READ AND DISCUSS:

Appealing to the ruling class

One of the most well-known of these ‘Utopian’ socialists was Robert Owen. He made, ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to develop co-operatives and model factories, to show that it was possible for workers to be employed under decent living and working conditions. These included the textile mills Owen set up at New Lanark in Scotland, as well as model communities in the United States.

1. Reading the passages from the Manifesto, instead of looking to the working class to lead revolutionary change, what was the ‘Utopian’ socialists’ strategy for improving society?

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

Engels wrote in more detail about the efforts of these reformers in his 1880 pamphlet ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific³²’. In it, Engels acknowledges the brave steps taken by Owen, particularly in helping to build trade unions in Britain. However, he points to the weakness of these Utopians as seeing socialism as “the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, [that] has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power.”

2. Rather than appeal to the ruling class to give way to ‘reason’, what does ‘Scientific’ socialism, as set out in the pages of the Manifesto, explain is required to bring about a socialist society?

‘Utopian Socialists’ today

In 2018, Tony Saunois, the Secretary of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), wrote an introduction to a new reprint of Engels’ pamphlet. In it, he compared the thinking of some of the new left leaders to that of the ‘utopian socialists’ of old:

“In Greece, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras seemed to imagine it was sufficient to appeal to the ‘reason’ and ‘justice’ of German imperialism and the EU to convince them not to impose a brutal austerity on the Greek people. Their answer was a predictable and firm ‘no’, as they uncompromisingly acted to defend their class interests.

In Britain, Paul Mason … has pointed to the emergence of “parallel currencies, time banks, co-operatives and self- managed spaces…new forms of ownership, new forms of lending…” In his book, ‘PostCapitalism’, Mason writes that such ideas “offers an escape route – but only if these micro-level projects are nurtured, promoted and protected”. By whom, and how, we are not told.

In fact, these sorts of ideas are a return to the utopian projects of Robert Owen. At that time, they represented an important milestone in the development of socialist ideas. They gave way, after an inevitable demise, to the ideas of scientific socialism of Marx and Engels. In today’s’ era of modern capitalist society, rather than representing something ‘new,’ as claimed by their supporters, they represent a step backwards in terms of socialist ideas and socialist programme.

In Latin America, ‘Socialism in the 21st century’, was propagated in Venezuela, by Hugo Chavez, and echoed by Evo Morales, in Bolivia….  It included the establishment of co-operatives and buying up a percentage of shares to establish ‘mixed enterprises’. Where the working class is weak or not fully organised, support for the idea of co-operatives can develop amongst workers faced with the closure of their workplaces etc. Socialists, of course, adopt a sympathetic attitude to this development, where workers can see no alternative. Yet Chavez and Morales supported such developments without explaining the limitations of them. The idea was put forward of building an alternative to capitalism, within the framework of capitalism, and not ending it. Inevitably, the decisive sectors of the capitalist economy maintained their control and consumed the ‘alternative’ co-ops and enterprises”.

3. How have left leaders like Tsipras and Chavez, and writers like Mason, echoed the utopian approach of those criticised by Mark and Engels in the Communist Manifesto?