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New Testament aphorism

He who does not work, neither shall he eat is a New Testament aphorism traditionally attributed to Paul the Apostle, later cited by John Smith in the early 1600s colony of Jamestown, Virginia, and by the Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin during the early 1900s Russian Revolution.

The aphorism is found in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians 3:10, the authorship of which is traditionally assigned to Paul the Apostle (with Silvanus and Timothy), where it reads:

that is,

The Greek phrase (ou thlei ergzesthai) means "is not willing to work". Other English translations render this as "would"[2] or "will not work",[3] using the archaic sense of "want to, desire to" for the verb "will".

In the spring of 1609, John Smith cited the aphorism to the colonists of Jamestown:

Countrymen, the long experience of our late miseries I hope is sufficient to persuade everyone to a present correction of himself, And think not that either my pains nor the adventurers' purses will ever maintain you in idleness and sloth...

...the greater part must be more industrious, or starve...

You must obey this now for a law, that he that will not work shall not eat (except by sickness he be disabled). For the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a hundred and fifty idle loiterers.[4]

According to Vladimir Lenin, "He who does not work shall not eat" is a necessary principle under socialism, the preliminary phase of the evolution towards communist society. The phrase appears in his 1917 work, The State and Revolution. Through this slogan Lenin explains that in socialist states only productive individuals could be allowed access to the articles of consumption.

The socialist principle, "He who does not work shall not eat", is already realized; the other socialist principle, "An equal amount of products for an equal amount of labor", is also already realized. But this is not yet communism, and it does not yet abolish "bourgeois law", which gives unequal individuals, in return for unequal (really unequal) amounts of labor, equal amounts of products.This is a "defect" according to Marx, but it is unavoidable in the first phase of communism; for if we are not to indulge in utopianism, we must not think that having overthrown capitalism people will at once learn to work for society without any rules of law. (Chapter 5, Section 3, "The First Phase of Communist Society")

In Lenin's writing, this was directed at the bourgeoisie, as well as "those who shirk their work".[5][6]

The principle was enunciated in the Russian Constitution of 1918,[7] and also article twelve of the 1936 Soviet Constitution:

In the USSR work is a duty and a matter of honor for every able-bodied citizen, in accordance with the principle: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat".

Criticizing Stalin, Leon Trotsky wrote that: "The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat."[8]

Read more here:
He who does not work, neither shall he eat - Wikipedia

In the next few weeks, Republicans will have an opportunity to rebrand the Democrats as big-government socialists.

This is the kind of opportunity which may come once in a lifetime.

Every Democratic senator and representative has already voted for the outline of a $3.5 trillion spending bill. No matter what lies they tell back home about being moderates, their names are right there in the Congressional Record. When it mattered, there were no moderate Democrats. The only Democrats serving in Congress were unanimously willing to vote for big-government socialism.

The big-government socialist brand will isolate the Washington Democrats from their own moderates and from the rest of the country. Faced with this clear betrayal of their values, millions of grassroots Democratic voters will find themselves having to organize a moderate wing of their party (something Bill Clinton tried to do as governor of Arkansas in the 1980s).

In a number of upcoming primary elections, there may be moderate Democratic candidates prepared to run against the big-government socialist incumbents, using the $3.5 trillion bill vote as proof the incumbents need to be replaced.

The polling is clear, and devastating, for the Democrats in Washington. Americans in general favor free-market capitalism over big-government socialism by a huge margin (59 percent to 16 percent). Among swing voters, there is an almost five-to-one advantage (82 percent to 18 percent).

Perhaps most ominous of all for the Washington Democrats, swing voters already believe, by a margin of 69 percent to 31 percent, that the $3.5 trillion spending bill proves big-government socialists now define the Democratic Party.

When the detailed version of the $3.5 trillion bill makes clear its wide range of tax increases and enormous expansion of government into our personal lives, Democrats will have two choices. They could vote "no" to soften their images back home and defeat the bill. Or they could double down, vote "yes," and hope the Pelosi-Schumer-Biden wave of money will overcome the immense voter hostility to big-government socialism.

The real test for the next month falls on Republicans and conservatives. Can they have a disciplined focus on defining the $3.5 trillion bill as big-government socialism?

Can they communicate nationallyin every state and congressional districtthat the Democratic incumbents have proven they are big-government socialists by voting for the bill in August?

When facing hostile, distracting questions from left-wing television reporters, can Republicans discipline themselves to constantly point out that the $3.5 trillion bill is championed by an avowed socialist and is big-government socialism?

