The Spirit of the Laws: Constitutional Republics, Capitalism, and the Future of Socialism

By Stephen Eric Bronner, Reader Supported News

06 February 21

 

he liberal republic is today the fulcrum of progressive politics. Protecting liberal principles, the democratic character of the republic, and existing social rights from political reaction in the United States and anti-immigrant and racist parties in Europe has been the overriding issue for Western radicals since the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. Elsewhere, and especially in the Middle East, the liberal republic remains an unrealized goal and the primary aim of radical politics. But terms like republic, rights, and the rule of law are tossed about so regularly that they have virtually lost all meaning. Communist states used to call themselves people’s republics, and that is still the case with China, Iran and North Korea; rights are often relativized to the point where they insulate dictatorships from criticism; and social rights often justify economic equality without political liberty. The test for a republic is not simply what its constitution says but whether it is willing to enforce what Montesquieu termed “the spirit of the laws.”

An elemental fairness in applying the law and willingness to constrain the arbitrary exercise of institutional power, issues even more salient since “Black Lives Matter” and the insurrectionary protests of January 6th, 2021, ultimately determine just how “liberal” the liberal rule of law really is and whether social rights — not only economic interests but also political and ideological issues — come into play. Rosa Luxemburg correctly spoke about the quest for reforms born of class compromise as a “labor of Sisyphus,” since reactionary capitalist interests are always on the lookout to roll back progressive legislation and, even more important, the accountability of elites to the citizenry. By the same token, however, the ability of citizens to both resist and pursue further reforms is dramatically influenced by the degree to which the state and its institutions adhere to liberal republican values. Economic “austerity” is always connected with political reaction and the reassertion of cultural traditionalism. That is why defense of civil liberties and the quest for social rights are flip sides of the same coin. It is an old story: the power of authoritarian and business elites depends not only upon the degree of organizational unity among working people and their supporters, but also upon their ideological unity. Raising awareness of the practical conditions for solidarity and beginning the intellectual work of coordinating interests is perhaps the crucial political question facing progressive activists today.

This marks a change. Enlightenment political thinkers identified liberty with political rights such as freedom of religion and assembly, speech, and arbitrary imprisonment. Only explicit legal prohibitions universally applied, they believed, should constrain individual freedom. Indeed, the logic of thinkers like John Locke or Adam Smith was transparent. The new liberal state should be kept weak so that “civil society” might be made strong. An “invisible hand” would regulate supply and demand and, ultimately, foster equality. Capitalism would enhance the public good as a “watchman state” set the rules in which private associations could compete and flourish. It is after all in civil society — the economy, the family, educational institutions, and the myriad associations of everyday life — that individuals become who and what they are.

But it soon became apparent that the “invisible hand” wasn’t working, that inequality was thriving, that elites were mostly unconcerned with republican principles, and that exercising political liberty required freedom from oppressive economic conditions. Commitment to the liberal republic subsequently became intertwined with the conflict between workers seeking to maximize their wages and improve their daily lives as against capitalists wishing to maximize their profits and control over their employees. The burgeoning labor movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was strongest in monarchical states like Germany or Austria-Hungary where it could link calls for economic with political democracy for the class that was effectively denied both.

Social democrats demanded a republican welfare state; communists later called for a “dictatorship of the proletariat” that would prioritize “people over profits;” workers’ councils sought to fulfill the dream of participatory democracy with full economic equality; and, finally, postcolonial states attempted to follow their own economic course for communitarian social or religious purposes. These options all expressed the commitment to combining welfare rights with a maximum of political liberty — and that dual enterprise still defines the prospects for a rational radicalism.

