In the spirit of dialogue, I am responding to the observations in Conrad Hamilton’s recent expansive review of my book The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism.
I will be concentrating on Hamilton’s three main claims, that there is a gap between the form and content of socvialism, invoking Marxist theories of struggle before coming down on old-fashioned “bourgeois” political theory and ethics. Second, that I accuse Marxism of containing an authoritarian “original sin” that results in a one-sided evaluation of real-existing socialism. Third, that ultimately liberal socialism remains “nominally capitalist” and is consequently a climb down from more ambitious socialist aspirations. I’ll discuss each in turn.
The Socialist Developmental Ethic
One of the major critiques Hamilton makes is that there is a gap between the “form” and “content” of my work. This gap appears in several places.
Some are exegetical. Hamilton argues that while I insist “mantra-like on the need to apply the method of Marx, whose class analysis serves as a prophylactic against the navel-gazing characteristics” of ideal theory ultimately this is in “the service of ends that hardly conform with those of socialism’s signature author.” Hamilton holds that the end goal of liberal socialism is the establishment of a kind of “market socialism” or a highly regulated and unionized economy that is still “nominally capitalist.” As Hamilton notes this is “not what Marx sought, either in the Critique of the Gotha Program or certainly in full communism.”
I’ll discuss what my version of liberal socialism would look like later. But to the point about breaking with orthodox Marxist political theory; I don’t know where I ever suggested I was doing otherwise. The book makes clear that my own theory of liberal socialism would be far more Marxist than many other forms of liberal socialism. I characterize it as “Marxist Rawlsianism” and chastise other liberal socialists for not internalizing Marx’s lessons sufficiently. But I also emphasize that, in the rare places where Marx did hypothesize on what a socialist future should look like, there are problems with his formulation. Marx was a brilliant man but not a prophet. I have deep reservations about the democratic centralism Marx and Engels call for in The Communist Manifesto and the far more hyper-participatory and direct democratic speculations Marx flirts with in The Civil War in France. Here I’ll quote directly from the book:
More appealing are Marx’s more overtly republican and hyper-democratic views on the Paris Commune. Here Marx was right to accuse the 19th bourgeois state of falling short of securing democratic legitimacy through its coercive imposition of class rule. Many of his objections apply to the profoundly imperfect liberal democracies of the 21st century, which are assuming increasingly plutocratic characteristics. On the other hand, as Irving Howe notes in his Liberalism and Socialism: Articles of Conciliation, there are good reasons for thinking Marx may have simply been too utopian and perfectionist in these moments. This support for a highly democratic and accountable political system characterized by minimal domination is praiseworthy but largely sidesteps correct liberal worries about the need to divide power between different bodies to avoid its dangerous concentration in a few hands. Marx’s decentralized views about provincial and self-governing communes organized nationally partially offset this, but not sufficiently given the lack of any other significant check on the power of the National Delegation. More worrying still is Marx’s unusually gooey faith in a very nearly direct democracy, where delegates are rapidly recalled and immediately accountable to citizens. Beyond just the enormous potential for instability and inefficiency in such arrangements, his writings on this are worryingly free of references to the need to protect individuals and minority groups against potentially dangerous majorities.
I think there are very good reasons for socialists to take these liberal concerns very seriously. As Howe notes in his classic essay socialists have often dismissed liberal arguments for the division of state powers as yet another means of insulating capitalism from bottom-up pressure. To an extent these socialist critics are right; it is hard to read many of the Federalist papers except as an argument for limiting potential democratic control of a powerful state in order to make the world safer for property. But Howe correctly notes that doesn’t mean that liberal concerns about the dangers of large concentrations of state power are idle. The point applies with added force when considering the importance of rights.
Elsewhere in his review Hamilton largely dismisses liberal rights by describing Marxism as a “doctrine that ‘corrected’ for the limitations of a rights-based model by positing the primacy of the economic.” Firstly this exegetically overstates the case. Marx’s appreciation of the limitation of rights-based models doesn’t mean he dismissed the achievement of bourgeois rights; from early in his career he agitated for rights to suffrage, expression and assembly. More importantly protecting individual rights against the state, even one governed by working classes majorities, expresses a commitment to an important principle shared by socialists and liberals: the equal moral worth of all individuals. A purely majoritarian democratic system could very well be, as fascist jurist Carl Schmitt argued in The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, one where equals are treated equally but those deemed unequals are treated very unequally. Protection for individual rights is intended to offset this danger by ensuring large majorities of people, say in the American south during the Jim Crow era, can’t discriminate and dominate vulnerable minorities. To the extent orthodox Marxism is committed to democracy but doesn’t take these concerns seriously I think socialists ought to push back.
