Abstract
Socialism comprises several distinct traditions but, for much of the twentieth century, it also struggled to define its position in relation both to the revolutionary Marxist claim that all forms of capitalist state were class dictatorships and to the liberal concept of democracy. This article accepts that there are contradictions between the Marxist and liberal positions, but suggests that these can be embraced positively by socialists. It explores the ideas of Harold Laski and Ralph Miliband to demonstrate this. There were some similarities between the two theorists, but their trajectories differed. Laski began with a radical pluralist perspective into which he later attempted to incorporate a Marxist critique of capitalism, while Miliband started as a Marxist but increasingly sought to integrate strands of thought associated with liberalism into his outlook. The article explains why the positions of both thinkers evolved over time and the comparative discussion highlights their insights into some key problems in socialist political theory. More generally, it concludes that both the liberal and Marxist traditions are a necessary part of socialist thought on class, democracy and the state.
Socialism has always included diverse traditions that are often in conflict with one another (Wright, 1987). But, for much of the twentieth century, it also struggled to define itself in relation to two powerful ideologies. On the one side it faced the challenge from one of its own constituent elements – revolutionary Marxism – which argued that the capitalist system as a whole must be rejected and that ‘political power, properly so-called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another’ (Marx and Engels, 1976 [1848], p. 70). On the other side, liberalism constantly insisted that democracy and progress must be understood in terms of liberty, justice and representation through contested elections. Since these ideologies appeared to be mutually contradictory, socialism was urged to declare itself as part of one or the other. Either it must accept that all forms of capitalist state were class dictatorships; or it must adopt a position on the left of the liberal spectrum, rejecting the Marxist theses on class and state power. This choice was, of course, posed most starkly at the height of the Cold War. Yet, the situation in the early twenty-first century has become still more difficult for those socialists who do not wish to align themselves in this way. For, they now face a new conventional wisdom, which Ralf Dahrendorf defined particularly effectively when the Soviet bloc collapsed. Arguing that the historical law of Marxism had been inverted, since capitalism succeeded socialism, he simply asserted that ‘socialism is dead, and that none of its variants can be revived’ (Dahrendorf, 1990, p. 38). This was thus a claim that liberalism had triumphed in the battle against Marxism, slaying socialism in the process. One possible socialist response might be to argue that this conclusion is based on a false premise, since there was never any contradiction between simultaneously holding both liberal and Marxist beliefs. Certainly, the differences have often been exaggerated by both sides for political reasons, but the claim that there was no dichotomy seems untenable. My argument is rather that the contradictions between liberalism and Marxism certainly exist, but that these can be embraced and used constructively within socialism. I will seek to demonstrate this through the ideas of two thinkers – Harold Laski (1893–1950) and Ralph Miliband (1924–94). But, before discussing these individuals, it is necessary to consider the context more fully.
Any interpretation of Marxist thought is highly contentious, and its democratic credentials are still defended cogently and forcefully by some authors (Hoffman, 1983; Wood, 1995). At the other end of the spectrum lie the ‘classical’ Western Cold War texts, equating Marxism with ‘totalitarianism’ and Stalinism (Carew Hunt, 1963; Mayo, 1955; Popper, 1945). The position taken here differs from both these interpretations and derives much from the insights of Norberto Bobbio (1987), Joseph Femia (1993) and Christopher Pierson (1986). While accepting the validity of much of the Marxist critique of liberal politics, it holds that the theory was deeply flawed because it scorned such notions as rights, liberties, civil society and representation, on the grounds that the ‘real’ basis of society was in its material structure and the class relationships that this produced. Furthermore, the rejection of both the conceptual and institutional framework of liberalism also meant that the Marxist notion of political emancipation departed wholly from such ideas as the separation of powers and institutional safeguards for individual liberties. This was clear, both in Marx's effusive praise for the Paris Commune in which the delegates of the masses combined executive, legislative and judicial functions, and in the projection of a post-capitalist system in which there would be no need for political power as such because there would no longer be fundamental divisions of interest. The underlying assumption was that social wholeness required neither the ideas nor the structures emanating from liberalism.
The dominant forces within the Second International before the First World War contradicted some of these assumptions in practice, as Marxist-inspired socialist parties increasingly confined their activities to constitutional political forms, and revisionists sought a convergence with liberalism. However, the Bolshevik success in 1917 ensured the dominance of the opposite tendency within Marxism, for Lenin reiterated still more forcefully the claim that all bourgeois states were fundamentally similar and that the triumph of socialism would mean the end of the state and the necessity for divisions of power. He deliberately deepened the chasm between the Bolshevik perspective and liberalism and, with the new ascendancy of the communist movement, Marxist orthodoxy followed this lead. Stalin's monstrous dictatorship then opened up a gulf between a theory in which political power would cease to exist under communism and the reality of a ruthless, repressive state crushing all liberties. Subsequently, the terror may have ceased, but dictatorship remained, and while some Marxist-inspired regimes may have made very significant social and economic progress, there has been little democracy in the sense understood by liberal theory.
