Libertarian socialism

This article is about the libertarian political philosophy within the socialist movement. For the branch of anarchism emphasizing social equality, see Social anarchism. For the type of libertarianism stressing both individual freedom and social equality, see Left-libertarianism. For the political philosophy that incorporates liberal principles to socialism, see Liberal socialism. For the variety of liberalism that endorses a regulated market economy and the expansion of civil and political rights, see Social liberalism.

Libertarian socialism, also known as socialist libertarianism, is a left-wing, anti-authoritarian, anti-statist and libertarian political philosophy within the socialist movement which rejects the state's control of the economy under state socialism. Overlapping with anarchism and libertarianism, libertarian socialists criticize wage slavery relationships within the workplace, emphasizing workers' self-management and decentralized structures of political organization. As a broad socialist tradition and movement, libertarian socialism includes anarchist, Marxist, and anarchist- or Marxist-inspired thought and other left-libertarian tendencies.

Libertarian socialism rejects the concept of a state. It asserts that a society based on freedom and justice can only be achieved with the abolition of authoritarian institutions that control specific means of production and subordinate the majority to an owning class or political and economic elite. Libertarian socialists advocate for decentralized structures based on federal or confederal associations such as citizens'/popular assemblies, cooperatives, libertarian municipalism, trade unions and workers' councils. This is done within a general call for liberty and free association through the identification, criticism and practical dismantling of illegitimate authority in all aspects of human life. Libertarian socialism is distinguished from the authoritarian approach of Bolshevism and the reformism of Fabianism.

Past and present currents and movements commonly described as libertarian socialist include anarchism, as well as communalism, some forms of democratic socialism, guild socialism, Marxism (autonomism, council communism, left communism among others), participism and revolutionary syndicalism.

Overview

Definition

See also: Definition of anarchism and libertarianism

Libertarian socialists advocate the preservation of individual liberty, through the creation of a decentralized system of self-governance and the abolition of private property relations. According to Peter Hain, the core tenets of libertarian socialism are decentralization, democracy, popular sovereignty and individual liberty. Libertarian socialism, such as that advocated by Cornelius Castoriadis, generally upholds autonomy and direct democracy.

In the context of the European socialist movement, the term libertarian has been conventionally used to describe socialists who opposed authoritarianism and state socialism, such as Mikhail Bakunin. The association of socialism with libertarianism predates that of capitalism, and many anti-authoritarians still decry what they see as a mistaken association of capitalism with libertarianism in the United States. As Noam Chomsky put it, a consistent libertarian "must oppose private ownership of the means of production and wage slavery, which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer".

Libertarian socialists seek the abolition of the state without going through a state capitalist transitionary stage.

Anti-capitalism

Main article: Anti-capitalism

According to John O'Neil, "[i]t is forgotten that the early defenders of commercial society like [Adam] Smith were as much concerned with criticising the associational blocks to mobile labour represented by guilds as they were to the activities of the state. The history of socialist thought includes a long associational and anti-statist tradition prior to the political victory of the Bolshevism in the east and varieties of Fabianism in the west".

Libertarian socialism upholds individual self-ownership, as well as the collective ownership of the means of production.

Anti-authoritarianism and opposition to the state

Main articles: Anti-authoritarianism and Anti-statism

Libertarian philosophy generally regards concentrations of power as sources of oppression that must be continually challenged and justified. Most libertarian socialists believe that when power is exercised as exemplified by the economic, social, or physical dominance of one individual over another, the burden of proof is always on the authoritarian to justify their action as legitimate when taken against its effect of narrowing the scope of human freedom.

History

Development

In the early 20th century, libertarian socialism held significant influence alongside social democracy and communism. The Anarchist International was established shortly after the split between Marxists and libertarians at the Congress of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA) in 1872. This organization effectively attracted the support of anti-capitalist activists, revolutionaries, workers, unions, and political parties for over fifty years, competing successfully against social democrats and communists.