When face to face with Democratic incumbents, can the Republicans muster the courage and discipline to stick to facts and hammer away at the message, "on this date you voted for a $3.5 trillion big-government socialist bill, and that makes you a big-government socialist?"

Finally, can Republican Party officials, activists and candidates focus on communicating that Democrats have become big-government socialistsand that the old moderate Democratic Party has been replaced by a new radical party?

These votes have given Republicans the opportunity of a lifetime to brand the Democratic Party so it becomes a minority for a generation or more.

The test now is on the Republican sideand in the conservative movementto see if they can rise to the opportunity.

To read, hear, and watch more of Newt's commentary, visit Gingrich360.com.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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Call the Democrats' Budget Bill What It Is: Big-Government Socialism | Opinion - Newsweek

Occupy Wall Street protesters attempt to disrupt the pedestrian flow for financial workers in New York City on September 19, 2011. (Emmanuel Dunand / AFP via Getty Images)

It feels most apt to mark the 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street by reviving a debate that is resistant to resolution, open to endless disagreement, and primed for messy expressions of political ideology. How very Occupy!1

If you had asked me at the time whether Occupy was more anarchist or socialist, I would have answered, without missing a beat, that it was an anarchist movement. Though I most likely wouldnt have said movementI wouldve said moment, out of respect for Occupys anarchistic departures from traditional organized politics. Of course, I would have also said that socialists were among the many thousands of people who participated in Occupy with great commitment. Some of my best friends today are socialists from Occupy!2 Occupy Wall Street 10 Years Later

I still believe Occupy was more anarchist than socialist, and that this was a good thing, even if the movements rejection of representative structures and formal demands made it vulnerable and difficult to sustainreliant as it was on maintaining physical sites that needed constant protection from violent police eviction. Over the years, Ill grant, Occupy has found a place in the socialist legacy, especially for those who were too young to have joined at the time. Occupy is recognized as having changed the conversation on economic inequality and having birthed many of the activist constellations that would fuel Bernie Sanderss presidential campaigns and the expansion of the Democratic Socialists of America.3

Such an outcome, I would have said in 2011, would constitute a co-optation by electoralist interests, a reversal of Occupys radical rejection of party politics. In 2021, Im less interested in purity. But while I can admit that democratic socialism is the tendency that won the day in shaping Occupys place in history, I submit that we lose a lot by erasing Occupys anarchist forms.4

I reported on the protests as a stringer for The New York Times, while at the same time aligning myself with an anarchist cadre that helped orchestrate the Zuccotti Park occupation. My gig with the Times ended when the far-right Breitbart exposed the already public fact of my support for the encampmentthe so-called revelation was based on a video of a debate on, in essence, whether Occupy should be more anarchist or more socialist; I was arguing on the anarcho-communist side. And I was terribly drunk.5 Current Issue

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I was present for the pre-Occupy meetings that stretched long into the summer nights in Manhattan, in which a few dozen people made plans to occupy Wall Street. The late, great anarchist anthropologist David Graeber was there; so, too, were several activists who had taken part in the square movements that had emerged in Spain and Greece that year. The Egyptian Arab Spring was not yet a revolution undone. The international context matters here: We aimed not simply to protest Wall Streets turpitude but to act in concert and solidarity with a spread of global revolutionary eruptions.6

Even prior to its inception, Occupy was anarchist in structure: burdensome consensus-based decision-making, no (official) leaders, and a commitment to creating untested political spaces. The insistence that the means of our undertakings be consistent with our desired ends and that we establish radical political forms of life in the present is decidedly anarchist. But there were other ways the movement/moment was situated firmly within the contemporary legacy of anarchism in the US: It was overwhelmingly white, lacked a sufficient analysis of class struggle, and targeted capitalism but failed to understand the world-ordering force of capital as, in the words of the late Cedric Robinson, racial capitalism.7

These flaws are not unique or intrinsic to anarchism. We can disagree over the extent of Occupys anarchist or socialist bent, yet it should be obvious that the movement was grossly deficient in its abolitionism. Occupy was inspired by the Arab Spring and Europes square movements but failed to adapt to an American context, shaped as it is by a history of slavery and Indigenous extermination and dispossession. Even at the time, some of us bristled at the idea of occupying already stolen land.8

The Indigenous-led climate struggle and Black liberation uprisings in the years since have taught us better. The 2020 George Floyd protests were a reminder, far more powerful than Occupy, that rupturous rebellions are worthy even when they dont translate smoothly into legislative undertakings.9

