Marxism and Democracy

188 Pages·1980·27.424 MB·English

by  Alan Hunt

MARXISM AND
DEMOCRACY
edited and introduced
by
ALAN HUNT
London: LAWRENCE AND WISHART
New Jersey: HUMANITIES PRESS
Lawrence and Wis fart Ltd
39 Museum Street
London WC l
First published 1980
Copyright © Lawrence and Wis fart, 1980
ISBN 85315 SSI 3
U.S.A. edition, 1980
Humanities Press, New Jersey
ISBN 0 391 01879 5
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way
of trade or otherwise, be lent. re-sold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition including this condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser
Printed and bpzmd in Great Brfrafn at
The Camelot Press Lid, Sou llaamplon
CONTENTS
ALAN HUNT
Introduction: Taking Democracy Seriously 7
BARRY HiNDESS
Marxism and Parliamentary Democracy 21
BlOB .IESSOP
The Political Indeterminacy of Democracy 55
ANNE SHOWSTACK SASSOON
Gran sci: A New Concept of Politics and the Expansion of
Democracy 81
COLIN MERCER
Revolutions, Reforms or Reformulations? Marxist Discourse
on Democracy vol
PHIL JONES
Socialist Politics and the Conditions of Democratic Rule:
Notes on Marxism and Strategies of Democratization 139
STUART HALL
Popular-Democratic vs Authoritarian Populism: Two Ways
of 'Taking Democracy Seriously' 157
Notes on Contributors 186
Name Index 187
These papers were first presented under the title of 'Marxism and
Democracy' at a conference in December 1978 organized by the
Sociology Group of the Comrnuniéf' T*'5Ffy ET G'F€'é't Britain. They have
been revised by the authors and an introduction has been added.
INTRODUCTION: TAKING DEMOCRACY
SERIOUSLY
Alan Hunt
The suggestion that democracy should be taken seriously has a
deliberately polemical intent. It poses the suggestion that socialists and
Marxists can be charged with failing to take democracy seriously, and
that this is not just a problem of the responsibility of socialists of an
earlier period but that it is a current problem which we ignore at our peril.
But if this charge is to be made, it is advanced not to convict others (or to
exonerate ourselves) but to assist in clarifying the nature of the 'problem
of democracy'.
The charge of failing to take democracy seriously is many-sided. For
example, it includes the suggestion that the early attempts to elaborate a
strategy for the transition to socialism under the conditions of bourgeois
democracy were gestures which made tacit recognition of questions
of political democracy, within a basic strategy that remained
-
insurrectionary even though the insurrection was seen as electoral
rather than military. But the charge also raises the question of whether
the theoretical framework of Marxism, especially in its most potent form
developed by Lenin, has been adequate to the task of confronting 'the
problem of democracy'.
The issues posed are ones which necessarily move between the two key
areas of Marxist theory and socialist strategy. The questions posed are
theoretical but have immediate political ramifications; the political
questions depend upon and raise basic issues for Marxist theory. This
essay seeks on the one hand to raise some general issues which constitute
barriers towards taking democracy seriously and, on the other, to raise
those which take the discussion of democracy further. It is hoped that this
discussion will lay a basis for the more detailed papers which follow.
It is necessary to start by setting out the scope of the present
discussion. The papers collected in this volume take as their focus the
problem of bourgeois democracy, or the democratic forms, institutions
8 ALAN HUNT
and practices that are to be found predominantly in the advanced
capitalism of Western Europe and North America. As a consequence the
discussion does not seek to grapple with questions concerning socialist
democracy. Yet it must be insisted that the question of socialist
democracy is not one totally removed from the problem of bourgeois
democracy. In the most minimal sense the nature of the transition to
socialism, and the specific levels and forms of democratic practices
involved, have profound ramifications on the subsequent development of
socialist democracy. Yet it is necessary to insist that the discussion of
socialist democracy raises a distinct and therefore separate range of
issues, which would necessarily involve issues such as the nature of the
socialist mode of production as well as the historical experience of 'real
socialism'. The analysis and discussion of these problems is in its early
stages of development, until these debates have been more thoroughly
developed. Marxists tend to be restricted to a combination of responses to
particular developments and a much deeper disquiet and even revulsion
at the practice of socialist democracy under conditions of'real socialism'.
.
However important these questions, they are not the focus of this work
What is essential for the discussion of the 'problem of democracy' is to
End the appropriate starting-point. All Marxists will readily agree that
this starting-point cannot be any notion of 'democracy in general'. But
the alter alive to a discussion of democracy in the abstract is often
presented as the need for a class analysis of democracy. Nowhere is this
more powerfully expressed than in Lenin's polemic against Kautsky in
'The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky' (Collected
Works, vol. 28, p. 227).
It is natural for a liberal to speak of "democracy" in general, but a Marxist will
never forget to ask' 'for what class?' (ibid., 235).
Here we encounter what is perhaps the most basic or fundamental
problem that underlies the 'problem of democracy'. Lenin's position
involves much more than the contention that there is a definite historical
assoc ation between the dominance of particular classes and the
associated political forms of that rule. Lenin himself stresses that this is
not a simple or direct relationship, since the rule of a class can take a wide
range of political forms. Thus capitalist rule has manifested itself in a
wide range of political forms including monarchical, fascist and
parliamentary democratic systems. Yet Lenin goes further when he poses
INTRODUCTION: TAKING DEMOCRACY SERIOUSLY 9
the question of 'democracy for what class"'. This can only carry the
implication that the specific historical forms of democracy constitute
democracy for a specific class or classes and the denial of democracy for
other classes. Thus, for example, the democracy of slave cities and states
was democracy for the slave owners and dictatorship over the slaves