All this left those Marxists who recoiled from dictatorship with a major problem: was it possible to maintain the essence of the theory about the relationship between class and state power, while jettisoning its utopianism about the post-capitalist era and embracing some liberal concepts? From the 1960s to the 1980s many Marxists endeavoured to release themselves from their theoretical straitjacket. In practice, most West European communist parties had long since abandoned the idea that the state was purely and simply ‘capitalist’ and had been seeking to secure greater influence within it. During the 1970s ‘eurocommunism’ developed this further with the parties now accepting many of the key ideas and institutions of liberal democracy (Boggs and Plotke, 1980). Similarly, a range of theorists now suggested that Marxist political theory needed serious revision (Boggs, 1995, pp. 98–200; Carnoy, 1984; Pierson, 1986, pp. 134–70). However, there are very forceful arguments for suggesting that the attempt to use the Marxist explanatory framework to limit and divide power is incoherent in theoretical terms (Pierson, 1986, pp. 153–92). Historical materialism can certainly identify complex divisions within societies and argue that these also operate within the state structure – thereby undermining the idea that it is simply a class entity. Yet Marxism uses quite different categories of explanation from those of liberalism and it is difficult to understand how such concepts as rights and the division of power may be introduced into it as normative principles. But nor is liberal doctrine any more accommodating to Marxism.
Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) is widely regarded as one of the most influential theorists of political liberalism in the second half of the twentieth century and his thinking may be used to illustrate this point (Ignatieff, 1998; Ryan, 1979). His particular importance rests on his fundamental distinction between pluralist and monist thought, which underlies his well-known distinction between negative and positive liberty (Berlin, 1969 [1958]). Liberalism, in his view, is intrinsically ‘pluralist’ for it incorporates values that often contradict one another. Liberty, equality, justice, individual rights and the collective good do not all point in the same direction and the essence of liberalism is the necessity to make difficult choices between them. On the other side, however, lie doctrines such as Marxism that are ‘monist’. These theories do not recognise the need for the exercise of judgements for they seek to mould reality to a pre-existing set of goals that are presumed to be in harmony with one another. Yet, Berlin's view is surely much less ‘pluralist’ than it appears at first sight: it accepts a diversity of values within liberalism, but regards Marxism as a dangerous and threatening ‘other’. It thus accepts contradictions within liberalism, but not that Marxism can be included within this framework of contradictions. For, this is not simply a value that needs to be weighted against the others, but a theory that denies the independent status of those values.
Both Marxism and liberalism have thus been exclusive in relation to one another. Each can accommodate heterodoxy within its identifiable theoretical traditions, but regards the other as incommensurable (and oppositional) as it operates on quite different assumptions. However, it is this dichotomy that poses a fundamental problem for socialists who wish to combine Marxist insights into the relationships between class power and state power with liberal political concepts. This suggests that socialist doctrine needs to build on the work of thinkers who somehow straddle both liberalism and Marxism – even if they are regarded as contradictory. This leads to the major focus: the writings of Laski and Miliband.
The remainder of the article is divided as follows. The first section introduces the two thinkers; the second section explores the complex evolutions in their thought; and the final section considers the degree of eventual convergence between them, and the importance of their positions for current socialism.
Laski and Miliband: Comparisons and Contrasts
The close personal relationship between Harold Laski and Ralph Miliband is well known (Newman, 2002). When Miliband, as a seventeen-year-old refugee from Belgium, began his degree at the London School of Economics (LSE) in October 1941, Laski quickly took him under his wing, becoming his teacher and mentor. After Laski's death, Miliband did much to sustain his memory and sometimes seemed happy to associate himself with his political legacy. For example, he wrote a very sympathetic review article of Kingsley Martin's biography in 1953 (Martin, 1953; Miliband, 1953), jumped to Laski's defence when he was traduced by H. A. Deane in 1955, and later in the decade also produced an excellent study of Laski's thought, apparently endorsing its most significant features. However, this was also a turning point for him, for he never published this work, which only appeared in an abridged version in 1995 – after his own death (Miliband, 1995). In Parliamentary Socialism (Miliband, 1961a), Miliband acknowledged his debt to Laski, but The State in Capitalist Society (Miliband, 1969) did not mention him or his work. He subsequently continued to express his deep affection for him, but no longer viewed him as a major thinker. However, shortly before his own death, Miliband paid Laski a final tribute, which may have constituted a partial reappraisal of his contribution in the light of some subtle shifts in Miliband's own thinking (Miliband, 1993). It is also very likely that Laski had exercised a stronger continuing influence than he appreciated – at the very least by initially raising questions with which Miliband remained preoccupied. Many of these concerned the relationships between class, state and democracy – the focus of this article.
Others have noted the fact that Laski and Miliband spanned liberalism and Marxism. In the case of Laski, this has been widely argued, and often seen as a major weakness in his work (Deane, 1955; Greenleaf, 1981; Zylstra, 1968). Nevertheless, two of his contemporaries regarded it as a positive characteristic. Thus, John Strachey argued that it was Laski's unresolved themes that ‘gave him his hold over the mind of a whole generation of the British Labour Movement’, and he continued:
After all, the contradictions were in our minds too – in a sense they were in the objective situation itself as it had developed historically … Laski performed an immense service for us by making these contradictions conscious and articulate; for he gave us thereby at least one pre-requisite for solving them (Strachey, 1962, pp. 196–7).
Writing as a minister in the post-war Labour government, Strachey clearly believed that the contradictions had now been resolved and that Laski's task of making them ‘conscious and articulate’ was a past service. The other positive judgement was by H. N. Brailsford. Introducing Laski to an audience in 1932, he stated:
The academic student who is half of Laski is most himself … among the individualistic rationalists of the eighteenth century and the French Revolution; their passion for liberty burns in him. The man of experience who is the other half of him is the contemporary of the Russian revolution: he understands its imperious call to order and planning, its grasp of the significance of the machine, its passion for social equality, its sense that the whole is greater than the part … His work is to attempt a synthesis of these two tendencies, which are shaping the world of today and tomorrow … He grasps both poles of this contradiction … with equal integrity, and strives to reconcile them with an effort of intellectual sincerity that is itself a creative act (Brailsford, 1932, pp. 13–4).
