Democratic Socialism: An Impossible Dream?

Democratic Socialism: An Impossible Dream?
By Craig Collins
The founders of “scientific socialism,” Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels, assumed it was quite possible, even historically inevitable, for
working people to democratically govern an industrial society. However,
they never went into detail about how this would work. Even today,
despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, many orthodox Marxists
persist in believing that vast, complex, globalized, industrial economies can
be run by and for the workers who operate the machinery of production.
In fact, doctrinaire Marxists still cling to the fantasy that worker-run
industrial socialism is not only possible, it is the historically destined,
superior replacement for industrial capitalism.
This Marxist conviction is dubious for two reasons. First, history has
demonstrated that after many attempts, and despite their best intentions,
the leaders of “socialist” revolutions have never succeeded in building an
industrial society run by and for working people. Second, the primary
underlying reason for this failure flows from the structural requirements of
industrial society. Fossil-fueled industrial economies exert a powerful
influence over their social structure. The extensive, intricate, hierarchical
configuration of carbon-powered industrialism appears structurally
unsuited and deeply resistant to bottom-up, democratic management.
When socialist-led revolutions seized political power in Russia,
China, and elsewhere, Marxists were quick to label these countries
“socialist.” They were convinced that their ruling communist parties
would industrialize these countries and bring them under democratic,
working class control. Meanwhile, in Western Europe, reform-minded

Marxists believed working people could gain power over their industrial
economies through the ballot instead of the bullet. But whether socialist
parties were elected or seized power through revolution, they were never
able to bring an industrial economy under the democratic management of
working people.
Does this mean industrial societies are stuck with capitalism? No.
History has proven that industrial societies can possess relations of
production other than profit-driven capitalism. Just as the agricultural
societies generated despotic, slave, feudal, and capitalist class relations at
different places and points in history, modern industrialism’s brief 200-
year lifespan has generated a spectrum of economic relations as well. But
none of them have been democratic.
History demonstrates that industrialism can be dominated by
capitalist owners out to maximize their profits or by central planners who
manage the economy to benefit themselves while governing in the name of
the people. Thus, the actual distance been industrial capitalism and the
statist economies falsely labeled “socialist” or “communist” is much
narrower than either old-line Marxists or free-market ideologues want to
admit. Throughout the 20th century, capitalists and communists waged
ideological warfare over which type of industrial system was superior—
privately run or government planned. But these arguments exaggerated
the actual, real world differences between state-run (“socialist”) and
corporate-run (capitalist) industrial systems. In doing so, they hid the
pervasive similarities between these two versions of industrial society.
During the Cold War, most Marxists asserted that the state-planned,
industrial societies they called “socialist,” were far superior to capitalism.
They denounced capitalism as a crisis-ridden system that benefitted the

few by exploiting the labor of the vast majority. These Marxists believed
that government-planned industrial economies would outlaw labor
exploitation for private profit and promote the general welfare of all.
Conversely, free market ideologues insisted these statist industrial
economies (that they also called communist or socialist) suppressed
economic liberty; stifled competition, efficiency, and innovation; and
imposed totalitarian control over every aspect of life.
The original meaning of “socialism” and “communism” was lost in
this ideological shadow boxing. As originally intended by Marx and
Engels, a socialist society would be run democratically, by the vast majority
of working people, on the basis of human need, not profit. In other words,
socialism meant economic, political, and social democracy. They believed
worker-run socialism would eventually become classless communism, as
industry produced enough wealth to satisfy everyone’s basic needs and
people became accustomed to contributing their abilities to a
commonwealth that encouraged their talents and potentials in return.
When self-proclaimed socialist revolutions came to power in Russia
and China, Western capitalists were worried. They feared that thriving
workers’ democracies could make capitalism look inferior and inspire more
class rebellions around the world. They tried to eliminate, subvert, and
vilify these socialist experiments whenever possible. But sabotage failed to
prevent these experiments in “socialist construction” from rapidly
industrializing. Unfortunately, industrialization was never accompanied
by economic democracy.
For years Marxists excused the failure of self-proclaimed socialist
governments to promote democracy in the workplace, the community, and
in government. There was substantial truth in their excuses. The

conditions for promoting democracy were definitely not ideal in the USSR,
China, or any of the other countries where communist parties came to
power. These countries were not the advanced industrial societies Marx
and Engels believed would become the birthplace of socialism. The
working class was not the majority; instead, it was a poorly organized
minority in underdeveloped nations of peasant farmers.
But even though the Soviet Union and China fell short of their vision
of working class democracy, most Marxists were hopeful that they were a
work-in-progress. They claimed economic democracy would come later,
after a modern industrial economy was constructed under the direction of
the communist party’s central planners. Unfortunately, later morphed into
never. Although the USSR and China industrialized and the “socialist”
nations of Eastern Europe modernized rapidly after World War II, efforts
to promote genuine economic and political democracy never gained
traction, even after the working class was the vast majority of society.
In fact, no self-proclaimed socialist country, from Poland and East
Germany to Cuba and Vietnam, ever achieved the type of economic and
political democracy Marx, Engels, and most socialist revolutionaries
envisioned. Instead, what passed for socialism were statist societies ruled
from above by an elite cadre of party officials and central planners.
Needless to say, the proponents of capitalism seized every opportunity to
disparage and vilify the idea of communism and socialism whenever these
statist governments failed to live up to their self-proclaimed socialist ideals,
which they invariably did.
The rulers of statist systems insisted they were Marxists, leading their
socialist nations toward a classless, communist society. Yet, as time passed,
it appeared that centrally planned industrial systems consistently fostered

