Socialism Without Utopia

...Such a revolution leads to a crisis not only of established institutions but of civilization itself...

...The Socialist movement, so it is said, was a historical and spiritual force as long as it offered suffering mankind the hope of total salvation on this earth...

...This, rather than Utopianism, is the historical essence of Socialism...

...It puts new and complex dependencies in the place of familiar hierarchies...

...The concept of a new...

...The first is the belief in the unique value and the inalienable rights of the individual, and in his self-determination...

...The crisis was eventually overcome and the adjustment of the essential values of European civilization to the new conditions insured by the Reformation, and in a derivative and less effective manner by the Counter-Reformation...

...It is permissible to label this faith as "ideology," in contrast with the material structure of society as embodied in the division of labor and the stratification of classes, provided three qualifications are made: First, although the content of such a faith varies according to class and stage of historical development, it is not wholly determined by class interests but expresses necessities of life common to the whole of society...

...The relations between the countries from which the new development had sprung—Europe or, in a broader sense, the West—and the former "colonial" countries were revolutionized to no lesser extent than the social structure within the "old" industrial countries and the relations between the modern nation-states themselves...

...The crisis of a civilization cannot be banned merely by reformulating its fundamental ideas...

...Third, this faith is not merely a "reflection" of the material structure (its "superstructure") but is vital to the physiological functioning of that "anatomy of society...

...With the expansion of industrial capitalism and of democratic national mass movements throughout the world, the upheavals caused by this transformation affected the whole of mankind...

...In the solidarity of the Socialist labor movement the uprooted masses found a new collective home, and the first achievements won by its struggles gave them at least a measure of protection from chaos and arbitrary power...

...This question evidently touches the heart of all contemporary Socialist theory...

...We are now able to distinguish two kinds of revolution in the life of a civilized society: one that leaves the continuous development of its fundamental values unbroken, and another in which the total upheaval of all conditions of life causes such a loss of sense of direction that the fundamental values of the civilization and, indeed, its very survival are placed in jeopardy...

...Second, it is not merely a form of consciousness but also deeply rooted in the subconsciousness of the people, in a manner which does not fit into the classical disjunction between "being'' and "consciousness," owing to the characteristic process of education by which a given culture passes on the values from one generation to another...

...Today we are more conscious of the importance of these basic values of our civilization than were our predecessors a hundred years ago...

...To be more concrete, our "European" or "Western" civilization, in all its historical phases and forms, rests upon certain permanent assumptions...

...Even in the United States, the principle that the state is responsible for the maintenance of a high level of employment has come to be recognized, thanks to pressure from the trade unions and progressive public opinion...

...But, prior to the catastrophic world economic crisis of 1929, the Socialists had, in fact, failed to provide an effective solution for this basic problem, just as had the conservative forces of the old order...

...What is more, the practical example has so intensified the demand of the working masses for social security that in Britain, even after the fall of the Labor Government, the basic features of that policy had to be maintained...

...In the beginning of a new civilization, such a faith always assumes a religious or mythical form...

...The organization of society has become the central problem...

...As for the best method of joint control, the international Socialist movement is still completely in the experimental stage...

...The outline of the theoretical solution emerged already in the nineteenth century...

...It offers the only hope of counteracting the psychological alienation of the producer from his work, an estrangement which is increasingly being recognized as one of the main causes of the emptiness and intellectual impoverishment of the lives of millions of people in the advanced industrialized countries...

...the social order can no longer be regarded as "natural" but must be understood in its changing historical setting...

...It destroys the former basis of a meaningful existence and opens up new and unexpected vistas...

...The first basic task which confronted Socialists was to end social insecurity and the impersonal dependency in which the working people found themselves under modern industrial capitalism...

...the second, the belief in an objective world order, whether moral, natural or historical...

...The European Renaissance marked a crisis of the second kind...

...A comparative study of the widely varying experiences with the different methods used by parties and trade unions in the various countries seems therefore one of the most urgent tasks of Socialist discussion...

...Once full employment had been shown to he technically possible, it was purely a matter of political power whether it would be promoted and for what purpose—a war economy or welfare planning...

...Far beyond the area of direct Socialist government, the Socialist example has decisively influenced the manner in which the state-controlled economy is operating in the most advanced, democratic-capitalistic countries...

...Such joint control in industry seems the only way of insuring, beyond the desire for social security and full employment, the workers' interest in concrete decisions of economic policy...