It would be a great shame if Occupys anarchismits embrace of utopian and confrontational space-taking, horizontalism, and political experimentationwere ignored in its retelling. We should remember: Occupy was and is a verb. I do not want young people to miss that legacy and thereby foreclose a political imagination that goes beyond electing better politicians and making legislative gains. For those of us who embraced Occupys anarchist forms as inherent to its content, it was about living the politics we wanted to see in the world, albeit on a stretch of drab concrete in Lower Manhattan where middle-management bankers now eat their sandwiches.10

Natasha Lennard11

The signature figure of Occupy Wall Street was the debtor. Student debt, medical debt, rental debt, credit card debt, mortgage debt: So many people were underwater. The financial wizardry being done in the buildings surrounding Zuccotti Park both created debt and transformed it into financial products. Following the trail of inequality led many to indict the entire systemand to seek its replacement. Electoral politics seemed to offer little: It had enabled and expanded this system. Thus, when protesters occupied the park, they observed self-governing practices. People sought consensus, not majority rule; they tried to lift up marginalized voices first. The movement could have taken an anarchist direction and tried to build a new society in the shell of the old. But 10 years later, the legacy of Occupy is best seen in the reemergence of a socialist movement, the roots of which were planted in the inhospitable soil of Zuccotti Park, a public-private square that itself was a byproduct of tax credits and debt financing for commercial real estate.12 Subscribe to The NationSubscribe now for as little as $2 a month!

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A coalition developed through Occupy that formed the foundation of so much socialist organizing today: precarious semiprofessionals and the younger members of a deindustrialized proletariat, many of them involved in the service sector and caring professions. Though gulfs in education, country of origin, and often race separated these two groups, their interests aligned thanks to the nature of the capitalist system in the early 21st century, which put downward pressure on both. Indebted professionals had lost status and suffered material deprivation; the deindustrialized working class had endured wage stagnation, rapacious employers, and high rates of eviction and housing instability. Virtually no political figure spoke for them.13

Occupy produced an unusual fluidity between theory and practice that characterizes the best movements. Many who were involved will recall the General Assemblies, but Occupys forms of direct action drew public attention to the injustice of the states priorities. The magnitude of the police presence that surrounded the occupations and the violence that police conducted against the Occupiersmany of them unhousedhighlighted how massively municipalities had invested in their police forces at the expense of even basic provisions for ordinary residents, such as public bathroom facilities (a constant struggle for the Occupiers).14

In time there would be dozens of occupations across the United States, including in Philadelphia, where I made my home that fall. I was trained in the labor movement, and like many others in organized labor, I was involved in the occupations but, at times, maintained a condescending skepticism toward them. I was frustrated by how inward-facing the occupations seemed, relentlessly focused on process and horizontality rather than on specific goals and success. I often pointed out in conversations that the Occupy movement was among the smallest of the anti-systemic movements that were taking place around the worldthose in Spain, Greece, Turkey, and Hong Kong, to say nothing of the chain of events that toppled governments in North Africa and the Middle East.15

These sorts of comparisons were correct in a narrow sense, but ultimately pointless. With impressive swiftness, Occupy transformed US politics in a way the labor movement was failing to do. Inequality and the mass indebtedness it produced became accepted as fundamental problems. It was thanks to Occupy that Bernie Sanderss first run for president achieved an unlikely measure of success, and Sanders regularly acknowledged the rhetoric of the Occupy movement, especially that of a working-class majoritythe 99 percentopposed to a predatory minority of the rich. Though no major party emerged from the movement (as, for example, Podemos came out of the movement of the squares in Spain), the existence of avowed socialists at every level of office derives from the coalition of the precarious and the new working class and the analysis of inequality that Occupy put forward.16

Social democratic and socialist politicians have come to understand the need to construct a base of support among the growing number of people alienated by traditional politics. As the communist journal Endnotes observed, anti-government protest across the world has grown by 11 percent every year since 2008. The visions of Occupyand of Black Lives Matter and the protests that followed the murder of George Floydput pressure on electoral politics, but the Occupiers really desired jubilee and abolition. They were, in the words of Karl Marx speaking of the Paris Commune, storming heaven. The tactics keep reappearing, as when, in the summer of 2020, unhoused Philadelphians occupied a portion of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to demand housing. They drew attention to the crisis and succeeded in negotiating with the city to transfer more than a dozen vacant homes. To scale up these movements, to move these actions into mass actionto turn, for example, a world in which a perpetual housing crisis is taken for granted into one in which the universal provision of housing is considered common senseis the political challenge of our era. Occupy laid it at our feet. We are all in the movements debt.17

Nikil Saval18

More:
Was Occupy Wall Street More Anarchist or Socialist? - The Nation

Electrical fires pose a higher risk to poor Black renters in Milwaukee

The majority of Milwaukee's suspected electrical fires are in rental units, many in low-income neighborhoods. Video by the Milwaukee Police Department.