This takes us nicely into the other respect in which there is an alleged gap between form and content; my emphasis on a developmental ethic. Hamilton cites Yanis Iqbal’s recent critique of my book (my response here) as anticipating many of his own objections. I’m grateful that Hamilton criticizes Iqbal for missing where I stress the “need for both immanent and non-immanent critique” and pointing out “Iqbal doesn’t bother to adopt McManus’ operative assumptions, making conformance with a discontinuous conception of dialectics a litmus test for liberal socialism as a whole, as well as attributing prejudice to him on the grounds that his work contains a meaning that functions ‘behind the back’ of its author.” Nevertheless Hamilton agreed with Iqbal is largely dismisses my endorsement of a developmental ethic. He also cursorily rejects my identification of it with Marxism.
“Then again, this contradiction may not appear to McManus, since he–in what is surely an ideological tic in light of his generally strong scholarship–reads him as espousing the idea that the development of human capacities” must be an “end rather than a means for the valorization of capital” (155). Right: and the goal of Spider-Man is not to rid the city of villains but to use them as a means for advancing science and generating lucrative media opportunities.”
The problem with this curt dismissal is it ignores that Marx’s endorses a developmental ethic throughout his work. This of course is true in the earlier humanist phase. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts Marx muses about how the “essential powers” of human beings were being expanded and alienated by capitalism and hypothesized a future where this would no longer be so. The Communist Manifesto anticipates a day when the “free development of each is a condition for the free development of all.” The Grundrisse claims capitalism will “creates the material elements for the development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption…” As late as Capital Volume Three Marx muses that socialism is to be the “true realm of freedom” where the “development of human powers” becomes “an end in itself.”
Marx both overlaps with liberal socialists like Mill, Rawls, and ultimately me in stressing this developmental ethic. It’s interesting that socialists like Hamilton are critical of my approach for being insufficiently doctrinaire on the kind of political systems Marx endorsed while at the same time being deeply allergic to following him in these ethical impulses. My suspicion is that this is due to the abiding hostility-shared by many Marxists-towards anything that smacks of either ethics or what Iqbal calls “humanism.” Anti-ethical and anti-humanist Marxists are of course entitled to their position. I think they are wrong both theoretically and in terms of what Marx himself would sign off on. To the end Marx retained a commitment to a developmental ethic than is broadly humanist in orientation while being sensitive to the ecological implications of our metabolic relationship to nature.
In sum I never claimed to follow Marx on every point. Nor do I think socialists (liberal or otherwise) should. In particular Marx’s political theorizations have a lot to recommend them but are marred by serious flaws. By contrast Marx’s ethical vision is a very attractive one, and those socialists’ hostile to any form of ethical or humanist theorizing ought to take it more seriously. Or, if they refuse to, anti-humanist and anti-ethical Marxists should admit they’re also willing to break from Marx on important points.
Marx the Pure
The hostility to anything that smacks of ethical argument or humanism segues into my major disagreement with Hamilton. He is far softer towards authoritarian despotism than I am provided its blinged out with socialist rhetoric and aspirations.
Hamilton argues that my work attempts to find an “original sin” or “constitutive flaw” in Marxism that explains its inability to bring about a “greater state of freedom” through its own resources. He suggests that trying to expunge this original sin is a major motivation behind why I think socialism ought to merge with liberalism. By contrast Hamilton argues that if “socialism does not have a constitutive flaw, if it contains within itself the resources to bring about a greater state of freedom, then there is ipso facto no need for a merger with liberalism.”
There is both a theoretical and historical dimension to Hamilton’s rebuttal.
Theoretically he rejects my claim that at minimum early works like the Communist Manifesto contained an argument for “democratic centralism” which later provided ammunition for authoritarian socialist movements. Unfortunately Hamilton doesn’t really elaborate where his textual rejection comes from beyond speculating that I find “conception of democracy” articulated in the Manifesto difficult to parse. Hamilton suggests this is down to the fact that “the agonistic spirit of the French Revolution had not yet been procedurally recuperated by 1848.” The argument being that at the time democracy cannot be framed in terms of electoral structures since in 1848 working class citizens had very few legal means of agitating for change outside revolution. Consequently revolution should be understood as an expression of democratic where ordinary people take a proactive and self-determining role in politics.