Clearly, this judgement also reflects a particular historical era, which contained optimistic illusions about Stalin's Soviet Union. However, it remains illuminating because it recognises the importance of Laski's attempt to reconcile the two traditions that concern us here.
The contradictory nature of Miliband's thinking was much less apparent and has provoked less comment. Yet it was notoriously the view of Nicos Poulantzas (1936–79) in their celebrated debate on the nature of the capitalist state (Poulantzas, 1969; 1976). For, he criticised Miliband for ‘importing’ alien concepts into Marxism, allowing himself to be unduly influenced by bourgeois methodological principles. This meant that he had committed the ‘humanistic’ fallacy, in which ‘man’ was seen as the agent and in which explanations were ultimately sought at the level of individual motivations rather than in ‘the study of the objective coordinates that determine the distribution of agents into social classes and the contradictions between these classes’ (Poulantzas, 1969, p. 242). Subsequently, many others came to view Miliband as essentially a radical elitist theorist, rather than a fully Marxist one (Aronowitz and Bratsis, 2002). Others also noted that he was keen to build bridges between Marxism and other traditions and saw this as a positive feature of his work (Coates and Panitch, 2003; Panitch, 1995).
Yet if there were contradictions within the writings of Laski and Miliband, this was not because of muddled thinking. It was rather because they sought to understand the complex history of their own times – history that did not conform to the categories of a single theoretical framework.
Laski's preoccupations, until at least 1926, were with the values of freedom, tolerance, pluralism, discussion, constitutionalism and democracy (Newman, 1993; Hirst, 1989; Zylstra, 1968). This does not mean that he was indifferent to class inequality: on the contrary, this became an increasing concern and had already brought about some very significant changes in his thinking by the mid-1920s. He had thus shifted from his early pluralist position, which had emphasised the importance of multiple centres of power and allegiance, to one that favoured a much stronger state, primarily because of his growing concern about class inequality. Because he had come to believe that resolute state action was necessary to alleviate such inequality, he had moved much closer to Fabian social democracy – though without the total abandonment of his earlier position. Yet the issue of class had not become fundamental within his analytical and political framework. Liberal values remained predominant, but were now interpreted in such a way as to lead to broadly socialist conclusions. This was the essential message of his major work, A Grammar of Politics (Laski, 1925). His overwhelming emphasis was on politics as the progressive acceptance of reason and his work was designed to persuade everyone that this demonstrated the need for change. Reason was therefore seen as a universal value, rather than one which was class dependent. This, and his stress on peaceful evolution and constitutionalism, also meant that he totally rejected Marxism. Thus, his first pamphlet on the subject claimed that the theory was built on hatred rather than the love which had inspired earlier socialists and that it was therefore a ‘gospel of impossible despair’ (Laski, 1922, p. 25, p. 44). Nor did he draw any distinction between Marxist theory and Soviet practice, viewing the latter as the inevitable outcome of the former.
Miliband's outlook was quite different. By the age of sixteen he was already interpreting society through a Marxist perspective on class and viewed the overthrow of capitalism as the overwhelming priority. These fundamental convictions continued after the war and his early work was effectively a critique of universalist political conceptions that failed to appreciate the materialist conception of history. This was evident in an essay on Robert Owen in 1954 (Miliband, 1954) and in his monumental PhD thesis on the thought of the French Revolution (Miliband, 1956). Above all, Parliamentary Socialism (Miliband, 1961a) condemned the Labour party for putting parliament and the constitution above class and socialism. His fundamental aim, culminating in The State in Capitalist Society (Miliband, 1969), was to demonstrate that, despite its pretensions of democracy or pluralism, the state was capitalist and primarily served the interests of the dominant class. His analysis of this was subtle and multidimensional, but his treatment of democracy was mainly designed to demonstrate that it was both a mechanism for class rule and a form of ideological legitimation through which capitalist dominance was upheld and advanced.
This does not mean that Miliband was indifferent to democracy, but that it was not integrated into his theories at this stage. When he discussed capitalist states, he certainly acknowledged that liberal democracy was a particularly powerful way of attuning working-class people to the system. He also believed that this meant that there would be no support for violent revolution in a capitalist democracy (Miliband, 1958). However, he did not make this point as an expression of revulsion about violence or through a passionate commitment to democratic procedures (as in Laski's work), but rather as a statement of fact that needed to be borne in mind. Nor were his criticisms of the democratic failings of the Soviet political system the predominant aspect in his interpretation of communism. On the contrary, he believed that the Soviet bloc still represented a genuine path to socialism and that it could develop in ways that were far more positive than capitalism because it had abolished private property and therefore had a socialist base. He put this view most confidently after a trip to the Soviet Union in 1961, when he considered it quite absurd to think that a multiparty system should be established there. In his view, there was no long-term conflict of interest between the state elite and the rank and file: more political freedom would develop with greater security (Miliband, 1961b). In other words, his argument was that the class basis of the state superseded its current political shortcomings.
