There is a huge contradiction between what is possible to ensure a decent life and future for everyone on the planet, and the reality of capitalism’s failures and limitations. The accumulation of mutually reinforcing crises shows the inability of capitalism to provide a better future, not the unviability of a different society. Instead of offering answers, parts of the establishment are increasingly focusing attention on division, reactionary nationalism and fomenting wars. This is not the result of incompetence among politicians or some conspiracy of the powerful. No, it is the result of a capitalist system in which the private ownership of the means of production and the accompanying hunger for profit is all-important.
Observing the failures of the system leads to a lot of discussion and proposals on how to achieve change. This is the focus of the Workers’ Party of Belgium’s (PTB) president Raoul Hedebouw’s new book ‘Do the Switch’, which develops the PTB’s main proposals for the upcoming election campaign in 2024. It also led to an article in the German magazine ‘Der Spiegel’ this winter that featured Marx on its front page. The ’Der Spiegel’ article expresses the fact that capitalism is increasingly being questioned, especially at a time when we are entering a new era. While using the image of Marx, the article is not a plea for socialist change but, on the contrary, for the reinvention of capitalism with a greater role for the government in it. This is not exactly what Marx had in mind… Even left-wing professor Kohei Saito, who has researched the ecological nature of Marxism, gets no further than ‘consuming less’ as an alternative.
Actually, this capitalises on the greatest weakness of the current consciousness. That capitalism is failing and there is a need for system change is understood by a growing number of workers and young people. There is less clarity about the alternative. A broad-based understanding of the necessity of a socialist society and what is needed to achieve it is lacking. Capitalism is declining faster than awareness about the need for a socialist society is emerging.
Even where mass movements and revolutionary uprisings reach a point where they begin to partially exercise power, there is often no idea what can be done with it. We saw a telling example of this last summer in Sri Lanka: a mass movement forced the president and government to resign and even proceeded to occupy the presidential palace — the images of the occupation of the presidential pool went viral. Of course, it was not just about the palace, but about the power associated with the presidential office. The movement had the potential to exercise that power, but voluntarily gave up the occupation after two weeks. The movement did not know what to do with the newly captured position of power. Other mass movements also ran aground on this: from North Africa and the Middle East in 2011 to the recent revolutionary movements in Sudan or Latin America.
The crises of capitalism are weakening the position of the bourgeoisie in all countries. The capitalists’ greatest strength is the fact that awareness that capitalism does not work is not yet accompanied by a broad-based understanding of what a different society will look like and how we can obtain it. Popularising a programme of socialist change and thus making it a factor in the struggle for change is the crucial task today for workers and young people who want to end capitalism. Without such a programme, it is possible for the capitalists to sit out protest movements or maintain their rule by other means.
What change do we need?
With ‘Do the switch‘, the PTB is contributing to the debate on what change is needed. The starting point is the observation that the rich are getting richer and richer and class divisions are increasing. “The existing system offers a bright future only to a very small group of billionaires,” writes Raoul Hedebouw. In contrast, there is a need for a ’switch’, for change. “To make the switch, we need inspiring and credible ideas,” continues Hedebouw. After all, “the solutions are ready, very realistic and perfectly affordable.” These include energy in public hands, more public investment in affordable housing, free and decent public transport, public high-speed internet and public investment in scientific research to get healthcare out of the grip of pharmaceutical profits.
On the issue of energy, the PTB has shifted. Where a year ago the party largely limited itself to demanding a VAT reduction, it is now talking about nationalisation. The PTB is right to note that the market is “doing exactly what can be expected of a free market,” notably lining the pockets of a small group of capitalists in the context of an ever-increasing monopolisation. The European energy market is dominated by barely seven multinationals that “hold the economy and citizens in a stranglehold.” Today, the PTB defends the nationalisation of the energy sector. Two issues are missing: whether the nationalisation is done with or without compensation to existing owners and how the nationalised sector will be democratically managed by working people and the community.
The PTB’s daily propaganda however continues to focus on the proposal of a price freeze as in France. Instead of making the community pay for it, as in France, it looks at the ‘excess profits’. The proposal of nationalising the energy sector is present but unfortunately not central. However, nationalisation is a step forward compared to the proposal which remains indirectly present in the energy proposals of ‘Do the switch’, and which is dominant in the PTB programme in other areas. A public pool has to compete with the private companies and quickly risks adopting the same commercial profit logic. Moreover, without the nationalisation of the entire sector, a public pool can be used to do the dirty jobs at the community’s expense that allow the private companies in the sector to make more profits on other jobs.
Unfortunately, nationalising the entire sector is not what is proposed regarding the pharmaceutical industry. It notes that spending on pharmaceuticals is rising faster than all other social security spending, with a 17% increase over five years. The PTB’s proposal is to tame the pharma companies by replacing patents with open licences, after which drug production will remain in the hands of the existing private companies. “The only thing that changes is that the balance of power between the government and the pharma giants is upended,” the PTB says. That, together with the ‘kiwi model’ (a public tendering mechanism where the company that offers a drug at the most favourable price is reimbursed by social security), should lead to lower drug prices and smaller profit margins for pharma companies.
