Socialism from Below vs Socialism from Above
Discussion
Peter Critchley:
1.
"There are two traditions of socialism, socialism from above and socialism from below (Draper 1996). And these two traditions were evident in the nineteenth century. It is easy to distinguish some socialist schools. The likes of Blanc and Lassalle, for instance, are of the socialism from above tradition (Draper qualifiers this judgement as applied to Blanc the reformist). So too are the conspiratorial sects. The Utopians, for all their insistence on grass roots activity, a reformism from below, nevertheless possessed a determinist epistemology which meant only an elite could escape the corruption of circumstances. On the other side, the anarchists generally affirmed socialism from below, though again things are not so simple. For Bakunin would engage in the most elitist kinds of politics whilst Proudhon would curry favour with Louis Napoleon (Thomas 1985).Perhaps between Lassalle and his attempts to build socialism via Bismarck and Proudhon and his attempts to seduce Napoleon III there is no great difference, statism and anti-statism as two sides of a coin that fetishises the state power and does not grasp real relations (Thomas 1985). Marx's criticism of both wings is based upon this criticism. And it makes Marx's own position as ambiguous. Marx defined a socialism from below which recognised the need to go beyond trade union struggle and 'dwarfish’ cooperative experiments. Could this not imply the devaluation of workers associational activity? The abolition of the state that Marx pursued recognised the continuation of the state in a transitional period. Abolition, like the emergence of the state, would be the result of a gradual process. Would this not invite the preservation of the state?"
2.
"The argument to be developed here recognises this distinction between an associational workers socialism as an ascendant conception on the one hand and a statist governmental socialism as a descendant conception on the other hand. The view is that socialism was expropriated from the working class by a new middle class with their bureaucratic and reformist perspective, conscious of the need for a new capitalism. In this process, socialism was first colonised then transformed, adapted to the contours of bourgeois society and constituted by bourgeois modes of thought, action and organisation. The innovative, constructive activity of the workers in creating their own socialism, the fruitful ideas which made socialism vigorous and vibrant when expressing working class self-activity, was lost, systematically suppressed. The evident failure of the state socialists to create anything remotely resembling a socialist society has provoked criticism throughout the twentieth century, raising demands for an alternative approach. The collapse of state socialism, not only of Communism but also of parliamentary socialism, represents the final demise of what have been the dominant, competing but closely related approaches to socialism in the twentieth century. This collapse of the traditional left has created the opportunity to reexamine and recreate the suppressed alternative of left wing politics.