Another critique of capitalism I came across recently revealed yet another common misunderstanding on the anti-capitalist and pro-capitalist left. After describing some of the climate and ecological problems faced by humanity the author suggested the necessity for a revolutionary struggle to implement the following;

“….a model of socialism as one of sustainable human development.”

Here we have the abstraction ‘socialism’ articulated like some semi-religious incantation which ought to magically convince the reader to ‘believe’ in its relevance without the need for a detailed definition. This is despite its use by fascists (as in National Socialism), Stalinists (as in Socialism in one country) and Maoists (as in Socialist China), not to mention, assorted Social Democratic socialists in various countries. In reality, rather than fantasy, there is no current accepted definition of socialism and the term was so elastic in the past that its use was practically meaningless. Indeed, the term was given up by Marx in the 19th century – even before the totalitarian nightmare of Fascist socialism, and of course, the totalitarian Stalinist and Maoist socialist variants! If some people wish to resurrect the discredited and discarded idea of socialism, they should at least acknowledge and analyse it’s different historical manifestations and establish a convincing reason why the concept should not remain as an intellectual fossil to be studied by later generations.

Furthermore, the addition in the above quote of the phrase, “sustainable human development” still represents an anthropocentric and idealistic abstraction. What on earth does ‘sustainable development’ actually mean? Can continuous development ever be sustainable? Yet however it may be further defined, it is still not a ‘sustainable human development’ that should be the focus of present and future human activity. The actual problem humanity needs to solve is to ensure the sustainability of the whole, integrated, interdependent, ecological system of life on earth, not the already excessively privileged elite human section of it. This eco-system of life on earth, which prior to the creation of hierarchical mass society systems, had evolved as one inter-connected, inter-dependent ‘life on earth’ system, consequently needs urgently to return to such a condition. However, it will not return to that dynamic balance between by implementing the following advice offered to humanity.

“…revolutionary struggle in these circumstances [that] will need to evolve in two phases.” The first is an “ecodemocratic phase” in which there is a mass struggle to “demand a world of sustainable human development.” This goes over to a ‘more decisive, ecosocialist phase of the revolutionary struggle.”

The above summary, imagines the future solution to the steep existential decline hierachical mass societies are currently sliding down, is via a different form of political governance. The author or authors of the above lines has already undemocratically formulated a two stage political programme he or she wishes the rest of us to follow. A future mass struggle is imagined to somehow emerge so as “to demand a world of sustainable human development”. According to this political programme the purpose of the mass struggle is not to actively create a sustainable human development but to demand one! But demand it from whom? The answer in this scenario can only be from some future ruling hierarchical elite. The hoped for revolutionary mass struggle in this scenario is not to overthrow hierarchical elites and establish a sustainable human integration within the evolutionary cycle of life on earth, but to demand it be done for them – by a hierarchical elite.

In other words, the author thinks the problems caused by hierarchical mass society formations, can be solved by hierarchical mass society formations. First by establishing an eco-democratic hierarchical phase and then a hierarchical eco-socialist phase. The active agency demanding this course of action is imagined to be an ‘environmentally aware proletariat’. No thought is being given to the fact that the proletariat is now atomised, and split into competing occupational sections of rival, gender, ethnic, religious and numerous other alternative ‘identity’ sections. This wish list is simply an intellectually inspired fantasy. In the 21st century, there is no practical or ideological basis for a unified proletariat. This particular retro-Marxist example is part of current line of thinking that has reached back into 19th century anti-capitalist tradition in an attempt to rescue the valuable revolutionary-humanist perspectives identified by Karl Marx, but in order to plagerise these perspectives – not to update them.

Consequently, in doing so it has dragged along with it the no longer apropriate tactical means to achieve the revolutionary replacement of a capitalist based hierarchical mass society by a non-hierarchical future for humanity. It is worth reminding ourselves of what Marx actually wrote on this question when thinking about the consciousness of any class acting as the change agents altering hierarchical mass society on behalf of humanity.

“…for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a ‘revolution’; the revolution is necessary..not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.” (Marx. German Ideology. Section 6.)

The idea of a mass of class conscious ‘aware’ proletarians becoming revolutionary – en masse – was derived from the 19th century socio-economic industrial working conditions then in existence. However, that alteration of men on a mass scale did not take place in the 19th and 20th centuries. Indeed, the ‘muck of ages’ in terms of sectarian killing, mysogeny and racism deepened and thickened and became state sponsored, under the leadership of the middle-class radicals such as Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao and the Fascist socialisms of Mussolini and Hitler. Thus the failed industrial state-capitalist model the Leninists, and Stalinists contrived (based upon an almost complete misunderstanding of Marx) is still being implicitly if not explicitly proposed in the 21st century.

A revolutionary programme of gaining power by election (eg. early Marx on England); or by politically-led, ‘vanguards’ (eg. Bolsheviks and Maoists) consequently not only spectacularly failed but served to pile up the ‘muck of ages’ in mountainous heaps. These 20th century century ‘solutions’ failed because they remained firmly rooted within a hierarchical system and merely continued that system with a different and allegedly more ‘enlightened’ communist party elite in power. Lets be clear, to function, a hierarchical system – because it is not natural – must be ruled by force. The 19th century peasants became 20th century workers, and the revolutionary vanguard became reactionary totalitarian rulers. (See ‘Revolutionary-Humanism and the Anti-capitalist Struggle’, on this blog.)

In contrast to this nostalgic regurgitation of past practices and failures, the change in material conditions and the advance of knowledge since the late 19th century, requires a re-assessment of how the original and continuing multiple alienations of humanity and ‘nature’ identified by Marx can be ovecome and resolved in the 21st century. It is now possible to definitively know that the human species is not separate from this system of nature and that elite members of humanity should no longer be considered as being similar to a collection of Capability Browns’ tasked with imaginatively re-modeling aristocratic, overgrown landed estate. Humanity is an integral part of that integrated life-support system we call nature and it is that dynamic fluctuating ecological balance which needs to be re-established. Sadly, such misunderstood lines of reasoning are trapped within dualistic modes of thinking which still implicitly conceives humans as separate from the rest of life on earth or nature. In actual fact, humans are just one particular (egotistical) aspect of life on earth (ie. nature). Consequently, the above-noted formulation still has humans ‘regulating’ the complexity of nature, which even the best and most eco-friendly brains do not fully understand.

However the worst examples of humanity neither understand nor care about life on earth in general only about their own life on earth. Those will carry on as they see fit. These so-called socialist ‘solutions’ require hierachical social forms to continue and become the totalitarian enforcers of this ‘socialistic’ model of ending the problems created by hierarchical mass society forms. That is the socio-economic equivalent of standing in a large bucket and trying to pick yourself up by pulling upwards on the handle. An anthropocentric solution to self-inflicted anthropocentric problems cannot possibly achieve the desired results. Moreover, a dominant ruling elite will never allow such a reformist perspective to emerge. Future anti-establishment mass struggles will continue to be met with massive crackdowns and reformist diversions as they have been for decades. Although the ultimate corrective to the current malaise within nature and within hierarchical mass societies remains their complete revolutionary transformation, a completely different pathway to that end needs to be considered.

Roy Ratcliffe (2023)