The initial conceptions of the relationships between class, state and democracy held by Laski and Miliband could therefore be viewed as mirror images of each other. Laski focused on democracy and related values, attempting to accommodate his increasing concern with class inequality into a fundamentally liberal framework. For Miliband, by contrast, the Marxist conception of class and class/state relations was his central preoccupation. Although he cared about democracy, this was not a fundamental part of his interpretative framework. However, both would shift when confronted with real world crises, which also raised crucial issues for their existing theoretical positions.
For Laski the crisis is quite easy to identify. His political theory had been posited on the assumptions that, through doctrinal elaboration and persuasion and through the deliberate use of state power, it was possible to effect social and economic reform by peaceful, constitutional means. However, a series of developments between 1926 and 1933 appeared to provide increasing evidence that these propositions were implausible. The crisis in Miliband's political thought is more difficult to pinpoint because it was less specific and the shift was less dramatic. Nevertheless, the year 1968 initiated an important evolution, which was to make democracy an integral element in his theories. In particular, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia had a catalytic effect on his whole political perspective. His immediate reaction was to argue that bourgeois democratic society ‘is better than a society of authoritarian socialism’. 1 This represented a fundamental change from the position that he had argued in 1961. For, he was now suggesting that democracy was indeed an independent value, which was not subordinate to class/state relations.
The Search for Synthesis
Laski's Multilayered Thought
The increasing role of Marxist analysis in Laski's thought merged into some of his existing assumptions about class and the relationship between economic and political power. Even as a student before the First World War, he had expressed the view that the Guild Socialists were ‘very right in arguing that the root-evil of today is the regarding of labour as a commodity that can be bought and sold’ 2 and by April 1917 he argued:
Once accept the postulate that political power is the handmaiden of economic power – which seems to me a historical truism – and I think it follows that the state which manipulates that power is also a capitalist institution. The fight between labor and capital … seems to me part of a historic process which one day will take us out of the capitalist system just as in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries we got away from the feudal system (DeWolfe, 1953, p. I, 76).
This might sound Marxist, but Laski frequently attributed the theory about the relationship between economic and political power to the seventeenth-century English theorist, Harrington, rather than to Marx. However, after witnessing the role of the dominant classes and the state during the 1926 general strike, he expressed a sentiment that he would frequently reiterate over the next few years:
It is, historically, at least dubious whether parliamentary institutions are capable of making … [fundamental economic reorganisation] successfully. Their success has been in the direction of consolidating after a revolution – of bringing political liberty rather than abandoning economic privilege. Their success, moreover, demands an atmosphere of concession in public life which is increasingly rare in England … The concessions which are elementary cut at the root of the power held by the property-owning classes. I know of no instance where such a class has acquiesced in its own supercession (Laski, 1927, p. 194).
Laski now found Marxism increasingly convincing, but his attitude remained complex. It was, he now argued, folly to deny the economic foundation upon which the theory rested. In addition to the role of the state, he also claimed that the influence of property upon ideas, law, journalism, education and the social outlook of the churches was ‘in all large outlines quite final as a determinant‘. Marx had also shown ‘with unsurpassed clarity’ that there was no common interest between owners and workers and that the balance of power was overwhelmingly tilted in the interest of the employers. Capitalism, he also accepted, resulted in combinations and crises and endemic conflict. Yet, he still argued that the theory of surplus value was erroneous; that Marx's interpretation of history gave too little room to the significance of non-economic factors; that it was a doctrine of violence; and that a revolution was unlikely to succeed, but, if successful, would result in a self-serving dictatorship. Nevertheless, he maintained that Marxism had truth as a social philosophy. It was ‘true’ in the sense that it provided insights into the historical process and the nature of capitalist society. But its power came above all from its appeal (Laski, 1928, p. 29).
Its ‘truth’, he argued, was contingent, rather than necessary. The only way to counter the ‘truth’ and power of this inspirational social philosophy was to prove that peaceful, constitutional change was possible. Yet he was already pessimistic about the ability of the Labour party to do this. For example, in a short, but ground-breaking article soon after Labour won the 1929 general election (as a minority government), he demonstrated the way the Labour party itself, the state apparatus and the key companies and banks were still ruled by the same class as before the First World War. His approach in analysing the social composition of the elites foreshadowed Miliband's in The State in Capitalist Society and his conclusion was not dissimilar to that of Parliamentary Socialism. He thus anticipated some reform, but no movement ‘toward a social, as distinct from a political, democracy’ and he concluded that, even with Labour in office, the English aristocracy ‘may … be pardoned if they feel that in surrendering the shadow of political power they still retain its effective substance’ (Laski, 1930, p. 673).
The failure of the second Labour government in 1931 to withstand the cuts demanded by financial institutions pushed him further to the left. Yet, the implication of his condemnation of Ramsay MacDonald and other Labour leaders was that they had had a choice about the course that they had taken. It was not structurally determined that the interests and policies of the dominant classes would prevail. MacDonald could have taken them on and invoked the support of the party for an alternative policy. In other words, the contingency of the truth of Marxism remained: the failure of the Labour government had simply made it more probable that the working classes would embrace the doctrine.
The triumph of Hitler appeared to confirm his fundamental fear that, when faced with a stark choice, capitalists would suppress democracy so as to maintain privilege. The State in Theory and Practice (Laski, 1935) thus endorsed Marxism and the view that dictatorship was an inherent tendency within capitalism. Yet, the crisis in Laski's political thought had not led him to adopt Marxism in any conventional sense. Instead his attitudes to contemporary developments manifested oscillations and contradictions because of the clash between his values on the one hand and his intellectual acceptance of historical materialism on the other. This was evident in his attitudes to Soviet communism and Roosevelt's New Deal.