Russian Revolution

Libertarian socialism was an influential political movement in Russia during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, advocating for land reform and opposing Tsarist tyranny. The movement was led by groups such as the Narodniki, the Left Social Revolutionary Party, and various anarchist organizations. These groups created numerous clandestine and legal organizations over several decades to educate and organize Russian peasants. The rural soviets, which played a crucial role in the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, were the result of decades of organizing by these rural libertarian socialists. In the cities, anarchists were successful in recruiting workers, who were often distrustful of foreign-owned industries and maintained ties with their native villages. Anarchists' preference for revolutionary factory committees over reformist unions worked to their advantage, as unions were banned by the Tsarist government. The successes of libertarian socialists in organizing prior to 1919 were considerable, building a significant popular following and playing crucial roles in the revolutions. Nevertheless, when Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution of 1917, they viewed libertarian socialists as a threat to their authority and sought to eliminate their influence. Libertarian socialists were later banned, assassinated, arrested, and deported, leading to their political defeat.

Spanish Revolution

During the Spanish Revolution of 1936, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) played a central role in the establishment of anarchist communities and collectives throughout Spain. These communities were based on principles of self-management and communal ownership of land and property. The CNT also played a key role in the defense of the Spanish Republic against the military uprising led by General Francisco Franco. Ultimately, the Spanish Revolution was crushed by Franco's forces, and the CNT went into decline.

Decline

In the mid-twentieth century, libertarian socialism faced significant challenges as a political philosophy advocating for worker self-management, communal ownership of the means of production, and a rejection of traditional political parties. The libertarian socialist movement failed to gain traction in the labor movement after its defeat in the Spanish Revolution as unions came under the dominance of social democrats, communists, or business unionists. Moreover, the message of libertarian socialists that reforms were futile was not taken into account, since reformist unions were achieving significant wage increases during the golden age of capitalism.The decline of craft and guild-controlled production, the rise of deskilling and the concentration of productive knowledge in the hands of supervisory staff, and the limited appeal of worker self-management to industrial workers all contributed to the decline of libertarian socialism.

Libertarian socialism remained relatively absent until the emergence of the New Left in the late 1960s, this provided an opportunity for libertarian socialists to go beyond their traditional role of merely criticizing totalitarian socialism or capitalism. However, the revival of libertarian socialist ideas during this period took on different forms and deviated significantly from its original movement that held a significant role in the first part of the century. Thus, libertarian socialism failed to fully recover from its earlier decline.

The New Left

The New Left was a political movement that emerged in the 1960s, characterized by its critique of social democracy, communism, and capitalist societies. The movement revived themes of libertarian socialism, such as grassroots democracy, control over one's community and work life, solidarity combined with autonomy, and rejection of materialism. Despite this revival, new left activists were largely unaware of their intellectual antecedents, and many reinvented libertarian socialist ideas without acknowledging their sources.

Political roots

Within early modern socialist thought

For Roderick T. Long, libertarian socialists claim the 17th century English Levellers and the 18th-century French Encyclopédistes among their ideological forebears.

Within modern socialist thought

Anarchism

Main article: Anarchism

Anarchism posed an early challenge to the vanguardism and statism it detected in important sectors of the socialist movement. As such: "The consequences of the growth of parliamentary action, ministerialism, and party life, charged the anarchists, would be de-radicalism and embourgeoisiement. Further, state politics would subvert both true individuality and true community. In response, many anarchists refused Marxist-type organisation, seeking to dissolve or undermine power and hierarchy by loose political-cultural groupings or by championing organisation by a single, simultaneously economic and political administrative unit (Ruhle, syndicalism). The power of the intellectual and of science were also rejected by many anarchists: "In conquering the state, in exalting the role of parties, they [intellectuals] reinforce the hierarchical principle embodied in political and administrative institutions". Revolutions could only come through force of circumstances and/or the inherently rebellious instincts of the masses (the "instinct for freedom") (Bakunin, Chomsky), or in Bakunin's words: "All that individuals can do is to clarify, propagate, and work out ideas corresponding to the popular instinct".