...The change of ideas must be put to the test by applying them to the actual transformation of conditions of life...

...This was one of the reasons why the catastrophe led to the outbreak of barbarism in the heart of Europe...

...It is also an excellent way of curing the nostalgia for the lost Utopia which so often springs from a lack of meaningful tasks...

...The training of people for this new role is an urgent need if there is to be a further advance toward Socialist realization...

...With that, the problem of social security in modern industrial society has undoubtedly been solved, as far as it can be solved within the national framework...

...But the growth of socialist control over the economy requires that many more people should accept responsibilities of a new kind and should do so on a voluntary, unpaid basis, while continuing to work at their former jobs...

...The industrial revolution in Britain and the political revolution in France initiated a transformation which had a greater impact on the individual than any previous historic change since the decay of the medieval feudal order...

...There is, for example, a wide gulf between the medieval philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, with his belief in a system of corporative rights and a moral order laid down by God, and the philosophy of liberal individualism and scientific enlightenment...

...The decay of the medieval order not only opened up entirely new horizons, but also carried with it the imminent threat of barbarism...

...The reasons for this failure, and the whole process of experimentation through which the various features of a solution have since emerged, cannot be discussed here...

...But, before this happened, the crisis found its characteristic expression in superstition and witch-hunts, in Utopian chiliastic sects and in a cult of naked power in whose service each and every crime seemed permissible to the Renaissance rulers...

...Of course, the labor movement does not lack officials with experience in responsible functions in self-government, especially in the municipalities and in the field of social insurance...

...The cohesion of a social order is never conserved by the interests of its members in a given division of labor or by the power of the ruling class or group alone...

...It may suffice to state that the process of capitalist centralization and the development of modern financial techniques had created the objective conditions for a policy of full employment, just as the increase in productivity had prepared the ground for the welfare state...

...Without such a Utopian aim (as the bourgeois critic would say) or (as the Soviet spokesman would put it) without the revolutionary alternatives of capitalist decay and Communist reconstruction, trade unions and workers' parties may well exist and even fulfil some useful function in quiet times or privileged countries, but they will ultimately be condemned to insignificance—for they can neither give theoretical guidance on the historical tasks of the time, nor provide practical leadership in its decisive struggles...

...Besides the constant threat to national full employment from world economic developments, there is, above all, the problem of the workers' relations to the new economic bureaucracy, public and private...

...Later, this form is often dissolved by criticism, but its content, which binds the individual conscience and determines the community life, is retained...

...It is true that our ideas as to which are the necessary human liberties, or the precise nature of the world order, or the range of rational knowledge, or the criteria of meaningful action have changed again and again in the course of history with the progress of social development, the growth of science and of our technical power...

...But now that this promise, in one view, has been monopolized by Communism and, in the other, reduced to absurdity, it seems to follow that democratic Socialism, forced to abandon its belief in Utopia, has lost the real source of its strength...

...At present, the provisions are quite inadequate even for the nationalized industries...

...The most important condition for an effective form of joint control and for making workers' participation in planning more than a sham is a new type of working-class militant and a type of training that will produce him...

...But, with this first great achievement, new problems have come to the fore...

...Precisely the Utopian idea that the chance of overcoming all social contradictions, all conflicts of interest, was actually within reach has served, in the perverted Bolshevik version of Marxism, to justify the total subjection of social life to the all-powerful one-party state...

...The forcible expansion of Western civilization in the age of imperialism has frequently made us witnesses of the clash between different civilizations, with different sets of values, and of the decay and moral confusion caused when one civilization is destroyed by another...

...and of how the workers can play an active part in shaping their own living and working conditions...

...Moreover, relapses into barbarism have in recent decades revealed that our own civilization is passing through a life-and-death struggle...

...This article originally appeared in Die Neue Cesellschaft, a new periodical devoted to discussion of problems of Socialist theory...

...The critics, whether from the bourgeois or the Communist-totalitarian camp, are agreed on one point: that a Socialist movement, if it is to have vitality and encompass the whole of man, must be totally opposed to the existing social order and, by contrast, aim at a perfect society, free from all conflicts...

...socialist order was first developed in response to this problem, and the Socialists won the confidence of large masses of workers because they alone took it seriously and promised a solution...

...The achievements of the Scandinavian Socialists since the Thirties and of the British after the Second World War have once and for all identified democratic socialism with the cause of full employment and the welfare state...

