Democracy and Socialism - A Challenge

DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM–A CHALLENGE

DR. R C. GUPTA
Bolkar College, Indore

Although democracy and the labour movement appear outwardly antithetical they are, as a matter of fact, complementary to each other. The labour movement has been powerfully helped by democracy, especially since the introduction of the universal adult vote. Though the Trade Union movement was conceived as an economic movement, yet it has everywhere powerfully affected democracy, by organizing the voting strength of labour. Likewise, with its rule of law, guaranteeing the liberty of the individual, freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association, and the party system, ensuring periodical change of government, reflecting the will of the people, without the use of violence, democracy has accomplished in some modern countries a socialist revolution through constitutional and peaceful methods. It has succeeded in greatly modifying the rigours and the injustice of the capitalist social order. Trade Unionism and democracy thus have mutually helped each other.

On studying the history of the labour movement, we find that it has always influenced the principles and the working of the State. The earliest and the best known was the Chartist Movement in Great Britain, which decisively promoted the fundamental ideals of democracy. “The years 1825 to 1830 were the period of its incubation; from 1831 to the end of 1834 it developed its theories and exhibited great intellectual vigour; from 1837 to 1842 it received its practical and organized form; and from 1849 onwards its vitality was rapidly ebbing away and it died in 1855, leaving only here and there scattered stragglers who obstinately refused to believe that Chartism was extinct.”¹

The Chartist Movement grew out of a syndicalist mood of the workers which had been given, after the disillusion of 1832, an anti-parliamentary slant by Owen. Two lines of policies struggled for mastery in the movement: the Moral Force Group led by Feargus O’ Conner and the Physical Force Group led by William Lovett. The movement led to a tremendous deepening of the Trade Union organizations and inspired a number of mass actions including a general strike. But the developments that have given the name to the movement were the elaboration and adoption of the People’s Charter. The “six-point” Charter made the following demands: (1) universal suffrage; (2) equal electoral districts; (3) abolition of property qualifications for parliamentary candidates; (4) annul parliaments; (5) secret ballot; (6) payment to members of parliament.

The Chartist Movement focussed its attention on adult suffrage and other demands that would make the State responsible to the people. But the People’s Charter did not exhaust the meaning of democracy.

In fact, the Chartist Reforms do not touch the core of democracy. Surely, citizens cannot vote once a year and then go to sleep. They have to be associated with the processes and responsibilities of administration. Its complexity will have to be broken up for easy association. There may be the Parliament at the Centre, but below it there must be State Assemblies, District Boards, Village Panchayats, Cooperatives, Ward Committees, and Community Centres. Their respective powers have to be allotted and satisfactorily dovetailed. Such is the pulsating fabric of a democratic State evolved in the past century or more.²

A positive approach to the problem demands to guarantee to the people adult suffrage, civil liberties, representative government and the web of associative life. That the whole drift of industrial civilization needs such a State is the view of many an acute thinker. R. M. Maciver writes in The Web of Government (1947): “Not only under democratic conditions, but wherever modern industrial civilization exists, the nature of authority undergoes a transformation. A modern society with its complexity of organisation, becomes a multi-group society. It possesses no longer the homogeneity of culture that has pervaded former types of society, even when they are sharply divided by class and caste. There is no longer one religion, one scale of values, one pervasive indoctrination. A multi-group society is a multi-myth society. Its appropriate form of government can be based only on some form of myth that accommodates conflicting myths, and that condition is met by the myth of democracy.”

The fact that the modern society is a multi-purpose and a multi-group society demands a necessary change in our outlook towards democracy. It is quite unfortunate to note that there are people who still believe that democracy stands only for a particular form of government. Although adult suffrage, civil liberties and representative government are considered essential for establishing a democratic society, they cannot make the ideal of democracy fully attainable. Democracy does not stand so much for a particular form of government, as it does for a particular form of society. Representative government is one of the several means to organize a democratic society. The representation of the people in a democracy cannot be ignored, because in a democracy, which is known as a government of the people, if the people are not represented, it cannot be called a democracy at all, in spite of its being a successful government. But a true democracy is that in which not only the voice of the people is held supreme, but in which the people participate actively and consciously in the organisation of the manifold life of society, as also in the working of government.