Especially for those in most need of political and economic reforms, however, the liberal republican ideal remains a source of hope. Little wonder that the attack on the welfare state in the United States should have brought with it an attack on the achievements of the 1960s while, in Greece and Spain, attempts by the European Union to introduce economic austerity resulted in xenophobic reactions, the rise of right-wing extremism, competition between members, and Brexit. Nevertheless, there is nothing new about this double-barreled assault on liberty and equality.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution are terms that derive from an epoch of democratic revolution that extends from England in 1688 to the United States in 1776 to France in 1789 to the nineteenth-century uprisings in the Caribbean, Latin America, and elsewhere. Far more important than the differences between these events was the common spirit, sense of purpose, and interchange between thinkers and activists in an international revolution opposed by similar national forces that comprised an international counter-revolution. Everywhere those committed to the creation of a secular state under the liberal rule of law, and intent upon constraining the arbitrary power of religious and other private institutions, squared off against advocates of “throne and altar,” the military and the Church, frantically engaged in attempts to preserve their privileges and the pillars of a pre-modern community.

Such was the origin of the Counter-Revolution. Everything associated with the Enlightenment came under suspicion in the years 1815-1848. Stendhal appropriately called this era a “swamp.” Integral nationalism and religious absolutism served as intoxicants for reactionaries. With the attack upon the republican ideal of the citizen came the attack on the rights of the Other, cosmopolitanism, and tolerance. Chauvinism, racism, and sexism took center stage. Tensions between these supporters of enlightenment and counter-revolutionary ideals simmered in Europe for the next three decades following the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815. They reached a climax in revolutionary calls for republics in 1848 that, especially in France, would prove “democratic” and egalitarian; indeed, this transnational “springtime of the peoples” with its republican, secular, and egalitarian commitments would anticipate the Arab Spring of 2011. These revolts were clear about what they wanted and their enemies were clear as well.

Karl Marx wrote what remains the finest theory of counter-revolution. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1851) would remain a staple for analyzing every form of counter-revolution that has emerged since the seizure of power by Napoleon III and Bismarck propagated their anti-democratic forms of “Caesarism” and integral nationalism in the aftermath of 1848. It is perhaps also why the most divergent socialists were so concerned with integrating the enlightenment heritage into their transformative vision for a republican welfare state. That took place in different ways and it impacted the democratic commitment of their politics. Rosa Luxemburg admired the Great English Revolution no less than Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky looked back to the American Revolution, while Jean Jaurès and Léon Blum as surely as Lenin and Trotsky sought inspiration from the Jacobins and the heritage of the French Revolution. Neglecting constitutional liberty in the name of economic equality or social rights has proven a recipe for disaster. Learning that lesson marks the progressive enterprise of our time.

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Capitalism is ultimately predicated upon the transformation of objects into commodities that are bought and sold on the market. The commodity thus defines not merely production and consumption, but social action as well. The extent to which previously non-commercial activities like religion and art, or “free” goods like air and water, become subordinate to the commodity form determines the progress of capitalism or what, today, is called “globalization.” Capitalism is not merely the struggle between classes in an exploitative accumulation process, but an overarching form of commodification. Implicated in capitalist modernity is science, bureaucracy, standardization, the division of labor, and criteria of “efficiency” that speak to a world of scarcity, or what Marx and Engels liked to call “the realm of necessity.”

Traditionalism is the oldest enemy of capitalism: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred becomes profane,” wrote Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto. What counts is “exchange value” and the mathematical determinations of profit and loss, the prices of commodities, and the costs of labor. Workers are thus subject to “reification” — or being treated as “things” — through the division of labor, and the adage “time is money.” Workers become mere costs of production in the pursuit of profit, and “alienation” is connected with this process. Old ideas of community are destroyed, nature becomes an object for domination, and trust between individuals is lost. Alienation strips individuals of any organic connection to the world and other people. According to the “young Marx,” workers become mere cogs in a machine whose stultifying assembly lines separate them from their co-workers, the products of their labor, and their potential as individuals.

Capital turns into the subject, and workers the object of the “commodity form;” what Hegel (not Marx) first termed an “inverted world” results. Capitalists are obsessed with creating more capital, not community, nation, or religion. What Emile Durkheim termed “anomie” becomes ever more intense: urban life and technologized production leave the individual feeling ever more bereft and alone. Little wonder that traditional elites and those outside the cities in formerly colonized territories and the Middle East should prove so suspicious of capitalism and the onset of modernity.