As the text of my book makes clear, this is not in fact the issue I raise with democratic centralism. One limitation of The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism is it does not theorize the legitimacy of revolution; I’m certainly not opposed to it in the right context but don’t have developed thoughts. My concern in the book is with the statist approach to achieving communism articulated in the Manifesto.
“The Communist Manifesto wraps up with a list of measures that includes the ‘expropriation of property and land,’ a steeply progressive tax, centralization of transport, factories, and other means of production, and credit in the hands of the state, free education, abolition of inheritance, and other measures. From a liberal standpoint much of this can ominously be read as concentrating enormous new powers in the state with very few checks or balances to inhibit abuse – a foretaste of the Leninist and Stalinist ‘democratic centralism’ to come. Marx and Engels occasionally seem to recognize those concerns but brush them aside by appeals to ‘democracy’ and an insistence that the proletariat’s rule is guaranteed to eliminate class antagonisms and classes generally upon seizing power. Since the basis of state authoritarianism is class oppression, the elimination of class will inoculate against the danger.”
Marxists have sometimes tried to downplay these theoretical worries by reminding us that a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat would not mean rule by a dictatorial personality or individual. Instead an entire class consisting of most people would be put in charge of the state. Moreover the long term goal of the dictatorship of the proletariat would be the elimination of class rule and potentially even the need for there to be a state. With class rule dissolved the state, an instrument of class rule, could wither away. But I find this profoundly unconvincing, not least because Marx himself shifted his position to the more decentralized and hyper-participatory system discussed above by the time of The Civil War in France.
Moreover history has tragically borne out my concerns again and again. Hamilton is by and large far more willing to apologize for authoritarian forms of socialism than I am. He develops many arguments to that effect. Firstly, some of his arguments are relativizing. He points out that given “liberalism itself was first advanced through dictatorship–over slaves and colonies if not the polity as a whole” meaning how is it fair to describe authoritarianism as a “constitutive flaw” of Marxism? Secondly, Hamilton offers contextualizing exonerations for the atrocities committed by states like the Soviet Union and Maoist China. He describes them as under continual threat from the “imperial core” which necessitated making “trade offs” with “openness” because “because openness for them can only mean openness to imperialism.” He goes onto speculate that the authoritarian socialists states would have, or will, open up upon the defeat of capitalism and the victory of socialism. Thirdly, Hamilton suggests that by securing economic wellbeing the authoritarian socialist states actually constituted the “fulfillment” of liberalism t. Or at least built a material basis for a hypothetical future respect for individual liberty. This is to be achieved by lifting “whole nations out of poverty, the provision of education to untold millions now told” which has “cleared away the most essential obstacles to the achievement of individual freedom” just a few years out. In other words we’re back to the idealist cunning of reason working through world spirit…
I find this unpersuasive. My position is more consistent and simple: if we call out liberal theorists and states for defending and doing bad things we ought to do the same when self-described socialist and communist theorists and states do it. My book never denies that liberal states have committed gross atrocities, or that liberal theorists played a role in abetting them. Citing Charles Mills I emphasize how “Locke contributed to the legitimating logics which would later be appealed to in order to justify genocide, assimilationism, and the Trail of Tears.” To the extent that theoretical or real-existing liberalism is implicated in systems of oppression it must be ruthlessly criticized. My book doesn’t even spare liberal socialists for their “sins.” I have many nice things to say about J.S Mill’s liberal socialism and pioneering feminism but describe his support for English colonialism as “unforgiveable” and his failure to theorize the relationship of imperialism and capitalism abject.
By contrast, underneath the seemingly hard edged socialist anti-humanism of Hamilton’s position is a forgiving softness towards the authoritarian theorizations and practices of figures like Lenin and Mao. These two between them contributed to the deaths of millions of people. Nor do I think it is any more legitimate for socialists to relativize the Great Leap Forward away than for liberals to suggest the genocide of the indigenous peoples was tragic but necessary step towards American republicanism. If a defender of capitalism justified the Great Bengal famine by insisting that “yes 4 million people starved but think of how British imperialism helped develop India today” any socialist would call that out as callous ideological propaganda. I’ve never understood why a different standard ought to be applied to Mao when his authoritarian policies led to the starvation of millions of people just because his brand was a hammer and sickle and today China is a rich country.