From this viewpoint, every such movement or philosophy which directly or indirectly aims at setting up such a society, as hinted at, has a close relationship with democracy. Socialism, in all its forms–Communism, Fabian Socialism, Guild Socialism and also Syndicalism and Anarchism–aims ultimately at the attainment of this society. The theories of Democratic Socialism and Welfare State have also been propounded with a view to realizing the ideal of a true democracy. With the advancement of the idea of people’s democracy, the objectives and functions of the State would undergo a radical change. A democratic or a socialist society cannot be established under a dictatorship on a police state. For that a highly responsible government with complete decentralization of its powers is indispensable. It is all the more necessary for realizing the goal of a true democracy, coupled with the values of socialism.

There are many socialists who therefore believe that in democracy alone socialism can be cradled a positive state, working on behalf of the workers, peasants and the poor, is the very foundation of all further achievements.

Lassalle was among the first socialists to develop such a positive attitude towards the state. Of him Rosa Luxembourg had said: “He dreamt of marrying science with the working class movement.” He also thought of making the state an instrument of workers’ emancipation. It was he who said that “if you will not make use of the state as an instrument, you will confront it as an obstacle.” Therefore, he said, workers must demand adult suffrage, and fight for it. Once they get it, with the large number of votes they command, provided they are conscious and well-organized, they can capture the state machine, and use it, for their own ends. He linked up his view with his theory that the state cannot be a mere night watchman. The functions of the state can never be confined to that of a ring-master. The state must have a positive role. Lassalle was the father of the “Welfare State”, though he did not coin that phrase.

The Fabians were keen about the local bodies. George Bernaard Shaw, one of the greatest men of letters, began his political career from a borough council. Although Shaw was a vain person, he did not hesitate in addressing “soap-box” meetings. The Fabians believed in building from the bottom; they were not ashamed of working in a borough councilor a minor municipality. Their approach was to take even these little bodies significant, vital, and, above all, endow them with democratic content. Every election, no matter how small it was, was meaningful to them. Whatever be the committee, the Fabians approached their work with such thoroughness and industry that not only they made themselves indispensable but made the committee fruitful. Their favourable view of the state was based upon the belief, shared by Jean Jaures and many other contemporary socialists that the capitalist state is, or can be made, penetrable for socialism.

Socialists, like G. D. H. Cole, held that real democracy was to be found, not in a ‘single omni-competent representative assembly’, but in a system of coordinated functional representative bodies³. Such a system of functional democracy is much superior to the present irresponsible parliamentary government. The Guild Socialists wanted to realize socialism on the essential basis of the guild. They believed in evolutionary transformation of society. Their object was “the abolition of the wage-system and the establishment by the workers of government in industry through a democratic system of national guilds working in conjunction with other democratic national organizations in the community”. A democratic society according to them, is a net-work of co-ordinated, functional representative bodies. They were against an omnipotent central authority and felt that true democracy would remain a mere dream without decentralization of functions and powers.

Like these socialists, Karl Marx was also not averse to the idea of a true democracy, although he was polar opposite to bourgeois democracy. He wrote in the Communist Manifesto (1848): “Communists support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things….They labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.” It means that communism is not an anti-democratic movement. On the contrary, it works in agreement with the democratic parties of other countries. But it is opposed to the existing set-up, because it is capitalistic. In a capitalist society, the workers have no choice, but to sell their labour to the capitalist class which controls not only the industrial and economic life of the society, but which also directs the policies of the government in its own interests. Such a system is cumbersome and coercive in which the condition of the workers is not, in any way, better than that of slaves.