Marxism

See also: Anarchism and Marxism

William Morris, early English libertarian Marxist

Marxism started to develop a libertarian strand of thought after specific circumstances. Chamsy Ojeili said: "One does find early expressions of such perspectives in [William] Morris and the Socialist Party of Great Britain (the SPGB), then again around the events of 1905, with the growing concern at the bureaucratisation and de-radicalisation of international socialism".

Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg

However, "the most important ruptures are to be traced to the insurgency during and after the First World War. Disillusioned with the capitulation of the social democrats, excited by the emergence of workers' councils, and slowly distanced from Leninism, many communists came to reject the claims of socialist parties and to put their faith instead in the masses". For these socialists, "[t]he intuition of the masses in action can have more genius in it than the work of the greatest individual genius". Rosa Luxemburg's workerism and spontaneism are exemplary of positions later taken up by the far-left of the period—Antonie Pannekoek, Roland Holst and Herman Gorter in the Netherlands, Sylvia Pankhurst in Britain, Antonio Gramsci in Italy and György Lukács in Hungary. In these formulations, the dictatorship of the proletariat was to be the dictatorship of a class, "not of a party or of a clique". However, within this line of thought, "[t]he tension between anti-vanguardism and vanguardism has frequently resolved itself in two diametrically opposed ways: the first involved a drift towards the party; the second saw a move towards the idea of complete proletarian spontaneity. [...] The first course is exemplified most clearly in Gramsci and Lukacs. [...] The second course is illustrated in the tendency, developing from the Dutch and German far-lefts, which inclined towards the complete eradication of the party form".

For many Marxian libertarian socialists, "the political bankruptcy of socialist orthodoxy necessitated a theoretical break. This break took a number of forms. The Bordigists and the SPGB championed a super-Marxian intransigence in theoretical matters. Other socialists made a return "behind Marx" to the anti-positivist programme of German idealism. Libertarian socialism has frequently linked its anti-authoritarian political aspirations with this theoretical differentiation from orthodoxy. [...] Karl Korsch [...] remained a libertarian socialist for a large part of his life and because of the persistent urge towards theoretical openness in his work. Korsch rejected the eternal and static, and he was obsessed by the essential role of practice in a theory's truth. For Korsch, no theory could escape history, not even Marxism. In this vein, Korsch even credited the stimulus for Marx's Capital to the movement of the oppressed classes".

Several libertarian socialists, notably Noam Chomsky, believe that anarchism shares much in common with specific variants of Marxism, such as the council communism of Marxist Anton Pannekoek. In his Notes on Anarchism, Chomsky suggests the possibility "that some form of council communism is the natural form of revolutionary socialism in an industrial society. It reflects the belief that democracy is severely limited when the industrial system is controlled by any form of autocratic elite, whether of owners, managers, and technocrats, a 'vanguard' party, or a State bureaucracy".

In the United Kingdom, the group Solidarity was founded in 1960 by a small group of expelled members of the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League. Almost from the start, it was strongly influenced by the French Socialisme ou Barbarie group, in particular by its intellectual leader Cornelius Castoriadis, whose essays were among the many pamphlets Solidarity produced. The group's intellectual leader was Chris Pallis, who wrote under the name Maurice Brinton.

Autonomist Marxism, neo-Marxism and Situationist theory are also regarded as anti-authoritarian variants of Marxism that are firmly within the libertarian socialist tradition. As such, "[i]n New Zealand, no situationist group was formed, despite the attempts of Grant McDonagh. Instead, McDonagh operated as an individual on the periphery of the anarchist milieu, co-operating with anarchists to publish several magazines, such as Anarchy and KAT. The latter called itself 'an anti-authoritarian spasmodical' of the 'libertarian ultra-left (situationists, anarchists and libertarian socialists)'".

Notable tendencies

Anarchist

Main article: Anarchism

Historically, anarchism and libertarian socialism have mainly been synonymous. Principally this regards the currents of classical anarchism, developed in the 19th century, in their commitments to autonomy and freedom, decentralization, opposing hierarchy, and opposing the vanguardism of authoritarian socialism.