Since he still identified Marxist theory with Soviet practice, his increasing pessimism about capitalist democracy made him more inclined to see virtues in the Soviet Union. He thus returned from his first visit there in the summer of 1934 proclaiming that the ‘mental climate is one of intense exhilaration, of a buoyant, and optimistic faith I have never before encountered’ (Laski, 1934a, p. 70). Furthermore:
the intolerance and repression characteristic of proletarian dictatorship are the symptoms of communist insecurity; they will disappear as conviction of security emerges in Russia. But for those who … are able to adapt themselves to the foundations of the new system here are opportunities, and therefore freedoms, comparable in volume to those of the early days of the industrial revolution. The class affected is, of course, both different and wider, and it does not depend upon its ability to procure the use of capital for its private well-being. For this reason, I believe the claim of the bolsheviks that their form of state is a higher form than that of capitalist democracy to be well founded (Laski, 1934b, p. 101).
This appeared to suggest that he had abandoned his belief in democracy as a supremely important political value. Taking it for granted that the Soviet Union constituted a form of state serving the interests of the working class, he seemed to be suggesting that this, in itself, meant that it constituted a ‘higher’ form than liberal democracy since this served the interests of the capitalist class. Yet, his generally positive conclusions had been prefaced by a clear condemnation of the Soviet dictatorship. His liberal and democratic outlook tempered the extent to which he could eulogise Stalin, and he became more critical over the next few years. For example, when Beatrice and Sydney Webb published a second edition of their Soviet Communism – A New Civilisation in 1937 (notoriously removing the question mark that had been there in the first edition), Laski criticised their gullible acceptance of the show trials. Arguing against his own earlier view that the repression was a function of Soviet insecurity, he now expressed scepticism about the idea that ‘tolerance will come automatically in the Soviet Union as security comes‘, fearing that ‘a new dark age lies before us through which we have to pass before a recovery of tolerance becomes again a possible adventure’ (Laski, 1938, p. 130).
The continuing dominance of Laski's liberal values was also evident in his attitude to developments in the United States. For, as soon as he came to believe that Roosevelt was seriously trying to make fundamental social and economic changes through the New Deal, he became a firm supporter. Roosevelt, he now argued:
is the first statesman in a great capitalist society who has sought deliberately and systematically to use the power of the State to subordinate the primary assumptions of that society to certain vital purposes. He is the first statesman deliberately to experiment on a wholesale scale with the limitation of the profit-making motive. He is the first statesman, again in a wholesale way, to attack not the secondary, but the primary manifestations of the doctrine of laissez-faire. He is the first statesman who, of his own volition, and without coercion, either direct or indirect, has placed in the hands of organised labour a weapon which, if it be used successfully, is bound to result in a vital readjustment of the relative bargaining-power of Capital and Labour. He is the first statesman also who … has sought to use the political authority of the State to compel over the whole area of economic effort, a significant readjustment of the national income (Laski, 1933, p. 1).
However, he was by no means sure that the New Deal would succeed and his major writings in this period reflect the bifurcation in his mind. His Marxist-influenced analysis of class/state relations led him to expect revolution or counter-revolution. Simultaneously, his overwhelming preference for liberal democracy meant that he constantly sought to demonstrate the need for egalitarianism and social justice so that the values of freedom, pluralism and constitutionalism could be preserved.
Although he detested violence, he believed that the Second World War provided some real opportunities for the creation of a new synthesis. For fascism could be defeated only with the active commitment and participation of the working classes. And he believed that such commitment could be elicited only if they were convinced that this was a war to bring about fundamental change. In these circumstances, he saw the war as the time to bring about a ‘revolution by consent’ (Laski, 1940; 1943); and after 1941, he hoped and believed that the grand alliance against fascism would eventually lead to an international transformation of this kind.
In the post-war period his dominant mood reverted to pessimism. Within Britain itself he was cautiously positive about the reforms of the post-war Labour government, accepting that the development of the welfare state and full employment constituted a move towards the new class equilibrium for which he had been calling. But, despite these gains, he held that a socialist government had ‘fairly narrow limits within which it may successfully manoeuvre’ and:
There is a point, never capable of exact definition, up to which the men of property are willing to buy off the opponents of capitalism by measures of social reform. But when that point is reached there is always the gravest danger that men of property, if they have to make their choice, between their possessions and democratic institutions, will prefer their possessions, and destroy democratic institutions (Laski, 1948a, pp. 27–8).
He also knew that the government had not made any attempt to penetrate the ‘citadel’ of capitalist power. He therefore remained agnostic about the ultimate prognosis. In any case he was well aware of the shift in international power that had taken place and he was deeply depressed about the United States. Thus The American Democracy (Laski, 1948b) was a sustained critique of the way in which capitalist dominance and business ideology had permeated all the social institutions and perverted the democratic ethic which, he believed, had formerly played a crucial part in the construction of the American state. However, he was now also convinced that the Soviet Union was a brutal dictatorship – and in an introduction to The Communist Manifesto (Laski, 1948c), he argued that even in theoretical terms Leninism was a deviation from Marxism in which there was no basis for a single party either before or after the seizure of power. Leninist communism was not therefore of universal application. Moreover, in any country with a strong democratic tradition it would be both retrograde and counterproductive to seek to emulate it or to base socialism upon it. For democracy was in advance of Soviet-style communism.