Lou Saldivar, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

With a rare open mayoral race in Milwaukee on the horizon, and with changing views nationwide about what forms of government best serve the public, a possibility has emerged that would, at the very least, intrigue history buffs.

Would Milwaukee, which had the last Socialist mayor in the United States six decades ago, embrace another one?

Frank Zeidler, who was the last of three Socialist mayors elected in Milwaukee,held the top job at City Hall from 1948 to 1960. No other American city of Milwaukee's size elected threeSocialist mayors.

Now, two factors are at play that would make it possible for a credible run for office, in the wake of longtime Mayor Tom Barrett's nomination to become ambassador to Luxembourg.

The first is that no candidate has been able to make a dent in Barrett's hold on the job, and with him leaving, the field could be crowded.Common Council President Cavalier "Chevy" Johnson will become acting mayor whenever Barrett's nomination is confirmed, and he says he will run for the permanent job.

Johnson has filed a Campaign Finance Registration Statement with the election commission. Former Ald. Bob Donovan andNicholas McVey have also filed an intent to run.

Milwaukee County SheriffEarnell Lucas has indicated his intention to enter the race.

Ald.Marina Dimitrijevic has said she's excited to consider the position. State Rep. David Bowentold a local television station that it's "something to consider," but also said in a tweet that he is focused on getting other Democrats elected.State Sen. Lena Taylor who ran against Barrett in 2020 said it's "not off the table."

State Reps. Daniel Riemer and Chris Larson as well as Milwaukee County Circuit Judge David Borowski have also expressed interest in vying for the job.

Gov. Tony Evers has said he believes it will be a big field, and he's not alone. The more candidates, the greater the chance for the vote to be divided multiple ways. The more divided the vote, the more possible it becomes for a dark horse candidate to get some traction.

The second factor is the dramatic change in political philosophy in recent years.

More: Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett nominated to be ambassador to Luxembourg by President Biden

More: Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's eventual departure opens door to generational change, comes during trying time for city

More: Bice: Who's in, who's out and who's undecided in what should be a crowded field for city's next mayoral race

A June Axios/Momentive pollfound that while the country overall still embraced capitalism, it had fallen dramatically in the eyes of young adults. People ages 18 to 34 werealmost evenly split on having a positive or negative view of capitalism, whereas two years ago the gap was 20 percentage points in favor of a "positive view."

Among adults ages 18 to 24, 54% hada negative view of capitalism, the poll found. Even young Republicans, ages 18 to 34, showed a 15% decline in positive views of capitalism from 2019.

The Axios/Momentive poll showed many similarities to earlier polls. ASeptember2020Hill-HarrisX pollreported that 56% of Democrats have a favorable view of socialism and53% of Democrats said the same of capitalism, which is within the margin of error and statistically a tie.

And a February 2020NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist pollfound that Democrats are open to the idea of socialism.

The Democratic Socialists of America countamong its members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Cori Bush of Missouriand Jamaal Bowman of New York, all of whom serve as Democrats in the U.S. House. In the U.S. Senate, socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont has made two strong runs for president, although he is not a member of DSA.

Further, DSA memberIndia Walton is set to become the next mayor of Buffalo, New York,after defeating incumbent Byron Brown in theDemocratic primary in June. Brown has vowed to remain in the race and is attempting to get his name on the ballot for the November general election.Walton would become the first Socialist mayor of a major American city since Zeidler.

Tom Hansberger,committee chairman of the Milwaukee chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, said no decisions have been made about the mayoral race.

After the publication of this article, Milwaukee DSA sent the Journal Sentinel a statement, which can be found in full here.

Hansbergersaid the organization has been discussing internally the idea of running a candidate in the mayoral race but said anydecisions wouldn'tbe announced until it is put to a vote ofits membership.

"I don't know that we are going to run in the mayoral race," Hansberger said. "We haven't made a decision on that. And we'll only decide to run if we think that we have a good candidate who can get our message across and win the election."

Milwaukee County Supervisor Ryan Clancy is a member of DSA and has been mentioned by some as a mayoral candidate, but hetoldthe Journal Sentinel that "there are no such announcements currently scheduled."