Anarcho-syndicalist Gaston Leval explained: "We therefore foresee a Society in which all activities will be coordinated, a structure that has, at the same time, sufficient flexibility to permit the greatest possible autonomy for social life, or for the life of each enterprise, and enough cohesiveness to prevent all disorder. [...] In a well-organised society, all of these things must be systematically accomplished by means of parallel federations, vertically united at the highest levels, constituting one vast organism in which all economic functions will be performed in solidarity with all others and that will permanently preserve the necessary cohesion".

Marxist

A broad scope of economic and political philosophies that draw on the anti-authoritarian aspects of Marxism have been described as "Libertarian Marxism", a tendency which emphasises autonomy, federalism and direct democracy. Wayne Price identified it most closely with the tendency of autonomist Marxism and identified libertarian characteristics within council communism, the Johnson–Forest Tendency, the Socialisme ou Barbarie group and the Situationist International, contrasting them with tendencies of Orthodox Marxism such as social democracy and Marxism-Leninism. Michael Löwy and Olivier Besancenot have identified Rosa Luxemburg, Walter Benjamin, André Breton and Daniel Guérin as prominent figures of libertarian Marxism.

Democratic socialism

Main article: Democratic socialism

Labour Party minister Peter Hain has written in support of libertarian socialism, identifying an axis involving a "bottom-up vision of socialism, with anarchists at the revolutionary end and democratic socialists [such as himself] at its reformist end" as opposed to the axis of state socialism with Marxist–Leninists at the revolutionary end and social democrats at the reformist end. Another recent mainstream Labour politician who has been described as a libertarian socialist is Robin Cook. In the United States, there is a Libertarian Socialist Caucus within the Democratic Socialists of America.

See also

• Freiwirtschaft ("free economy"), idea based on the "natural economic order"
• Mao-Spontex, Western Europe political movement of the 1960s–70s combining Maoism and spontaneism
• Sociocracy, governance system using consent, rather than majority voting
• Libertarianism, a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core principle

Bibliography

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• Kinna, Ruth; Prichard, Alex (December 2012). "Introduction". In Prichard, Alex; Kinna, Ruth; Pinta, Saku; Berry, Dave (eds.). Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1–16. ISBN 978-0-230-28037-3.
• Levy, Carl (December 2012). "Antonio Gramsci, Anarchism, Syndicalism and Sovversivismo". In Prichard, Alex; Kinna, Ruth; Pinta, Saku; Berry, Dave (eds.). Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 96–115. ISBN 978-0-230-28037-3.
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• Masquelier, Charles (2014). Critical Theory and Libertarian Socialism: Realizing the Political Potential of Critical Social Theory. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-4411-1928-5.
• Ojeili, Chamsy (November 2001). "The "Advance Without Authority": Post-modernism, Libertarian Socialism, and Intellectuals". Democracy & Nature. Taylor & Francis. 7 (3): 391–413. doi:10.1080/10855660120092294. ISSN 1469-3720. Retrieved 22 May 2014.
• Pinta, Saku; Berry, David (December 2012). "Towards a Libertarian Socialism for the Twenty-First Century?". In Prichard, Alex; Kinna, Ruth; Pinta, Saku; Berry, Dave (eds.). Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 294–303. ISBN 978-0-230-28037-3.
• Price, Wayne (2012). "The Anarchist Method: An Experimental Approach to Post-Capitalist Economies". In Shannon, Deric; Nocella, Anthony J.; Asimakopoulos, John (eds.). The Accumulation of Freedom: Writings on Anarchist Economics. AK Press. pp. 313–325. ISBN 978-1-84935-094-5. LCCN 2011936250.
• Shannon, Deric; Nocella, Anthony J.; Asimakopoulos, John, eds. (2012). "Anarchist Economics: A Holistic View". The Accumulation of Freedom: Writings on Anarchist Economics. AK Press. pp. 11–39. ISBN 978-1-84935-094-5. LCCN 2011936250.
• Vrousalis, Nicholas (April 2011). "Libertarian Socialism: A Better Reconciliation between Equality and Self-Ownership". Social Theory & Practice. Florida State University. 37 (2): 211–226. ISSN 2154-123X. JSTOR 23558541.

External links

• Media related to Libertarian socialism at Wikimedia Commons