish gene" business that the sociobiologist Richard Dawkins has been hawking and concluded that this makes socialism impossible. See, the genes make us selfish, and, er... yeah, can't happen, never will, never has. Can you name a time when it has happened? Exactly. Not a surprise, then, that the book was issued for a second edition in 1989...

Where does one begin? Aside from the fact that the argument involved a crude reduction of an already reductionist thesis, it is a remarkably useful shorthand for dismissing the tragic and heroic history of a cause whose failures and successes to date still include the absence of a successful and long-lived post-capitalist society. By invoking 'human nature' in some fashion - particularly in this way, the cited way - one has no cause to bother with the intricacies of history, agency, structure, contingency and so on. It is a strangely teleological view, combining the utopian with the dystopian; socialism is doomed, both an unrealisable dream, and an intolerable nightmare. If you want socialism, you've got the wrong organism - far better to wait for the alien invasion (it is already forgotten that we are the real aliens on this planet, one of the many thoughts evoked by the beautiful Koyaanisqatsi).

Unfortunately, many socialists have reacted to the fall of Stalinism, and the ensuing collapse of the social-democratic tradition, as if indeed socialism was now an impossibility, or at least a possibility that was permanently deferred. Fidelity to the cause has therefore taken the form of principled attachment to the lost object, to the loss of what they never had: in Slavoj Zizek's painful joke, they are Fidel Castros, faithful to their own castration. This symbolic commitment involves the notion that one has only to generate the right formulae from a careful exegesis of Lenin, Trotsky and the rest, and then apply such wisdom to today's problems. Innovation and risk need not apply. Unfortunately, this causes many would-be revolutionaries to sound like talking bloody text-books.

What if, by contrast, we treat socialism as a real, material possibility, a future hibernating in the penumbral recesses of the present? How if, for instance, we think of socialism as not merely providing a stoical stock of answers to the acknowledged failures of capitalism, but actually of being a material force which is adequate to the situation in the right hands? For I say we underestimate the accomplished facts of socialism and overstate the hegemony of capitalism - which is, guarding all proportions, fulfilling every promise of The Communist Manifesto, particularly in battering down all walls, Chinese walls included.

If we don't seek an historical guarantee for the success of socialism, we can nevertheless locate the materials for the construction of it in daily capitalist society. For instance, the principle that society should share the costs of production while enjoying free access to goods at the point of delivery is one already operative in a huge public sector in most capitalist states. The concept of 'relative scarcity' assumes that because human needs are elastic, and infinitely so, there will always be competition for scarce goods and therefore the necessity for a market. Yet we see this point disproven daily. The National Health Service, public education, street lights, garbage collection etc., all involve the sharing of costs and free and non-discriminatory access at the point of need. Some goods that remain on the market are already treated as free goods: salt is a common example. While there is some very minor elasticity in demand, it is bought and used as if it were a free good. That is, because the cost of a commodity falls below, and the income of the consumer rises above, a certain minimum, it is purchased and used according to need, not budgeted. Clothing, shelter, certain basic kinds of food, light, transport - in all of these areas, such a logic could obtain with little difficulty given the socialisation of their production and distribution. It would simply involve creating such an abundance that the price of such goods may as well be zero.

The objection to this usually involves a notion that the suppression of markets in complex, modern economies with a vast and almost incomprehensible network of exchanges, segmentarities, lines of flight and relays will inevitably lead to the construction of vast and ineffective bureacracies. Truly, the NHS and local councils hardly represent the nec plus ultra of efficiency, although they are in fact more efficient than private companies and have many other side-benefits (for example, they can run at a loss, thus maintaing jobs and having a counter-cyclical effect in a capitalist economy). And if one were proposing the erection of Stalinist chains of command in which orders flowed downward and information rarely flowed upward, then the point would have something to it. But while the market could not be demolished tout court and with immediate effect the first day following a revolution, the dynamic movement away from a system which naturally generates inequalities would involve the replacement of market transactions by horizontal rather than vertical networks of control: co-ordination rather than subordination.

The models for achieving this emerged naturally throughout the 20th Century: workers' councils in Europe after the First World War; cordones in Chile during the Allende government; shorahs in Iran before the overthrow of the Shah; and, of course, soviets in Russia, before they were relegated to rubber-stamping mechanisms under Stalin. As goods become more abundant and no longer need to be traded as commodities, their production and distribution can be co-ordinated by elected bodies subject to instant recall. Meanwhile, those goods which remain luxuries or specialities, or those new goods which need to be tested for demand, can still be circulated through the market.

Well, how to even get to a stage where we can implement such ideas? Revolutionaries will have to do better than simply insisting on the need to build a mass revolutionary party which unites the most militant sections of the working class. For that is a supposition that demands explanation more than it explains. Given present realities, how does one get to the stage where it is even possible to build a mass, revolutionary party? Posing abstract answers (like 'build a party that unites revolutionaries on the 90% they agree about, stand in elections and organise in the trade unions'), will yield victories only in the abstract. It is not enough to pose the 'right' slogans; revolutionaries must be adequate to the situation.

In today's Britain, I would suggest that the immediate task is to break Labour's hegemony on the left and working class vote. This involves a strike both at the ideological hold of neoliberalism and the institutional hold of a party that can no longer even promise capitalism with a human face. This can be done because Labour has, through its PFIs, wars and attacks on civil liberties, pissed off two key groups which are likely to be sympathetic to socialist arguments: 1) trade unionists, 2) Muslims. Add to that pensioners, former Labour Party members, students, single mothers, the disabled, immigrants, shiraz-quaffing patio-botherers and so on, and you have a potentially large coalition.

The immediate effect would be to create the conditions for a revival of socialism, trade unionism and so on in the mainstream. It would provide a platform for the ideas of the Left, as well as providing an alternative venue for trade union activity and funding. To this end, I propose the formation of a new alliance, one which unites the antiwar Left with disenfranchised Muslims, socialists, trade unionists and so on. It should contest elections and propose a minimal socialist programme. It should involve itself in demonstrations, serenade the trade unions and court media coverage. Perhaps it should have a funky new name. If we could get a well-known MP involved, that would certainly be a considerable boost.

Anyway, I realise that this will take some effort and maybe many people won't ... what? You mean, it already exists? Well, what is it called? Eh? What kind of a stupid name is that?