File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9709, message 481


Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 22:26:12 -0400
Subject: M-I: G.A. Cohen Interview in Philosophers'  Web Magazine (Part 2)
From: farmelantj-AT-juno.com (James Farmelant)


This is the second part of a three part interview with G.A. Cohen that
is appearing in the Philosophers' Web Magazine
(http://www.cix.co.uk/~jstangroom/).  Part 3 will not appear until
November.  

		James F.

   
Socialism and Revolution

    Professor G. A. Cohen Interviewed
    
   
   
   
   
   Scannella: You also argue that the conditions that Marx stated for a
   revolution will never come into existence, so you argue that the basis
   for the motivation of the proletariat is a desire to get rid of
   injustice as opposed to a desire to rid themselves of a state of
   abject poverty in the face of unjust oppression. The latter would
   unquestionably be seen as a strong enough motivation, but do you
   really see the former as a strong enough motivation for people to risk
   their relatively, historically speaking, comfortable standard of
   living?
   
   Cohen: Well, the challenge to me is deeper still than that, because my
   point about the transformation of the conditions of a capitalist
   society is that the proletariat itself in the classical sense simply
   does not exists anymore. There is not even this body of people who are
   the mass of the population and who can really count as a proletariat.
   It is obvious that if you forecast that people whose existence would
   otherwise proceed under an oppressive yoke will rise in revolution,
   then you are on much safer ground than if you forecast that people
   will come to see that a certain way of life is unjust, unworthy and
   contemptible and will therefore get rid of it. But I am not
   forecasting that: I am only advocating it.
   
   You could ask, "Does the advocacy of that sort of revolution have any
   realism in it? How are you going to have a revolution just because
   people who are not particularly oppressed think that the present order
   is wrong and that another would be superior. Why should they risk what
   they have?" I think that to answer to that question, you have to
   distinguish among meanings of the word "revolution".
   
   I think that the word "revolution" has borne four meanings in the
   socialist tradition. We can distinguish four senses of "revolutionary
   change" as opposed to "non-revolutionary change", senses which
   correspond to four meanings of "revolution":
    1. A revolutionary change is a violent one rather than a peaceful
       one.
    2. It is unconstitutional, rather than occurring within the rules of
       the constitution.
    3. It is sudden rather than gradual.
    4. It is comprehensive rather than superficial.
       
   
   
   Now, if you think about it (and please do – it is a worthwhile
   exercise) you will see that each of these features is logically
   independent of the other three. You can have any combination of those
   four features, and because of that you can mean many different things
   by "revolution". People on the left are often confused, they don’t
   really know what they’re talking about, when they say you can have or
   can’t have a revolution, because these four different features are
   mingling in their minds, and they haven’t distinguished them and
   pinned them down.
   
   I think that if you are talking about a violent, unconstitutional and
   sudden change on the basis of people’s perception of what is right and
   wrong, of course that is out of the question, whereas it may well have
   been in question for people suffering from massive oppression and
   material want. But if you are talking about a comprehensive
   transformation of society, which could be something which happens
   gradually, peacefully and constitutionally, then I do not think that
   we know that people are unable and unwilling to produce that sort of
   change. There are a lot of things now that are a lot less lousy than
   things were in the past and one of the reasons why the mass of people
   accept the way things now are is that they know that what they have is
   miles better than what their parents and grandparents had. But that
   does not mean that there are not a lot of oppressions in their lives
   and indignities and subordinations to market forces which are
   extremely unattractive, which they might come to resent more when
   memories of bygone worse things have faded. They might come to care
   more about the admittedly lesser oppressions than it now seems
   possible that they would ever care about them. I am not saying that I
   know that, I am just saying that nobody really knows that it is not
   so.
   
   
   
   Scannella: You seem to suggest by your last answer that a socialist
   society can be reached through a liberal democratic path, which if we
   look at the recent state of the British Labour party seems very
   unlikely. Do you believe that socialism can be reached through this
   way?
   
   Cohen: Well, I don’t know if socialism can be achieved at all. I have
   not claimed it can be achieved, but I am 100% certain that if I can be
   achieved then it can be achieved through a liberal democratic path.
   The reason is that I do not believe it can be achieved through any
   other path in a society which is a liberal democracy. That’s to say,
   where you have czarist dictatorship, where people do not have the
   suffrage and therefore cannot express themselves politically and can
   only express their political will violently, then of course there is
   no liberal path to socialism. But if you have a society in which the
   popular will can be expressed through the ballot box, then the only
   reason why you would want to produce socialism non-democratically is
   because it is not properly consonant with the popular will, and if it
   is not consonant with it, then you will not get socialism. You cannot
   impose socialism on people. Socialism, the collective ownership of the
   resources by the people as a whole, has to be something that people
   willingly engage in, as a centrepiece of their lives.
   
   This does not mean that there cannot and will not be violence on the
   road to that socialism. You see, you have to distinguish between
   constitutionality and peacefulness. For example, you could envisage a
   socialist government being elected which has to take very severe
   measure against private ownership. Those who enjoy private ownership
   will try, and might manage, to suborn parts of the violent apparatus
   of the state – the military and the police or whatever – to prevent
   serious inroads against their power. If the legitimate socialist
   government successfully used violence to defeat them, that would be a
   case of violent without (on the part of socialists)
   extra-constitutional behaviour. Take the example of the loyalist
   government that was elected liberal-democratically in Spain. Franco
   organised the capitalist and reactionary forces against it, and there
   as a war. Suppose the loyalist government had won that war. Well, in
   that case you would have had what I would regard as a constitutional
   transition to socialism, in the sense that at least the socialists did
   nothing unconstitutional, but it would also have been a very violent
   transition. Socialists should not abandon liberal-democratic norms as
   an integral part of their socialist project, but they must anticipate
   that others will, if they reach a certain degree of success in their
   project.
   