Viewed in this way, the aim of each labour movement, whether it has been sponsored by the communists or by the socialists or by the trade unions, is to restore to themselves again, the authority of the people which has slipped away from their hands to the state or to some other section of the community, either due to their own ignorance or due to some other reasons. The idea of the Communist Manifesto was not to replace one dictatorship by another; it meant that victorious workers must cut out those features of bourgeois democracy which were incompatible with socialist democracy–the army as a special caste, for example, and a bureaucracy and a judiciary hostile, both by tradition and class-composition, to the fulfilment of socialist purposes. It purports that the power, after the revolution, should remain in the hands of the workers themselves. Prof. Harold J. Laski remarks in Introduction to his book, Communist Manifesto: Socialist Landmark. (1948), that “The Manifesto did not propose the exchange of one dictatorship for another; it proposed the democratization of power by putting the authority of the state into the hands of the working class. It assumes that the decline of capitalism has produced a working class mature enough to recognise that it must take its destiny into its own hands and begin the building of socialism.”

Thus the real aim of commuaism, like that of democracy and socialism, is to awaken the consciousness of the workers and of those who have so far remained subjected to all types of humiliation and exploitation. It was quite unfortunate that in Soviet Russia, after the Communist Revolution, the authority could not be entrusted to the working class, and there emerged a party dictatorship, in its worst form, instead of a workers’ democracy. The reason is that the revolution of which Lenin was the supreme architect was made by the methods evolved by him, no doubt , upon a Marxist foundation, to fit the special conditions of Russia. Its central principle adapted Marxism to those conditions by making the dictatorship of the proletariat more akin to the Jacobin idea of a Committee of Public Safety than to any content either Marx or Engels gave to that term. This was clearly seen, as early as September, 1918, by Rosa Luxembourg. “Without general elections,” she wrote⁴, “freedom of the press, freedom of the assembly, and freedom of speech, life in every public institution slows down, and becomes a caricature of itself, and bureaucracy emerges as the one deciding factor….Public life dies and a few score of party leaders, with inexhaustible energy and limitless idealism, direct and rule. Amongst them the leadership is, in reality, in the hands of a dozen men of first-class brains, even though, from time to time an elite of the working class is called together in Congress to applaud the speeches of their leaders, and to vote unanimously for the resolutions they put forward.”

But the unfortunate betrayal of Marxian purpose, particularly under the leadership of Stalin, cannot change the real spirit of The Manifesto and the intents of Marxian Socialism. And if the people living under the Communist Dictatorship are given a chance of expressing their real desires, without any fear of reprisals, they would assuredly throw out their present governments, and not re-establish capitalism, but proceed to build up by trial and error, through failure and success, a democratic socialist society. It will not be unwise to comment here that the Soviet Prime Minister, Mr. Nikita S. Khrushchev, was fully conscious of the evils of dictatorship. He was the first Russian leader, after the establishment of the Communist Dictatorship in Russia, who appears to have been keen on loosening the grip of dictatorship over the Russian people and promoting the democratic forces in Russia and other parts of the communist world. It is an encouraging attitude towards the realization of workers’ and people’s democracy, although the Stalinists in Russia and the communist leaders in China and Albania consider it an attempt to betray the ideal of revolutionary socialism and help the progress of bourgeois democracy.

Though it is an admitted fact that the goals of democracy and Socialism are more or less the same and that both have mutually helped each other, or that democracy cannot realise its fundamental ideals of liberty, equality and justice to all, without embodying values of socialism in its contents, and vice versa, yet it is difficult to say how a democratic socialist society will shape and work to realize its ultimate aims. No one today can answer this question completely. Neither Marx nor Engels nor Kautsky nor Liebknecht nor Luxembourg nor Plekhanov nor Lenin answered that in full. Nor the picture that Lenin drew of Soviet Russia has been realized there. Lenin had said, for instance, at the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party in 1919, that “there is nothing more stupid than the idea of compulsion with reference to economic relations with average peasants.” And yet in no less than two decades twenty million peasant families were forced, at the risk of death or banishment to Siberia, into two lakhs of collective farms. Perhaps, there is no other instance in history where a meagre minority having captured power was able to coerce such a vast majority of people in such a total manner.

