I'm an intellectual, Get me some politics

Submitted by on 14 May, 2003 - 12:00

An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto by Alex Callinicos, Polity Press

If the conclusions of this book were to be accepted, and its programme widely adopted, it would put the socialist project back to the time before Marx. This book is a revival of utopian socialism.

Callinicos asks three questions of the anti-capitalist movement: who is the enemy, what strategies are needed to beat this enemy, and what should the goal of the movement be? His answers are: the enemy is capitalism; the goal is socialism, and the strategy is revolution, brought about by fighting for a "transitional programme" of reforms.

Yes, capitalism is the problem and socialism is the solution. But Callinicos completely misconceives the how of getting from today's conditions to a socialist society. Like the early utopian socialists, he fails to bridge the yawning gulf between the critique of the present and the vision of the future.

Callinicos claims to have "sporadically drawn" on the form of the Communist Manifesto in writing this book. In the Manifesto, Marx charts the development of capitalist society and the tremendous revolutionary transformation that it wrought, creating the material foundations for a socialist society and working class that can carry out the socialist project. By contrast, Callinicos is so keen to avoid association with neo-liberal ideas that he cannot bring himself to describe the side of globalisation that has further prepared the prerequisites for socialism. The growth of large working classes and militant labour movements across the globe barely get a mention. Capitalist society is presented as nothing but wrongs - crisis, environmental damage and the role of imperialist states. Socialism is presented as simply a Good Idea springing from his head.

In the Manifesto, Marx emphasises that socialists base their programme and activities on the actually existing struggles of the working class, and on this basis elaborated a critique of other socialists. Callinicos has little to say here. He is more concerned to establish the relationship between socialists and the anti-capitalist movement. He describes different tendencies among anti-capitalists (reactionary, bourgeois, localist, reformist, autonomist and socialist). But Callinicos thinks the key distinction is between the reformists and the revolutionaries, whereas for Marxists it is their relationship to the working class that is paramount.

You could read this book and believe that the anti-capitalist movement has taken the place of the working class as the revolutionary agent of socialism, though Callinicos would no doubt deny it. But he does appear to think the movement can play the role of a workers' international, like those founded by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, in creating a party capable of leading a socialist revolution.

Marxists seek to orientate anti-capitalist activists towards the existing labour movement, to help transform it - but nowhere does Callinicos argue for this. In fact he does not even explain why anti-capitalism has emerged in this period: it as a product of the defeats of organised labour.

Callinicos's attempts to craft a programme for the anti-capitalist movement, he says, follow the conception of transitional demands, originally developed by the early Communist International and by Trotsky in the 1930s - demands which did connect existing workers' struggles with the fight for socialism. But Callinicos's programme bears little resemblance to this idea.

He says transitional demands "represent responses to contemporary reality, and have all been raised by existing movements". The tendency of these demands is to "undermine the logic of capital".

But Callinicos fails to address two central questions: who are demands made on, and who are they meant to mobilise? The whole point of the "transitional programme" was to mobilise the working class. Transitional demands start from the reality of working class life and working class consciousness. Callinicos's programme is merely a selection of demands made by NGOs - a programme sucked out of his thumb.

Some of Callinicos's demands are made on existing bourgeois states, but others seem to be demands on international agencies, or even corporations. For example he calls for the cancellation of Third World debt - but seems to be talking about only the poorest countries, ostracised from the world market. Hardly contentious. He says nothing about more developed indebted countries like Brazil or Argentina, where the argument about debt is more complex. And Callinicos advocates the Tobin tax on international currency transactions, without specifying who would introduce such a tax, or who would enforce it.

A programme which was focused on mobilising working class forces would include such things as fighting anti-union laws, would address the question of working class political representation in bourgeois elections and parliaments.

Transitional demands are associated with the idea of a united front - in this case of the anti-capitalists and the labour movement - and fighting for a workers' government. But Callinicos is not interested in this. He does not try to direct the young activists on the streets towards the labour movement. Unionising workers in Starbucks is far harder than putting a brick through their windows, but you won't find the SWP or Globalise Resistance organising a union drive.

The programme Callinicos advocates is at odds with the method of Marx. In 1938 Trotsky's document for the founding of an international - known as the "Transitional Programme" - spoke of facing reality squarely, not seeking the line of least resistance, calling things by their right names, and basing one's programme on the logic of the class struggle. For Trotsky this is what separated Marx from the utopians. Callinicos does none of these things and so his book is simply an exercise in wishful thinking.

Score: 5/10
Reviewer: Paul Hampton

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