Hansberger said the organization is no stranger to "David vs.Goliathsort of runs."

"And I think that's what we would expect, running against candidates who are likely to be better funded than our candidates," he said. "But DSA believes in organized people more than organized money, and we think that we can win."

Earlier this year, the Milwaukee chapter endorsed two candidates for school boardand one for County Board. All three lost, although county board candidate Darrin Madison Jr. lost his race for County Board to Priscilla Coggs-Jones by just 12 votes.

Milwaukee voters electedthe first Socialist to the U.S. House of Representatives, Victor Berger in 1910. The three Socialist mayors were Emil Seidel (1910-1912), Daniel Hoan (1916-1940) and Zeidler (1948-1960).

Themayors were dubbed "sewer socialists,"a pejorative label that came to be embraced because something like a working sewer system wasexactly the type of public infrastructure work they were fighting for.

Sewer socialists are credited with building up much of the city's public features, including developing the first Department of Public Works, Fire and Police Commission, public housing, taking steps to improve the drinking water andfreeway expansion.

"Socialists turned Milwaukee from an open cesspool of corruption into one of the best-governed cities in the United States," said Milwaukee historian John Gurda. "Their guiding star is what they called public enterprise and that meant working for public parks, public schools, public libraries,public housing ... anything and everythingto increase the quality of life for the working population of Milwaukee."

The party does have some embarrassing history.

Victor Berger was a racist who considered Black people inferior and opposed Asian immigration.

But by 1956,Zeidler was such a proponent of civil rights that rumors circulated he was posting billboards in the South urging Black peopleto move north to take advantage of public housing and social welfare policies.

"One thing that's really exciting about the contemporary socialist movementisthat it's better on issues of race, gender, inclusivity," Hansberger said."That's an area we've built on and we're always working to show that. What we need is a movement of the multiracial working class of working people, regardless of their background."

Hansberger said the strongest bond between today's socialists and sewer socialism is wanting to organize a broad base of working people.

"Several things that we have in common with those older socialists is wanting to build better public goodsand infrastructure for Milwaukee residents ... things like bringing We Energies into public ownership, making sure that everyone has access to affordable electricity and utilities.It's things like supporting lead remediationto get the lead out of our pipes, and it's other projects that would makethe life of ordinary Milwaukeeans better."

Contact Drake Bentley at (414) 391-5647 orDBentley1@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DrakeBentleyMJS.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

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A lot has changed since Milwaukee elected a Socialist mayor. Could there be renewed interest? - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Democracy exists if and when a community organises its self-governance around the full participation, on an equal basis, of all the members of the community. Its other, autocracy, exists when a community organises (or allows) its governance by an individual or subgroup of that community, a ruler. Universal suffrage is clearly a step toward at least formal democracy because voters elect leaders. How real this formal democracy is, depends on the inclusivity of the population voting and the concrete reality of voters equal influence on the elections outcome.

Residential communities in many parts of the modern world operate in formal democracies. However, they usually allow individuals with high levels of income and wealth to use these means to influence others in their voting, whereas individuals with low levels of income and wealth can and usually do wield less influence. The capitalist economic system generates precisely that unequal distribution of income and wealth that creates and sustains a wide gap between formal and real democracy in the world today. That gap in turn reinforces capitalism.

Workplace communities are those collections of interacting individuals comprising enterprises: factories, offices, and stores. In societies where capitalism prevails, enterprises are very rarely organised democratically. Instead, they are autocratic.

Inside most workplace communities in todays world, an individual or small subgroup within the workplace community, a ruling group, governs the workplace community. An owner, an owning family, a partnership of owners, or a board of directors elected by major shareholders comprises the ruler in capitalist enterprises. Their autocratic governance reinforces and is reinforced by the unequal distributions of income and wealth that they generate.

The democratic impulses that were provoked and suppressed in turn by monarchical autocracies occasionally matured into social movements. These movements were sometimes able to alter relations between the ruler and the ruled, but usually succeeded only to a limited degree and temporarily. Eventually, some of these social movements gathered enough strength to dislodge those rulers and end autocracies in residential communities. Kingdoms, czarisms, and oligarchies were then overthrown as a result of this. In their places, revolutionaries often established representative (parliamentary) democracies.

Democratic impulses, similarly provoked and suppressed inside workplace autocracies, have not yet matured into social movements that are strong and focused enough to overthrow autocracy inside workplaces. Social movements did develop far enough to form labour unions and labour-based political parties, and to win greater diversity of race and gender among workplace participants. Unions utilised collective bargaining to alter the terms of the relations between employers and employees. Labour-based political parties used suffrage to yield laws that also changed the terms of the employer-employee relationship.