It makes us think as to what are the reasons for the advancement of wrong and incomplete solutions and for the failure of democracy or socialism. First, each thinker or political leader is a product of a particular country and its special circumstantes. His ideology and thought-process are shaped by the peculiar habits, beliefs and traditions of the country in which he is born and brought up. All this conditions his mind to think primarily in the context of his own country. His limited horizon makes the universal application of his solution impossible. He fails to take full cognizance of the social and political conditions and understand the traditional beliefs and thought-processes of the peoples

“Of different countries. Even in his own country, his approach is found hardly correct. If he is too academic in his thinking, his approach may be ideal, but it cannot touch the core of the problem. If, on the contrary, his judgment is too practical, then it cannot inspire confidence even among his own people and it will be considered nothing more than mere opportunism. In both cases, his solution is liable to fail.

Secondly, the conservative and authoritarian attitude of the leaders makes the task of democracy almost difficult. Where men are trained in democratic traditions, where there is a habit of sending “heresy, of whatever kind, to Parliament, rather than to the hangman”, social changes can take place by adjustments. In the name of social or political transformation, to silence opposition is to rob people of their sovereignty. “To suppress the opposition” said Ferrero, “is to suppress the sovereignty of the people. “ To safeguard against such an attitude of the leaders, is to awaken the political consciousness of the masses. Only in the climate of freedom and cooperation can the constructive tasks of democracy or socialism be adequately fulfilled.

Thirdly, the leader or leaders who guide the revolution may, and do often, change as soon as they come into power and begin to shape events. A leader engaged in a revolutionary fight and the same leader in power and authority are often two different individuals. We see examples of this metamorphosis in recent history. Mussolini and Hitler began their revolutionary careers as socialists. Supposing they had remained firm in their socialist faith, it is quite possible that their followers would have remained loyal to them and paved the way for the establishment of socialism in Italy and Germany. Even in a democracy a leader in opposition does not remain the same when he gets into power. The labour movement in England received a set because of the change in the outlook of Macdonald when he was installed in power. And a leader in power gets corrupt and becomes irresponsible because of the authority which he wields. Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi ⁵ were unique exceptions in the political history of the modern world.

Fourthly, the masses are generally kept away from the administration. Upheavals are usually created by or with the help of the masses and ostensibly in their interest. The slogans raised are idealistic: ‘No taxation without representation’, ‘Liberty, fraternity, equality’, ‘Land to the tiller’, ‘Government of the people, by the people and for the people’, ‘From each according to ability, to each according t0 want’, ‘Banish poverty and ensure economic minimum to all’, ‘We fight for democracy and socialism’ etc. But in the hour of triumph and rearrangement the masses are usually nowhere on the scene, nowhere near the seats of power. For them generally there is only a change of masters. As often as not, the new masters are no better in their lust for domination, and for the good things of the world, as the holders of power whom the revolution overthrew. Often they are those who have felt in the past that their importance and worth were not adequately recognised in spite of their ability or their growing social importance. Their ambitions may have grown because of newly acquired wealth, position or even power. But one thing common to all successful revolutionaries and leaders is that those at the helm must have initiative, vigour, drive and some kind of fascist tendency. It is necessary because they want to supplant old authority be it of kings, princes or landed, industrial or financial barons or imperialists or dictators. It would seem that no society can work effectively without the guiding and controlling direction of some sort of an elite. The old elite, because of the corrupting influence of power and the enervating effect of luxurious and easy living, which sooner or later follows the acquisition of power, cease to perform any useful social function, which would entitle them to the prestige and the advantages they enjoy. They must therefore yield place to the class struggling for power. And the ambitions of the new aspirants to power will again be clothed in idealistic terms of justice, equality and fraternity–all meant for the advantage of the oppressed and suppressed masses. But in reality, it is nothing more than a mere transfer of power from one hand to another due to the lust of the leaders for power and domination.