The End Goal of Liberal Socialism
The last objection is the most important. It concerns the end goal of liberal socialism. Hamilton implies it is not nearly radical or Marxist enough. Liberal “…socialism, McManus tells us, will either take the form of cooperative-driven “market socialism” or “an economy still nominally capitalist but oriented by heavily unionized private firms whose production is largely determined by state investment. At the risk of stating the obvious, this is decidedly not what Marx sought, either in the Critique of the Gotha Program or certainly in full communism.” In the conclusion to his review Hamilton almost seems relieved to have someone on the “DSA right” openly call for a conciliation with liberalism and even capitalism that’s not just strategic and contingent, but comprehensive. He reminisces that “time again, we’ve been told that unity with liberals is an instrument for the achievement of socialism. McManus simply spells it out: what’s needed is a fusion with liberalism, aimed at the creation of a society that may remain “nominally capitalist.”
While this is Hamilton’s least developed argument it is the most important because it concerns the overarching ambition of the liberal socialist project. What is the end goal? Is it “market socialism,” a “nominally capitalist” regulated economy, or something else?
It is important to stress that The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism is not a defense of my own version of liberal socialism. Instead it is a “retrieval” of the tradition in the style of Canadian political theorist C.B Macpherson. The goal was not to argue directly for liberal socialism but to reintroduce and canonize its main theoretical figures, stressing their unity while acknowledging the diversity of views. Hamilton is aware that The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism is a work of retrieval. But at times he still projects the positions of the theorists described in the book back onto me. This is somewhat understandable given I identify as a liberal socialist. But it does lead to some needless ambiguities.
For instance I never argue that liberal socialism would be “nominally capitalist” if implemented the way it ought to be. The sentence where I describe liberal socialists who defended a “nominally capitalist” system cites J.M Keynes and indicates I will discuss his position later in later section of the book. In that section, I criticize Keynes for being too right wing on any number of points, and that his failure “demonstrates the extent to which liberal socialists will have to be far more ambitious in constructing counter-vailing centers of power to inhibit the retrenchment of capital” when reactionary forces gain political momentum. I stress that Keynes’ failure to be ambitious enough-to not be socialist enough in other words-is a major reason Keynesian style welfare states gave way before neoliberal onslaughts.
Theoretically my own version of liberal socialism will be articulated in my forthcoming Liberal Socialism: A Defense. It synthesizes a broadly left-Rawlsian normative theory to a Marxist and critical theory inspired account of power. This theoretical fusion is achieved by emphasizing Rawls and Marx’s shared lineage in the tradition of German idealism-a point already stressed in The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism. Practically my theory of liberal socialism cashes itself out by taking inspiration from the left end of the “Nordic socialist” tradition reintroduced by Pelle Dragsted. Socialists ought to be pluralistic and experimentalist in democratizing the economy. In some areas public goods can be delivered through full decommodification and social planning. Health care, child care, education, transportation, much of housing etc are examples. In the production and distribution of consumer goods I think markets and prices ought to play a role, provided firms are worker managed along the lines proposed by the Meidner plan and potential negative externalities are prevented through regulation. In addition the state should engage in extensive redistribution governed by the difference principle to ensure a rough parity of material wellbeing; though not so egalitarian it would compromise individual liberty or completely disincentivize effort. Liberal rights should be retained and expanded, excepting a right to private ownership of the means of production. Personal property should be protected, but this right will be thinner as the more expansive the property becomes and the more its retention enables the few to dominate the many.
Liberal socialism has never been achieved yet. But big steps toward it were taken by the Nordic states during the heyday of social democracy when Olof Palme took pride in saying Sweden was more socialist than many of the countries that called themselves socialist. In the developing world the first Lula administration also implemented policies that lifted millions out of poverty while protecting Brazil’s fragile liberal democracy. These examples should indicate that liberal socialism is the good society that can be achieved by deeply flawed beings such as ourselves; indeed it corrects for our sins precisely through preventing the corrupting concentration of wealth and power into dangerously few hands. Liberal socialism is a realistic utopia.