Previously colonized nations mostly lack an indigenous enlightenment tradition and an organic bourgeoisie. The recourse toward religion as an antidote to anomie is only logical. Islamic liberals and socialists like Jewish reformists and Catholic radicals attempt to accommodate and influence secular trends and the modern state. But extremists call for an opposition to modernity tout court. They rely on pre-capitalist values associated with traditional society such as religious absolutism, parochialism, bigotry, custom, and gender inequality. These are not epiphenomena, or mere reflexes of economic processes, but lived experiences that complicate oppression, divide the oppressed, and obscure the functioning of capitalism.

Of course, these prejudices are not confined to the non-Western world. Whether with the Tea Party or right-wing extremist movements and parties in Europe, or with al Qaeda and ISIS, they crystallize into an ersatz identity that justifies rebellion against universal rights, separation of church and state, and the spirit of the laws. The republican welfare state trembles while witnessing new and pre-modern forms of solidarity predicated on unique (group) experiences of reality. Resistance is possible as shown by the international women’s movement, human rights groups, international organizations, and agencies attempting to uphold international law. But it is naïve to ignore the crucial point, namely, that modernity brings reaction, and progress sparks regression. The former is fueled by enlightenment and the latter by counter-enlightenment values. It is increasingly necessary for progressives and radicals to decide between them if only because the public sphere has become less consensual than a type of contested terrain. Those ideas should be kept in mind as left and right, each after its fashion, compete in transforming what were historically private issues into issues of public concern.

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Social rights extend or diminish the democratic parameters of capitalist society. As for the state, whether in the Occident or the Orient, it is always implicated in the workings of the “free market.” At issue is the type of state, a modernizing dictatorship or a liberal republic, and its priorities with respect to the military budget as against welfare programs. Such choices should not be underestimated in judging the state, since they will have a pronounced influence on public life. The influence that citizens can have on determining them is the degree to which one can speak meaningfully about national self-determination. Economic competition driven by international and national capitalist elites in concert with greater enfranchisement and the strengthening of subaltern groups creates the space for compromise. And the extent to which working-class elements within such groups and lobbies achieve solidarity is the extent to which class power becomes manifest.

Compromise can strengthen or weaken the dependency of workers and other classes on capital. Of course, there is a limit to such compromises: meeting capitalist interests is the precondition for accommodating other interests. That is why the system is called capitalism. Yet capitalist control over investment priorities and distribution of wealth (especially under turbulent circumstances) requires legitimation or, more specifically, the consent of the governed. The inability to deal with this question appropriately has severely hampered the socialist enterprise.

In 1980, I contributed an article entitled “The Socialist Project” for an issue of Social Research (Volume 47, No.1). It was devoted to the state and (pessimistic) future of socialism. Edited by Henry Pachter, that issue included essays by prominent (now long deceased) socialists like Richard Lowenthal and Irving Fetscher. The status of socialism and its “end” have dominated countless academic conferences. Each assumes that something “new” has been added. But that is rarely the case. Not only an endless string of commentators but history itself has invalidated old teleological predictions concerning the “inevitable” defeat of capitalism. That is also the case when it comes to viewing socialism as the transition to a stateless and classless communist society. Each major brand of socialism has had to confront its mortality: socialist republicanism, authoritarian communism, and workers councils predicated on participatory democracy.

Last rites were given in 1914 when European social democratic parties became culprits in the “great betrayal” of internationalism by supporting their respective nation-states in World War I — though, at the time, one disgruntled radical insisted that these reformists had never betrayed anything since they never had anything to betray. Cynicism grew during the 1920s and toward the end of the Weimar Republic, Fritz Tarnow, the socialist politician, quipped that while social democracy considered itself a doctor at the sickbed of capitalism, it seemed that the patient had lived while the doctor had died.

Fascism seemingly buried the corpse and Stalinism destroyed its reputation. With the repression of workers’ councils following World War I, moreover, hope vanished for a decentralized democratic alternative to the liberal and authoritarian state. In rapid succession, social democracy identified with the capitalist West in the Cold War, countless revelations about the extent of Stalin’s crimes became public during the 1950s, and the “New” Left arose in the 1960s. Disillusionment followed the authoritarian anti-imperialist revolutions and the erosion of Maoism. Then in 1989 — most notably — Lenin’s statues were toppled and the rigidified and soulless Soviet Union collapsed. Under the circumstances, explanations concerning the “end of socialism” seem far less interesting than speculations about why it has proven so resilient.