Fifthly, it is difficult to bring about a change in the social, economic and political conditions of the masses without the divestment of vested interests. So long as vested interests are not divested, no revolution can effectively change the lot of the masses. And divestment takes place when authority has been decentralized and the masses actively participate in the general administration of the country through various committees and unions, democratically constituted, without any party politics. But generally it does not happen. What interests will be liquidated, and what kept, depends upon the wishes of the new rulers. When in power, they may not find it convenient to keep their pledges. They might keep some and violate others. They might be revolutionary about the capture of power and quite conservative about the changing of the social order. We can see this process taking place in our own country. Many of those who in the Congress were revolutionary for the capture of political power are either reactionary or at best stand for the status quo so far as social and economic equality is concerned. It is these reactionary forces that are just like a halter round the neck of the progressive forces in the Congress party. And if socialism, for which Congress stands since 1954, is not making any headway, it is mostly due to these reactionary elements. Congress socialism is Nehru-deep, and it was he, and only a handful of other progressive Congressmen, who were enthusiastic about the growth of the idea of socialism, as also about its implementation.

Sixthly, there is a general tendency in the leaders to stick to the principles of their political parties more than to care for the welfare of the masses. They value their own principles so much that they lose human touch and become inconsiderate to the views of the opposition groups, as also to the views of the common people. Also, their conservative and dogmatic outlook leaves no chance for time-to-time modifications in their own principles and policies to suit the changing needs of the society. The growth of a democratic society gets stunted in the absence of variety of experiences.

Seventhly, the leaders do not undertake seriously the psychological study of human nature in action. They fail to analyze properly the human mind and heart, the political behaviour of the individuals and the political atmosphere in the society, which is very essential for them to build up a sound theory of the State and Government. As a result, their theories mostly fall when they try to put them into practice.

Eighthly, the political leaders are in the habit of divorcing religion from politics. They shun religion and ignore human and moral considerations, while forming their political ideologies and principles. And politics, devoid of moral and religious considerations, is nothing more than mere opportunism. I am certain that a healthy democratic society cannot be established, if we continue to ignore human and moral values of life. Lack of faith in moral and religious ideals ultimately tells upon the character of the people. Corrupt leaders have no right to ask their people to behave nicely and morally. A nation which has no moral character cannot progress much, and it is bound to be doomed sooner or later. Even Machiavelli, the first among political thinkers, who attempted to separate politics from religion, soon realized that a healthy society could be built up only on the basis of a faith in religion. As such, he did not despise religion. Those who expect him to have despised religion will be surprised to read the title of a chapter in his Discourses: “The importance of giving religion a prominent influence in the State, and how Italy was ruined because she failed in this respect through the conduct of the Church of Rome.” He also said: “Princes and Republics who wish to maintain themselves free from corruption must above all things preserve the purity of all religious observances and treat them with proper reverence; for there is no greater indication of the ruin of a country than to see religion condemned.”⁶ He regarded the church as necessary for the health and prosperity of State. In fact, true religion does not serve as a barrier in the way of the social, economic and political progress of a country. It does not stand for any kind of dogmatism and narrowmindedness, and it is not opposed to rational thinking. On the contrary, it helps us to find out a correct and permanent solution to many of our problems. It calls upon us to treat all human beings as our brothers and serve them with honesty and with the spirit of self-sacrifice. True religion is that which fits to our highest reason. It is what we call a correct explanation of the term dharma (religion), according to the Hindu Nyaya Shastra. And no political leader can afford to ignore true religion. Gandhiji was cent per cent right when he remarked that politics devoid of religion was a death-trap.