Laski's thinking can be viewed as multilayered, with each previous layer coexisting with those that were subsequently added. Thus Marxism never replaced the differing forms of liberalism that lay beneath it. Instead Laski sought to incorporate Marxism within his earlier political perspectives. Liberal values remained dominant and ultimately meant that he could not possibly accept Stalinism or Leninism. But Marxist analysis of the relations between class and the state provided an immanent critique of capitalist democracy. His thinking remained contradictory because he could never wholly reconcile the different elements in his thought.
Miliband and the Quest for Socialist Democracy
One of Miliband's criticisms of Laski was that he had failed to engage sufficiently with Marxist theory. 3 The implication was that Marxism itself could provide the reconciliation between class, state and democracy that Laski had sought. This is what Miliband himself attempted after the crises of 1968, particularly in Marxism and Politics (Miliband, 1977).
As he noted, Marx and Engels had never attempted to provide a systematic political theory and most of their political writings were in fragmentary and ephemeral texts. Thus Marxists often regarded politics as an epiphenomenon of economics, rather than a subject in its own right. But Miliband drew attention to the dangers that had ensued from ‘an extraordinarily complacent view of the ease with which political problems … would be resolved in post-revolutionary societies’ (Miliband, 1977, p. 11). One of his goals was to demonstrate that democracy must be regarded as an integral part of socialism.
For Miliband, a key aspect of this task lay in an exploration of the relationships between social class and political power in different forms of society. When discussing class and class conflict he made a significant observation:
To speak of class conflict is to speak of a central reality by way of a metaphor. For classes as entities do not enter into conflict … For the most part … the conflict is fought out between groups of people who are part of a given class, and possibly, though not certainly, representative of it (Miliband, 1977, p. 28).
This point was related very directly to his exploration of problems in the establishment of socialist democracy. For if, as he believed, organisations were necessary both to bring about change and to implement socialism, their relationship with the class they claimed to represent was of key significance. He argued that the ‘unity of the working class' was a very dubious notion that normally obscured permanent and intractable differences that existed in any social aggregate. The problems were then compounded when it was suggested that a ‘vanguard party’ could embody such unity, and he concluded:
It is clear that more-than-one party is in fact the ‘natural’ expression of the politics of labour. ‘The party’ as the single legitimate expression of the labour movement is an invention which postdates the Bolshevik revolution (Miliband, 1977, p. 129).
This was very close to Laski's position in his 1948 introduction to The Communist Manifesto. However, it differed fundamentally from Miliband's own outlook in 1961, when he had poured scorn on the idea that there should be more than one party in the Soviet Union. Yet he also acknowledged that greater representativeness, for example by two parties, could reduce effectiveness. Moreover, revolutions were probably always made by minorities and this meant that the claim that the minority represented the class – substitutionism – was a permanent problem, which was inherent in the very notion of a socialist revolution. Since the working class was not united it could not be represented by a single party in any normal circumstances. But, he went further than this, arguing that resolution of the tension between class and party was not wholly possible.
Another key issue in relation to socialist democracy involved the question of how a committed party could overthrow capitalism. The most familiar line of argument in the insurrectionary tradition was that the overthrow of capitalism would involve ‘smashing the state’ and replacing it with ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’. However, Miliband argued that Marxists had paid no serious attention to the kind of state that would be necessary after a revolution. 4 The general assumption was that there would be popular power with some kind of vestigial coercive instrument to prevent counter-revolution. But this was completely inadequate:
Where power has been seized, revolutionaries have to create a strong state in place of the old if their revolution is to survive and begin to redeem its promise and purpose. This is bound to be an arduous task, particularly because the material circumstances in which it has to be undertaken are likely to be unfavourable and further aggravated by the hostility and opposition of the new regime's internal and external enemies. Inevitably some of its own supporters, and possibly many, will falter and turn away when the exaltation of the first phase wears off as it confronts the mundane and difficult requirements of the second. The new regime may retain a very wide measure of popular support and find it possible to rely on continued popular involvement. It will most probably go under quite soon if it cannot. But the tension remains between state direction and popular power; and that tension cannot be resolved by invocations and slogans (Miliband, 1977, p. 181).
Taken together, his point about ‘substitutionism’ being inherent in class—party relations, and his claim that ‘smashing the state’ in a post-revolutionary situation was a fantasy, constituted a very fundamental critique of the classical Marxist position. In effect, he was arguing that, whatever the effects of the specific historical circumstances in creating the Soviet dictatorship, those circumstances were not a sufficient explanation for its establishment. There were inescapable problems in class—party relations and there was an inescapable need for a strong state in a post-revolutionary society. But Miliband was also advocating a reformist strategy that would involve the establishment of institutions to minimise the dangers.
Any party that really attempted to implement policies that threatened the capitalist system would face the active opposition of all conservative forces, both inside and outside the state sector. If a government decided to press ahead in this situation its only major resource would be popular support. But this would need to be mobilised through ‘a flexible and complex network of organs of popular participation operating throughout civil society and intended not to replace the state but to complement it’ (Miliband, 1977, p. 188). This would involve a concept of ‘dual power’ in which the working classes were not challenging the government, but were supporting it in a semi-revolutionary and exceedingly fraught state of affairs. If a reformist strategy was thus taken seriously it must, he argued, lead to a vast extension of democratic participation in all areas of civic life amounting to a very considerable transformation of the state. His assumption here was that the existing democratic institutions would be supplemented by new ones, which would strengthen the attempts of the government to bring about fundamental change. He concluded:
That process of transition both includes and requires radical changes in the structures, modes of operation, and personnel of the existing state, as well as the creation of a network of organs of popular participation amounting to ‘dual power‘. The ‘reformist’ strategy, at least in this ‘strong’ version of it, may produce a combination of direction and democracy sufficiently effective to keep the conservative forces in check and to provide the conditions under which the process of transition may proceed (Miliband, 1977, p. 189, original emphases).