Reasons are not that difficult to find. If not before Marx, then surely after, socialist ideals were adapted to new conditions in both theory and practice. Socialism was the ideology of the first democratic mass parties in Europe that, everywhere, served as pillars for the inter-war republics, the modern welfare state, and anti-fascism. Communists introduced “front” politics, challenged imperialism, highlighted national self-determination, and offered hope to peasants in the colonial world; its authoritarian and totalitarian tenets don’t require elaboration here. What does call for recognition, however, is the need for class solidarity in challenging the economic exploitation, practical political disenfranchisement, and the alienation experienced by working people in class society.

Utopian socialist ideals inspired workers’ struggles to abolish the abominable economic, political, and social conditions of free-market capitalism that are so well described in the works of Dickens, Gorky, and Zola. They still do. To suggest that this transformative enterprise is predicated on constricting individual freedom or leading society down “the road to serfdom,” as Friedrich von Hayek argued, is historically absurd: Socialism was the bulwark of republicanism, the ideology of economic equality, and a source of internationalism and cosmopolitanism.

Obstacles blocking the translation of socialist ideals into practice have been discussed often enough: how to secure investment, control markets, and assess consumer needs. Dealing with these issues might require revolution but, depending upon the policies chosen, their impact can be either mitigated or enhanced under capitalism. If nothing else, then socialism involves the attempt to temper the whip of the market. Every system has its exploitative elements and, if the socialist god failed, only faith insists upon the workings of the “invisible hand” to secure an equilibrium between supply and demand. It is mostly socialists who still ask what classes are paying the price for stabilizing supposedly free markets, furthering in imperialist policies, and engaging in exploitative economic development. Socialists recognize that workers are more than a mere cost of production, never fully empowered under capitalism, and always at the mercy of capitalist investment decisions.

Socialism remains a protest against an inhumane world, the egalitarian hope of the wretched of the earth, and a regulative ideal by which to judge the mistakes of its partisans. Claiming that none of this is worth the effort, that these ideals are illusory, and that they cripple the fight for competitive advantage has always been argued by those who, as Brecht liked to say, “sit at the golden tables.” Amid the great recession of 2007-2008, indeed, Newsweek ran a headline saying “We are all socialists now!” The subsequent thunder from the right was deafening. Its supporters identified socialism with empowering the state against the market, support for immigration, protection of voting rights, cosmopolitan foreign policy, secularism and — especially in the United States — national health insurance, redistribution of wealth, control over capital, and what The New York Times (May 21, 2010) described as “the most sweeping regulatory overhaul since the aftermath of the great depression.” They were right. What came next was the mass-based socialist movement surrounding Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign for the presidency in 2020.

Some might claim that none of this is “real” socialism, that it is not “enough.” But this renders the concept of socialism ahistorical, abstract, and politically irrelevant. The young Marx insisted that critical philosophy does not face the world with fixed categories and doctrinaire principles and that it should not look with disdain upon existing struggles. To be sure: socialism is not what it once was. The old parties, ideologies, and slogans have mostly fallen by the wayside. And perhaps what we have now is only an appetizer. But socialism still animates not simply left-wing factions of established labor parties but also elements of mass movements that surfaced during the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street as well as others with roots in the ghettos of Brazil, Greece, Southern Europe, and elsewhere. Socialism is today a bundle of regulative ideals, and it inherently remains an unfinished project. But it retains a base in the working class. So long as capitalism and class society exist, indeed, so will its antagonist, socialism, and the dream of a more humane future.

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This article originally appeared in Left Turn, Vol. 2, #4 (Winter, 2020-2021).

Stephen Eric Bronner is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Rutgers University and Co-Director of the International Council for Diplomacy and Dialogue. His most recent work is The Sovereign (Routledge).