...and this readiness never rests solely on a rational understanding of a community of interests, but on a belief in values shared and recognized as binding by all who have grown up within a given civilization...

...Not the belief in a coming heaven on earth, but the prevention of hell on earth...

...A revolution on such a scale disturbs the traditional pattern of life for millions of people, uprooting them socially, geographically and spiritually...

...Thus a new philosophy of Socialist humanism has become possible and its outlines can be clearly discerned...

...Against this background, we shall now try to determine the position of the Socialist movement in the crisis of our time...

...The rights of the individual, which the liberal age conceived mainly in terms of political equality and universal freedom of contract, must be reinterpreted so as to comprise the right to work and to a secure existence, to liberation from economic and social dependencies which violate human dignity...

...During World War II, he published under the pseudonym "Paul Sering" a widely read book entitled Jenseits des Kapitalismus...

...The democratic control of the overall economic plan and of the top bureaucrats by parliament can never by itself counter these dangers, even if it functions well...

...In contrast, the Socialist movement has looked for a way out of the crisis not in clinging to a decaying order, nor in leaping beyond the confines of history, nor in submission to barbarian power, but in seeking to preserve the fundamental values of our civilization through their development—in adjusting the social system to the new material conditions in the spirit of these values...

...It is used in a broader sense, covering all chiliastic conceptions of achieving salvation by reaching a final and perfect stage of social development...

...But where the possibility of a humanistic view of the world, resting on the basic assumptions outlined above, is called in question not by the intellectual doubts of individual critical thinkers but by the breakup of traditional ways of life and the consequent confusion which seizes millions of people, there we face the spiritual threat of nihilism and the social threat of barbarism...

...This raises the question of appropriate forms of participation in the management of industry at all levels as a means of safeguarding the workers' rights in their relations with the management and their superiors and of giving the workers a say in the actual planning of production...

...It is within this meaning of the term that we shall now examine the question of whether Socialism without Utopia can be a live force...

...A mid-century approach to the problems of democratic socialism SOCIALISM WITHOUT UTOPIA By Richard Lowenthal In these mid-twentieth-century days, there is no lack of voices proclaiming the spiritual death of democratic Socialism...

...If it is to function, it needs the readiness of all, even the upper classes, to accept sacrifices, efforts and restrictions...

...the third, the conviction that a rational understanding of this order and meaningful human action based on this understanding are possible...

...The upheavals of our century, too, have provoked romantic dreams of a return to past stability, Utopian ideas of a leap into the millennium of Justice, the magic belief that all ills can be cured by exterminating a guilty minority, and the amoral glorification of the right of the strongest, the escape into turning away from the affairs of this world, and the escape into total submission to the omnipotence of the state...

...This article, which will appear in two instalments, attempts to revise democratic socialism in the light of the momentous developments since 1914...

...Richard Lowenthal, now West German correspondent of the London Observer, was active in the German Socialist movement before Hitler...

...Thus, the first important stage on the road to a complete Socialist transformation of the capitalist economy has been reached by the successful use of the power of the democratic state to protect the working people from poverty and arbitrary treatment...

...In this sense, even the work of Marx contains Utopian elements besides its scientific content...

...It must be mentioned that the term Utopia is not used here in Marx's sense—to denote a social ideal "invented in the head" and not based on an analysis of the motive powers of social development...

...It is the task of Socialist theory to ask again and again what the Socialist movement has actually contributed to overcoming the social crisis of our time, and in the light of experience to indicate the direction in which new solutions must be sought...

...But one thing appears to be clear even now...

...To overcome a threat of this kind is a task for theoretical thought—the problem of a further development of the content of our beliefs—and for practical historical action...

...not the nihilistic destruction of traditional values, but their conservation by a radical transformation of institutions...

...The quest for enlightenment now centers on understanding social relations, while meaningful action is directed toward controlling the blind working of natural laws in social life...

...The twofold bureaucratization of modern industry—advancing from within by the concentration of ownership and the fading away of its function, and from without by the growth of public control—tends to replace the former dependency on the arbitrary rule of the market and the owner of the means of production by new forms of dependency on an economic hierarchy...

...the new orientation must inspire historical action and help to master the social crisis if the triumph of barbarism is to be prevented...

...The modern Socialist movement was born as one of the responses to the breakup of traditional European society which, at the beginning of the last century, was brought about by two simultaneous revolutions: the birth of modern capitalist industry and the growth of nation-states with democratic institutions...