Democratic Socialism and Anarchism

Text/Fries Fries

foreword

This is an article I wrote in the early days, when I was just beginning to get in touch with works related to democratic socialism, and I didn't even read much about Marx. My ideology at the time could be classified as a reformist democratic socialist, but after I read Luxemburg's "Social Reform or Revolution?" ” and “On the Russian Revolution,” my thinking changed, so now I’m actually a revolutionary democratic socialist. In addition to the fact that the ideology shown in this article is inconsistent with my current ideology, this article is also full of various problems, and I will also publish another member's criticism of this article. As with the previous article, please read my article with a critical mind.

Democratic socialism and anarchism are very similar in this distrust of the state, and they both oppose the interpretation of public ownership as state-owned authoritarian socialism. I have explained this many times before, but here I will directly quote the summary of the influence of Marxist philosophy on the world in Chapter 1 of Part VII of the History of World Philosophy by Schdurich to review my review. the opinion of:

Marxists do not realize that public ownership of the means of production, confiscation of all private property and making it "social" common property, results in nationalization, which means that the bureaucracy will replace the manager to manipulate the operation of the country's economy . The complex modern national economy inevitably requires a huge bureaucracy. Compared with facing a single "capitalist", workers will feel more helpless in the face of such a huge institution.

If there is one metaphor to sum up the consensus among democratic socialists and anarchists, it is this: they prefer to trust the people, or themselves, than to trust the dragon slayer who may eventually degenerate into a dragon.

But democratic socialists are not without their differences with the anarchists, who hold different positions on how socialism should be achieved. Democratic socialists advocate constitutional democracy, and they believe the issue of capitalism should be brought to the table and put on the agenda. They believe that if the socialist system is forcibly established through revolution, firstly, the capitalists will be oppressed by tough policies, and secondly, the people will still be unclear about the problems of capitalism, which will eventually make the capitalists unclear. Bourgeois ideology is making a comeback. Some authoritarian socialists may retort that education can be carried out after socialism is forcibly established. Isn't the problem solved? However, in order to prevent bourgeois ideology from counterattacking in a short period of time, it is necessary to carry out high-pressure control of the people's ideology. It is impossible to achieve in a short period of time the way to enable people to think correctly through general education (humanities, logical thinking and critical thinking) for the whole people. Ultimately this will result in the state abandoning the principle of free speech and losing its political ability to correct errors. The greatest function of freedom of speech has never been freedom itself. In addition, to a large extent, in addition to the right to vote, the power of the people is reflected in the freedom of speech.

At this point, I have to quote John Stuart Mill's discussion of the principle of free speech in his book "On Liberty":

Opinions that authorities attempt to suppress may be correct. Of course those who want to suppress it don't admit it's correct, but they can never be good forever. They have no right to decide what is right and wrong for all of humanity, or to exclude all other people's ways of judging. By refusing to listen to an opinion because they are certain that it is wrong, they are equating their certainty with absolute certainty. Any prohibition of free discussion is an affirmation of one's own infallibility. Perhaps for this general reason, and not for a reason that ordinary is not good, the practice can be justified. Unfortunately, in human self-knowledge, they are far from applying the fact that they are fallible to practical judgment as theoretically has always been possible.

Democratic socialists still believe that the existence of a bureaucratic government under popular sovereignty is necessary, such as to ensure the enforcement of laws and social order. The system that is easiest to survive in the short term has never been a democratic system or a socialist system. Instead, totalitarian systems and capitalist systems can develop better and more competitive than democratic and socialist systems in many cases. Therefore, if there is no bureaucratic government to guarantee the implementation of the Constitution and other laws, in such a situation, the maintenance of socialism is not guaranteed.

Most anarchists believe that socialism needs to be established through revolution, but as I said above, revolution does not really bring the problem to the table, and it is still easy to lead to the restoration of capitalism in the end, and it is even possible It will make the country lose its political self-correction ability because it loses the principle of free speech. In addition, like war, another violent action, war will lead to national antagonism, while revolution will lead to ideological antagonism, which is different from class antagonism and is a vicious circle of hatred and violence. Therefore, democratic socialists believe that through the means of revolution, the road of socialism will become more difficult, or even impossible to advance at all. Continuing to argue that only by letting the people be the main force in criticizing capitalism can socialism be truly established.

But in any case, democratic socialists are only possible to unite with anarchists, not to compromise with authoritarian socialists, because if we still do not learn from history, we will only be stuck in the cycle of history unable to progress.