   
   
   Post-Soviet Socialism
   
   Scannella: Do you feel that the role of traditional left of centre
   Labour parties in the west has changed since the collapse of socialism
   in the Soviet Union? If so, what do you see as their new role and to
   what extent do you fell that the British labour Party is fulfilling
   this role?
   
   Cohen: Well, in the short term the collapse of the Soviet Union has
   had, and will continue to have, profound anti-socialist effects for
   the consciousness of people in the west. This was the grand attempt to
   institute socialism and this was one of the grandest failures in
   history. In the longer run the consequences of the collapse of the
   Soviet Union may be quite different. With the removal of the Soviet
   Union and societies like it from the scene, and with the gradual loss
   of memory of what they were like, people’s complaints about capitalism
   will less and less be answerable by "if you don’t like it here, why
   not go over there?" So it is conceivable that the removal of bastard
   socialism from the scene, which is an unachieved and deformed form of
   socialism, could increase rather than decrease the degree of
   resistance to capitalism.
   
   Now I say "could", not "would": I do not say more than that. The
   transformation of labour and socialist parties in the wake of the
   demise of the Soviet Union is simply the short term effect. The
   long-term effects could be different. As for the British Labour party
   in particular, a very large question mark hangs over what will happen
   when, as I am sure they will, they form the next government of
   Britain, because it is an open secret that the left of that Party has
   been as silent as it has indeed been because 18 years of Tory Power
   have put an anti-Tory victory as people’s prime goal and they are
   willing to sacrifice everything to achieve it. Just yesterday in my
   home in Oxford I was canvassed by the local elections Labour party
   candidate and I told her that I was strongly considering voting
   Liberal Democrats nationally because they are actually to the left of
   Labour. She said, "Yes, I know, I find it very difficult." Now a woman
   like that, who herself admits that the Liberal Democrats are to the
   left of Labour in their posture in this election, is nevertheless not
   going to say this and make a fuss about that to the detriment of
   Labour’s chances, but she is not gong to keep her mouth shut once
   Labour are in power: and there are tens of thousands like her. There
   are enormous expectations despite the fact that the Party said they
   will stick to a Tory budget for the first two years, which means that
   there will not be a significant change in, for example, the NHS
   waiting lists and the crisis in the health service, which also means
   that there will not be an improvement in the living standards of the
   poorest people in society. So although they have no commitments which
   would be broken by their failing to attend to urgent deprivation in
   the first two years of their term, they have expectations surrounding
   them which will be severely dashed and I think there will be strong
   conflicts and I do not know how they are going to respond to these
   conflicts.
   
   The present election is the most boring I have experienced and this is
   the tenth election I have experienced since coming to Britain in 1961.
   This is the most amazing election, where issues are not discussed,
   where the issue is, "Is he saying the same thing he said last week?"
   and "Does he mean what he says?" It is not the content that counts but
   these secondary features and that is partly because there is so little
   difference between all three parties and partly because the hegemony
   of the media, which have induced a situation where newsworthiness
   comes from error. It’s banana skin politics, where everybody is
   waiting for someone to make a big mistake, so everybody just tries to
   avoid making mistakes. So although the election is the most boring I
   have ever known, the post-election will be interesting because of the
   pickle Labour will be in.
   
   It will also be interesting to see the bear garden that the Tory party
   will become as they tear themselves apart and vote for a leader that
   not everybody will want. Anyway, I cannot give an evaluation of the
   Labour party at the moment because I just don’t know what is going to
   happen.
   
   
   
   Scannella: To what extent do you fell that Blair is himself a closet
   socialist?
   
   Cohen: I believe that Blair is not a socialist and therefore I do not
   believe he is a closet socialist, in the sense of socialist that I
   articulated. But we know that Blair is enormously electorally
   conscious and will adapt lots of strategies in order to win, so it
   would be extraordinary if every single piece of ideological
   manipulation which he has engineered reflects his own personal,
   electorally uninfluenced views. There must be lots of changes which he
   has engineered which were for electoral purposes. That is not to
   disparage him by any means. His syllogism is: we have to do everything
   we can to get into power; unless we change in these ways we do not get
   into power; therefore we have to change in these ways. It’s a very
   seductive syllogism and that is why so many people who are not
   Blairite have been won over. You can question it in various ways. You
   can raise long versus short term perspectives: if, in order to get in
   power, we have to do these things, then is it worthwhile trying to get
   power now? Or you can question by saying that even if we have to trim
   to get into power, it does not follow that we have to be maximally
   cautious. So he has engineered changes for electoral rather than for
   independent reasons. It does not follow that if and when he does get
   into power he will retreat from these changes, because he will then
   have as large a motive for staying in power as he did for achieving it
   in the first place.
   
   
   
   Click here to read a major response to this article.
   
   
   The third part of The Philosophers' Magazine's interview with
   Professor Cohen will follow in November.
   


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