Lastly, trade unions, economic groups and political parties, which come into being to fight on behalf of the workers and common people and to protect their rights against any kind of encroachment either by the State or by any dominant group in society do not function democratically. Their internal organizations remain so hierarchical that the top-level leaders almost lose contact with the ordinary members. The ordinary members do not have any say in the formulation of policies. Either they do not understand things, or they are kept ignorant of the high-level politics. Whatever is decided upon by their leaders, they silently acquiesce in. The leaders either have no time or they feel apathy to contact the rank and file with a view to knowing their grievances and discussing with them the policies which ultimately would concern them. In such a state of affairs, the masses do not feel secure, and the dream of establishing a democratic socialist society remains far away from its realization.

Also, the election system today is highly defective. The methods employed by the candidates and the political organizations to win the votes of theelectors are dirty and discouraging. The voters can be easily hypnotized by deafening propaganda and the exploitation of the sub-conscious non-rational elements in human nature. Education of the people is in fact no remedy. Instead of minimising the evil, it tends to maximise it. Since elementary education gives to the voter merely the power to read, it leaves him or her at the mercy of the clever manipulator of public opinion even more than before. Even the intelligent people act in excitement and are liable to be exploited equally by false propaganda. Thus the voters–both intelligent and unintelligent, vote for the candidates, not on the basis of their personal knowledge of the latter, but because they have been asked or excited by the political leaders or by some demagogues to do so. The result is that there remains no contact between the electorate and the representatives. The representatives soon become irresponsible and forget their pledges which they made to their voters at the time of their election. In short, the representatives soon turn to be the masters, and it leaves no chance for a cooperation and understanding between them and the people which is highly essential for the working of democracy. A government without consent is a complicated and ugly process.

After reflecting on these facts, we feel that the attainment of democracy or of socialism, clothed in democratic garb, remains even today a perplexing problem. Its success is still as doubtful and uncertain as it was a century or two ago. The fascist and imperialist forces are as dominant today as they ever were in the past three or four centuries. In spite of all our industrial and scientific achievements we have failed in changing the human heart and mind without which no progress is significant and continuous. If we want to realize the dream of true democracy or of socialism, we will then have tochange the human outlook towards the national and international problems, reorganize the political parties, if at all we feel they are necessary for a democracy, educate the masters to put pressure on governments to act in a more responsible way, divest the vested interests, decentralize the State powers to the greatest extent, stop the dirty propaganda to befool the masses, particularly, at the time of election, to strengthen the trade unions and to give due consideration to human and moral values, while deciding upon political and economic questions.

In a country like India, where the voter suffers from the hangover of a cruel past–from the inhibitions of centuries of political, social and economic slavery and of old harmful customs and superstitions as well as from family, communal, caste and provincial prejudices, we have to make every effort, overand above, to broaden his mental horizon by removing these inhibitions and prejudices. Let each democratic party make up its mind and, even at the risk of temporary unpopularity and misunderstanding, show that it stands for the removal of harmful social customs and that it would work against communalism, casteism and provincialism. So long as we do not fight combinedly against them, all our efforts to bring about social and political changes in our country will go waste.

Further, the problems like hunger, poverty, exploitation and colour-bar continue to challenge us. Their removal from India is as much necessary as from any other part of the world. In the face of their continuous challenge, we cannot build up a true democratic and socialist society anywhere in the world and our boast of calling ourselves civilized and progressive is false.

¹ M. Beer: A History of British Socialism (1921)
² Cf. M. Follete: The New State (1918) R. M. MacIver: The Modern State (1926)
³ G. D. H. Cole; The Social Theory (1920)
⁴ Rosa Luxembourg: Die Russiche Revolution (1918), p. 113.
⁵ Although Mahatma Gandhi was the supreme leader of the Indian movement for freedom, he always disliked to come into power. Had he lived for a few years more and agreed to come into power, he would have presented, I am sure cent per cent, a unique example of a just rule.  
⁶ Machiavelli: Discourses, Chap. xii.