Yet labour unions and labour/socialist parties rarely targetedlet alone achievedtransforming workplace autocracies into workplace democracies. Even at moments in history when labour unions and Left parties coalesced to build impressive social powersuch as the New Deal of the 1930s in the United States or social democracy in 20th-century Europethey could not or did not move to end the social prevalence and dominance of capitalisms autocratic enterprises. No revolution occurred in the sense of a transition beyond the capitalist organisation of enterprises and its autocratic division of participants into an employee majority and a governing employer minority.

Autocracies inside workplaces have endured in both private and state enterprises. In private enterprises, the rulers have often been individuals, partners, or corporate boards of directors: all persons with no positions within any state apparatus. Alternatively, rulers have also often been state officials positioned inside state enterprises (owned and operated by the state) in ways parallel to the positions of private corporate boards of directors. In such cases, the label socialist applied to such state enterprises might refer to some aspects that differentiated them from private capitalist corporations. But such socialist enterprises were not different in their autocratic internal organisation.

Over the millennia, democratic impulses were occasionally able to establish democratically governed workplaces in some places and during certain times. In them, all members of the workplace community had equal voting power to determine what, how, and where the enterprise produced and what was done with the enterprises product. We shall call these democratically governed workplaces worker cooperatives (as they sometimes named themselves).

Across the many centuries when slavery, feudalism, and capitalism were the chief sorts of economic systems, worker cooperatives were marginal forms of workplace organisation. The conditions, objective and subjective, were absent for worker cooperatives to become the socially prevalent forms of workplace organisation.

However, their scattered presences kept alive the notion that democratised workplaces were a possible alternative to the socially prevalent autocratic enterprises. Critics of autocratic workplaces often supplemented their opposition to them with advocacy for worker cooperatives.

Marxisms criticisms of capitalism in the century after Marxs death might have led it to advocacy for worker cooperatives. Instead, Marxisms anti-capitalism focused on pinpointing which agents could accomplish a transition from capitalism to socialism. There were two key agents considered: first, the working class, and second, the state.

The consensus that emerged was simple. The working class as societys majority would seize the state. This might happen via voting, or it might require a revolution. Either way, once state power was won by an organised working class, it would use that power to make the transition from a capitalist to a socialist economic system.

That consensus led both socialism and Marxism eventually to an excessive focus on the state and all it might do to negate, overwhelm, and displace capitalism and its baleful social effects. Government regulations of enterprises, government ownership and operation of enterprises, and government control of the market: these became the various definitions of what socialists would do once they had state power. As history shows, that is what most socialists and Marxists did in fact do when they acquired state power.

What happened was another historic example of a movement for basic social change mistaking one step taken toward its social goal for the achievement of that goal itself. Socialisms including and since the 1917 Soviet revolution increasingly defined and declared their state-regulated and controlled workplaces to be socialism. That socialism, however, included an enduring autocratic organisation of the workplace.

Developing socialism thus became the continuous refinement and shaping of the governments great influence on the economy toward approved social goals. Socialism might even advocate giving its working classes greater civil liberties and freedoms.

What Marxism and socialism had lost sight of was the internal organisation of workplaces. Those stopped being seen as sites of profound class struggles once socialism was proclaimed. The need to transform the organisation of enterprises internal relations of production from autocratic to democratic dropped from most socialists focus.

Thus, the Soviet Union, China, Sweden, and other socialist variants experimented with differing kinds and degrees of state interventions in the economy. For example, Sweden chiefly regulated private enterprises with autocratic internal structures. In contrast, the Soviets took over, owned, and operated state enterprises with autocratic internal structures.

China now experiments with a combination of both Swedish and Soviet socialisms to produce its socialism with Chinese characteristics. Chinese socialism operates with autocratic organisations inside both its private and state enterprises.

If we define capitalism in terms of the employer-employee internal structure of its enterpriseswhat Marx termed their social relations of productionmost socialisms to date have not yet accomplished transitions beyond capitalism. To do that, they would have to change the prevalent internal organisation of their enterprises to democratic worker cooperatives. Indeed, that has now become the task for 21st-century socialism.

Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, in New York.

Source:Independent Media Institute

Credit Line:This article was produced byEconomy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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Task for 21st Century Socialism Lies in Grasping Basics of Democracy, Autocracy, Capitalism - NewsClick