He accepted that no such possibility existed in many regimes and that even in bourgeois democratic systems there was no guarantee of success. Nevertheless, the dangers of the alternative must also be appreciated, for:
Regimes which do, either by necessity or by choice, depend on the suppression of all opposition and the stifling of all civic freedoms must be taken to represent a disastrous regression, in political terms, from bourgeois democracy, whatever the economic and social achievements of which they may be capable (Miliband, 1977, p. 189).
Yet, Miliband still implied that the values he was promoting were integral to Marxism – at least to a Marxism that paid regard to the lessons of history. His claim that the freedoms that existed in bourgeois democracy had been the ‘product of centuries of unremitting popular struggles’ (Miliband, 1977, p. 190) seemed to suggest that they owed nothing at all to liberal ideology. In other words, it was not necessary to reach outside the Marxist tradition to reconcile class, state and democracy. However, Marxism and Politics was written when Miliband was relatively confident about the prospects for socialism and did not represent his final position.
Three years later he went further in defining his stance in relation to all contemporary communist regimes.
The point is that the regimes in question are not simply monopolistic and repressive from temporary necessity and transient adverse circumstances, but by their very structure … [T]hey are based on a view of ‘socialism’ as requiring the existence of one leading party whose leaders do exercise monopolistic power; and monopolistic power by definition means the exclusion from power of everyone else, and also the deprivation of rights – speech, association, publication – which are essential for the exercise of power or at least pressure and which are so to speak the oxygen of civil society (Miliband, 1980, pp. 13–4, original emphasis).
Nor was it valid to regard these regimes as ‘transitional’ from capitalism to socialism. The abolition of the private ownership and control of the main means of production was a gigantic step and a necessary condition for socialism, but certainly not a sufficient one. The economic base did not necessarily produce anything like democratic and egalitarian forms in economic, social and political life or anything like a ‘socialist consciousness' which would prepare the ground for them. To be credible, the notion of ‘transitionality’ would suggest some degree of progress in terms of socialist consciousness. In this respect, Soviet-type regimes were no more ‘transitional’ than capitalist societies. They were ‘monopolistic regimes that are not socialist or “on the way” to socialism’ (Miliband, 1980, p. 16).
This suggested that he was now edging towards a definition of socialism in which political factors assumed equal importance with the issue of the ownership of the means of production. However, this was complicated by the fact that from the late 1970s until his death in 1994, Miliband was forced to grapple with two major problems: the threats to class-based politics and traditional socialist and Marxist conceptions in capitalist societies; and the repressive nature and ultimate collapse of communist-style regimes. The ways in which he reacted to these problems revealed different aspects of his thinking about class, state and democracy.
In relation to capitalist societies he tended to take a recognisably Marxist position. He thus totally opposed the revisionist view that cleavages based on ethnicity and gender were as important as those based on class (Miliband, 1985; 1989a). And, with some refinement in his position, he continued to argue that the state in capitalist societies was dominated by, and advanced the interests of, the dominant class (Miliband, 1983). But, in his evaluation of communist states the political characteristics became increasingly important, and when the collapse began in 1989, the centrality of democracy in his political thought became still more pronounced. It was, he argued, their authoritarian nature that was the most important reason for the crisis that had engulfed them, for the lack of democracy and civic freedoms had affected every aspect of their life (Miliband, 1989b, pp. 31–2). He now insisted that the only possibility for the left was its demonstrable commitment to democracy, built on the ancient proposition that ‘only power can check power’:
One of the worst aspects of Communist regimes has been their seeming indifference, in practice, to humane values, their bureaucratic insensitivity, their resort to arbitrary action … Governments, of whatever kind, can never be trusted by their own volition, to act decently. Socialist democracy would make it one of its main tasks to build strong barriers against their acting otherwise (Miliband, 1989b, p. 36).
Miliband still implied that he was operating within a Marxist framework, without needing to import values from outside this theoretical perspective. But this was becoming increasingly implausible, for the argument that it was always necessary to build strong barriers against governments acting arbitrarily or inhumanely was surely based on classical political liberalism. Miliband had now really evolved to a point where his analysis of class and the capitalist state was based on Marxism, while his critique of communist systems and his notion of socialist democracy also rested on liberal and other non-Marxist traditions.
He seemed to recognise this himself in his posthumous book, Socialism for a Sceptical Age (Miliband, 1994). For example, he acknowledged that warnings about the dangers of comprehensive social change could not be brushed aside:
The whole experience of the twentieth century shows well enough how real the dangers are; and I may say here that my own approach in this book to the question of socialist advance has been greatly influenced by my awareness of the delicacy of the enterprise and of the need to guard against authoritarian pseudo-solutions to the problems it must encounter (Miliband, 1994, p. 49).