(ibid., p. 235). With this there is no dispute, but it evades the problem of
bourgeois democracy since bourgeois democracy's precise significance is
the inclusion within the democratic framework of the dominated classes.
Nor are the problems posed by Lenin's position resolved by reference
to the importance which he attached to the working class taking the
maximum possible advantages offered by bourgeois democracy." This
insistence is undoubtedly important but it neither contradicts nor even
modifies the central thesis that bourgeois democracy is democracy for
the capitalist class and the denial of democracy for the working class.
It t`ollows that for Lenin the transition from capitalism to socialism
necessarily involves the transition from one political form of class rule to
another political form of class rule: parliamentary democracy superseded
by soviets?
It is necessary now to add to this the theory of the state elaborated by
Lenin in State and Revolution: All states are machines for the
suppression of one class by another, hence the creation of the form of
state appropriate to the rule of the proletariat requires the destruction of
the bourgeois state and the construction of a new proletarian (the soviet)
state.
Lenin, his writings and revolutionary practice, has provided the central
and inescapable point of reference for all discussions of the state and
democracy; his State and Revolution and the polemic against Kautsky
have been the central points of reference. Many of the most important
discussions since 1917 take Lenin as their starting-point; this was the
case in the immediate aftermath of October 1917 in the writings of Karl
Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg and then Antonio Gran sci, and remains
true of the modern writings of Louis Althusser and Nicos Poulantzas.
At the core of the issues raised by Lenin lies a fundamental theoretical
issue: the nature of the relationship between economics and politics.
Lenin advanced a strict relationship between stages of economic
development and their associated forms of the state. For the purposes of
our discussion this can be presented in the following form:
*See notes at end of each article.
10 ALAN HUNT
Economic/class stage Form of state
Capitalism Bourgeois/parliamentary democracy
Socialism Dictatorship of the proletariat
This analysis also takes a more detailed form in Lenin's writings,
specifically arising in State and Revolution.
Mode ofproductfon Form of stare
Capitalism Parliamentary democracy
Monopoly capitalism 'Bureaucratic-military state'
Socialism Dictatorship of the proletariat
This presentation which emphasizes monopoly capitalism as a distinct
stage of the capitalist mode of production, having a distinct state form,
has played an important part in the discussion in recent decades of the
possibilities of non-insurrectionary or 'peaceful' roads to socialism. For
the moment we should note that Lenin does not go very far in analysing
the nature of the associated state form, the emphasis on the bureaucratic-
military tendency remains essentially descriptive. The general
characterization is not in doubt; the general character is authoritarian
producing a state form which comes more and more into convict with
parliamentary democracy which may be retained as the constitutional
form. This stage Lenin sees as uniting the major combatants of the
1914-1918 war.
We can return for the time being to consider the more basic 'class
theory' which presents capitalist and socialist societies as being
characterized by specific general forms of the state: parliamentary
democracy vs the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is important to
recognize that there are present in Lenin's argument elements which
develop this framework by seeking to identify sub-stages but which do
nothing to alter the basic or essential features of the analysis: the political
form is derived from and determined by the economic stage or level of
development.
INTRODUCTION: TAKING DEMOCRACY SERIOUSLY 11
It is not the purpose of this essay to discuss the general theoretical issue
on which Lenin's analysis is based. I do not intend to discuss the general
theory of the relationship between 'politics' and 'economics'. It is
sufficient to note that the main theoretical thrust in recent years, taking a
variety of different forms, has been to propose a theory of the 'relative
autonomy' of politics from economics. Such a position drawing on textual
authority present in the writings of Marx and particularly Engels,3 and
also occurring in Lenin, posits that politics are not directly determined by
the economy, but that the determinacy of the economic is only true 'in the
final analysis'. This general position underlies such diverse positions as
those of Gramsci, Althusser, Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband, to cite only
a few_ It should be noted~that more recently the very possibility of
developing a coherent theory Of'relative autonomy' has been challenged.
This thrust has come in particular from Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst,
and a general statement of the position occurs in Hindess's essay in this
book.
Without entering into this perhaps most basic theoretical problem
confronting contemporary Marxism, one comment on the current
discussion appears necessary. How is the challenge to central aspects in
the existing state of Marxist theory to be responded to? The most
dangerous response, and there are indications that it is a common one, is
to react defensively, to protect 'Marxist orthodoxy', and thereby fail to
take issue with the challenging theoretical and political problems posed
My focus will be upon a number of issues which, while related to the
general problem of the relationship between economics and politics,
centre more directly on the question of democracy. The core issues upon
which an assessment of Lenin's theory rest are:
(i) the extent to which bourgeois democracy is to be evaluated as
democracy for the bourgeoisie and denial of democracy to the
working class,
(ii) the assessment of the theory of the revolutionary transition from
capitalism to socialism which requires the destruction of an
existing state form as appropriate to the rule of one class, and the
construction of another state expressing the requirements of the
working class as the new ruling class.
Let us first consider the nature of bourgeois democracy, or more
specifically of parliamentary democracy. Its distinctive characteristics