Using a kiwi model to curb pharmaceutical sector profits can certainly have an effect. But it does not eliminate profit hunger as a driver. Pharma companies may use pressure on prices to cut working and wage conditions or to play staff off against each other. If a public tender imposes too many conditions in the interest of patients, it is possible that pharma companies will boycott the scheme. If we remain dependent on private companies that are only out for profit, we are not in control. Band-aids are not enough; a sick system will not recover with a few aspirins. The entire sector should be nationalised under community control and management as part of a national health service.
A lot of other proposals are limited to more government intervention in areas such as public transport, high-speed internet and housing. On the latter, reference is made to the example of Vienna, where the government both owns a large number of its own homes and subsidises owners to rent housing at a cheap price. The government should become the “conductor” of housing policy to “rein in” the property giants and “curb speculation” and thus “bring calm to the market”, according to the PTB. In terms of internet access, the PTB advocates a greater role for the government: the former public telecom company Proximus should return 100% to public ownership and play a role in rolling out free high-speed internet for all. A public fund should give room for creativity in the technology sector to develop new social social media, but the private ownership of current players in Big Tech is not questioned. Besides the existing banks, the PTB wants a public bank. However, it is an illusion to think that banks can be regulated by a public bank that has to compete with the other banks.
You cannot tame or constrain the dictatorship of markets, it has to be broken. That requires contesting the private ownership of the means of production. In its proposals, the PTB dare not defend this because the demands must be feasible, feasible within capitalism and feasible for future participation in coalition governments at municipal and higher levels.
It is the entire system
The proposals in the book ‘Do the switch’ would be excellent steps forward if realised. But some problems arise with the approach. For instance, it emphasises very strongly that a battle of ideas is needed first, from which the rest will follow.
Even the rise of neoliberalism is viewed that way. “The neoliberal recipes emerged after World War II in obscure think tanks and it cost millions in advertising campaigns to make us believe that these ideas from a distant past were the future.” Dark think tanks are never lacking, but for ideas to become a factor in society, it takes a bit more than advertising campaigns. The rise of neoliberalism was the result of the crisis of capitalism, which re-emerged acutely in the 1970s, and of bourgeois attempts to restore profitability. This adjustment of policy was not done through expensive advertising campaigns, but by building a balance of power against the labour movement. Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the breaking of the British miners’ strike in 84–85 and of the US air traffic controllers’ strike in 1981 were key moments in this.
The idea behind the approach in ‘Do the switch’ is that progress is enforced inch by inch and that through struggles for limited demands a greater understanding will grow to eventually change the entire society in a distant future. In contrast, we think consciousness is a complex phenomenon that develops not incrementally, but in shocks, like any change. In this, struggle plays a major role. We saw this in Belgium, for instance, at the time of the strong strike movement against the rightwing government of Charles Michel and Bart De Wever in late 2014. After an action plan of the trade unions with a large demonstration followed by rotating provincial strikes and a national general strike, all announced before the demonstration even took place, 85% of the population was in favour of a wealth tax. So getting consciousness to shift is not just a matter of good ideas, but also and above all of organising the force that can enforce them.
Among the solutions to the many problems facing the working class, the PTB suggests “levelling up” by adopting solutions from neighbouring countries. There is certainly nothing against this, but how does the PTB intend to realise this within capitalism, a system that offers a bright future only to a small group of billionaires? The emphasis on the feasibility and realism of solutions is seen as something almost technical and always within the confines of capitalism. This means that the possibility or impossibility of proposals is weighed on the scales of capitalists. Marxists, on the other hand, assume that the feasibility, or possibility of realising demands, is a question of power relations, which can only be decided by struggle. As the Russian revolutionary Trotsky noted: “The revolutionaries always consider that the reforms and acquisitions are only a by-product of the revolutionary struggle. If we say that we will only demand what they can give, the ruling class will give only one-tenth or none of what we demand. When we demand more and can impose our demands, the capitalists are compelled to give the maximum. The more extended and militant the spirit of the workers, the more is demanded and won.”
The need for struggle does feature in the book. Hedebouw rightly argues that whether new ideas are realised “depends on the outcome of struggle” between social classes. Moreover, the PTB is invariably present in any movement championing change. But in ‘Do the switch’ and other PTB material, there is more emphasis on the need for “political will” and “daring to think of an alternative” around “credible ideas” (credible for which class?), than on the need for class struggle and a relation of forces, let alone struggle for a socialist society centred on the interests of the working class. ’Do the switch’ has in common with the article in ‘Der Spiegel’ that it does not talk about a socialist society. In ’Do the switch’, the s-word appears only once, in a comment that socialism is more popular than capitalism among British youth.
Marxists see a unbreakable link between everyday struggles and the need for socialist change. A socialist programme reinforces everyday struggles as it provides a perspective for the necessary continuation of those struggles, which is more clearly understood as a relation of forces is built up. Many reforms in the interests of the working class are the by-product of revolutionary threats. To gain anything from the capitalists, the latter must fear they will lose more if they do not concede. On the other hand, society change is only an idealistic wishful thinking if opportunities to take steps forward are not seized to build a relation of forces that makes society change more amenable to workers, youth and others involved in the struggle.
At a time when all technological capabilities are available for everyone to live a decent life, it is only natural to adjust our demands accordingly. If capitalism cannot afford this because it affects the profits of a small minority, then we cannot afford capitalism. Our demands and approach thus form a bridge between everyday needs and a socialist society in which the key sectors of the economy come under the democratic control and management of the working class for rational and democratic planning of the economy.