And, he justified the references to Marx and Marxist theorists in the text as follows:
The reason for this is that the kind of reappraisal of socialism which is undertaken here demands an engagement with Marxism. Such an engagement involves an acknowledgement of what remains of enduring importance in classical Marxism – and there is a lot more of this than is currently said; but it also involves a move away from some of its propositions. Either way, I believe that Marxism has to be taken as a major point of reference in the discussion of socialism (Miliband, 1994, pp. 4–5).
He was adamant that democracy was an essential characteristic of socialism, and that it must be respected both in the battle against capitalism and in the creation of a socialist system. Nor was this point simply affirmed in an abstract and general way. Rather, he elaborated the need for a separation of powers and constitutional safeguards for the citizen, and he endorsed the fundamentally liberal view that even popular power must be limited in order to preserve individual freedoms. Yet, none of this tempered his bitter condemnation of the current system as a travesty of democracy and constitutionalism.
Miliband's political position never shifted dramatically, but this combination of themes did suggest an important change. Above all, his definition of socialism was itself very important. There were, he argued, ‘three core propositions or themes which define socialism, all three equally important, and each related to, and dependent upon, the others. These are democracy, egalitarianism, and socialization of a predominant part of the economy’ (Miliband, 1994, p. 51). In other words, egalitarian relationships emanating from public ownership, and the need for a democratic state, were of equal importance. This was Miliband's synthesis.
Conclusion: In Praise of Contradictions
Laski and Miliband had started from different positions and their conceptions of the relationships between class, state and democracy continued to diverge. At the end of his life Laski was still trying to incorporate everything into a political ideology that was essentially built up from liberalism and his fervent belief in democracy. Marxism had been incorporated into liberalism to act as its critique, but there was no attempt to claim that his key values came from Marxism. He also still maintained a conception of democracy that originated in his early pluralism and was far wider than a conventional representative model. Thus, in some of his very last writings he appeared to be searching for something that would include functional and federal decentralisation, industrial democracy and the parliamentary system. His work was not consistent, but its contradictions challenged socialists to seek a resolution that he could never quite achieve himself.
Miliband's attempted synthesis differed. He was undoubtedly a more consistent theorist and his ultimate position offered a simultaneous critique both of capitalism and the communist experience, while delineating the major features of a socialist democracy. Yet he had not achieved this reconciliation between class, state and democracy within a Marxist framework. In reality, he too was really offering a synthesis between Marxism and other traditions, and it is notable that his last work did not claim to be Marxist, but socialist.
While their final positions still differed, there were also some highly significant similarities between Laski and Miliband. At a philosophical level, they both believed in historical contingency and human agency, refusing to accept any form of structural determinism. Both also combined empirical evidence with theoretically informed analysis, rather than engaging in abstruse abstractions. Above all, both were convinced that democracy was a value that must be nurtured in any social system. This meant that if socialism were ever to replace the class-dominated liberal democratic state, it must be a multiparty democracy with political and civil freedoms.
The fact that Laski and Miliband straddled the Marxist and liberal traditions might be noted, but why should it be celebrated? Ever since the crisis of socialism and the collapse of communism in the late twentieth century, most discussion has been ‘one-dimensional’ – largely confined to debate about the extent to which the capitalist market should control all forms of public and private life. Yet, there is considerable evidence that inequality has increased (particularly between the poorest and the wealthiest, both within and between countries) and that the major centres of corporate capitalist power are stronger than ever (United Nations, 2004). Yet, if Marxist theses still provide crucial insights into the relationships between the economy, society and politics, it is also surely true that modern states require a division of power, a recognition of rights, a robust civil society and a recognition of the liberties that have been secured. In this respect, the classical Marxist notion about post-capitalist society ‘must be rejected for what it is: an exaggerated, anti-political, and never-to-be-realised utopia’ (Keane, 1984, p. 256, quoted in Pierson, 1986, p. 148).
If political problems are complex and multidimensional there are, I believe, some definite advantages in conceiving of solutions in terms that span the Marxist and liberal traditions: their world views differ, but both are equally necessary. In particular, liberals normally find it exceedingly difficult to perceive society as structured on a class basis even though they may accept that inequality between individuals both exists and is unjust. Similarly, while Marxists might regard rights and the separation and division of power as advantageous they do not generally believe that such notions have an intrinsic value. But Laski and Miliband were able simultaneously to hold both kinds of insight as equally important: to regard Marxist notions about class and the state as generally valid analytically, while accepting liberal notions about rights and institutions as crucial in normative terms. This is not simply of theoretical importance, but also has political implications. In particular, any future socialist regimes will need aspects of liberalism, for Marxism itself provides no adequate ethical criteria to preclude dictatorship (Lukes, 1985). However, Marxism provides an ongoing critique of the injustices and inequalities within capitalist society and demands fundamental changes – demands that are often evaded by liberal rhetoric and self-justification. Judgements will always need to be made between values emanating from liberalism and analyses based in Marxism. Such judgements are integral to socialism, and both Laski and Miliband helped to clarify this fact.
Footnotes
1
Letter to Liebman, 1 September 1968 (unpublished Miliband papers, University of Leeds), quoted in Newman (2002), pp. 142–3.
2
Letter to Frida Laski (undated), Summer Term 1914 (unpublished Laski papers, University of Hull), quoted in Newman (1993), p. 27.
3
Interview with author, December 1991.
4
While he regarded this as a general weakness in Marxism, he argued it in relation to Lenin in particular. He had already provided a critique of Lenin's thinking on such issues (Miliband, 1970).