an entrenched, privileged class of party officials and central planners rather
than a socialist democracy run by and for working people.1
Yet, both
communist and capitalist cold warriors insisted on mislabeling these statist
societies “socialist” and either condemned them as grim totalitarian
tyrannies or extolled them as prosperous workers’ democracies.
It is important to note that it served the interests of both sides to
mislabel these statist systems “socialist” or “communist.” Western
capitalist governments wanted to discourage their citizens from seeing
socialism as a viable alternative, so they highlighted the worst qualities of
these state-planned economies to portray socialism as an evil totalitarian
system. From the other side, the ruling parties of these statist economies
proclaimed themselves to be the leaders of prosperous socialist
democracies on the path to classless communism, while glossing over the
grim realities of industrial statism with glowing propaganda.
Thus, for opposite reasons, both sides of the Cold War tacitly agreed
with the self-serving fiction that these statist industrial societies were
genuine examples of socialism. So when the Soviet system imploded and
China integrated itself back into the global capitalist system, it became a
commonly accepted myth that socialism (and communism) had failed and
capitalism had won the Cold War. When actually, what failed was statist
industrialism.
In reality, genuine democratic socialism has never existed despite the
self-serving claims of both sides to the contrary. In fact, the complex, large
scale, highly centralized, vertically integrated nature of industrial society
1 One of the first materialist analyses of this process was: Rizzi, Bruno. THE
BUREAUCRATIZATION OF THE WORLD (Free Press, 1939); see also: Bahro, Rudolf.
SOCIALISM & SURVIVAL. (Heretic Books, 1982) and Bahro’s FROM RED TO GREEN.
(VERSO, 1981).

cannot possibly accommodate authentic, bottom-up, democratic control
over this top-down economic process.
There are multiple theories for why democratic socialism failed.
Some critics of revolution insist that the leaders of socialist insurrections
were merely power-driven opportunists who never intended to bring the
working class into power. However, to be a valid explanation for the
universal failure of democratic socialism this would have to be true across
the board, for all those who led and organized every socialist revolution.
History provides no evidence for the assertion that none of the
revolutionaries who risked their lives to lead anti-capitalist revolutions
were sincerely committed to democratic socialism. Of course, there are
always opportunists in every political movement. But it is inaccurate to
claim that socialism failed because these revolutionary Marxists were never
genuinely committed to democratic socialism. Instead, most either
believed the communist party represented working people or hoped to
bring the working class into power eventually. Yet, despite their best
intentions, this never happened. Why?
As Engels reminds us, sometimes our intentions, “are from the outset
incapable of realization, or the means of attaining them are insufficient.” He goes
on to explain that when our intentions are unattainable, “the conflict of
innumerable individual wills…for the most part, produce results quite other than
those they intended--often quite the opposite.”2
The socialist-led revolutions of
the 20th century did indeed produce results quite other than those they
intended. Yes, they were able to launch nations down a path of state-
planned industrialization that did not operate according to the profit-
2 Engels, Friedrich. LUDWIG FEUERBACH (1888): 47-51.

driven imperatives of capitalism. But these statist systems bore no further
resemblance to democratic socialism.
Most historians have rejected opportunism as a universal explanation
for the failure of democratic socialism. But many doctrinaire Marxists went
so far as to insist that any criticism of self-proclaimed socialist countries
was merely capitalist propaganda. However, less ideologically rigid
Marxists have offered a range of plausible reasons why democratic
socialism has failed to materialize.
Some blame capitalism. Without a doubt, capitalist powers have
tried very hard to vilify, abort, or undermine these revolutionary regimes
at every turn. Their efforts had an definite impact. They made it very
difficult for socialist experiments to succeed, while highlighting their
failures to turn people against socialism. Yet these efforts at sabotage did
not prevent communist parties from rapidly industrializing or claiming
they were constructing socialism despite “capitalist encirclement.”3
Other Marxists blamed the failure of democratic socialism on the
authoritarian rule of communist vanguard parties that monopolized power
while claiming to rule in the name of the workers. There is truth in this
criticism as well. Most ruling communist parties extolled their nation’s
faultless leaders and the infallibility of Marxist doctrine even as they
departed further and further from anything resembling democratic
3 The notion of “capitalist encirclement” was popularized by Joseph Stalin. In his
words, “Capitalist encirclement—that is no empty phrase; that is a very real and unpleasant
feature. Capitalist encirclement means that here is one country, the Soviet Union, which has
established the socialist order on its own territory and besides this there are many countries,
bourgeois countries, which continue to carry on a capitalist mode of life and which surround the
Soviet Union, waiting for an opportunity to attack it, break it, or at any rate to undermine its
power and weaken it.” https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/cccp-
forrel-stalin.htm

socialism. In fact, time after time, as countries became more complex and
industrialized they became even less democratic.
The failure of democratic socialism was also blamed on the
underdeveloped economies where revolutions brought communists to
power. When communist parties gained power after leading successful
national liberation movements in the Third World, some Marxists doubted
they could create socialism in these backward peasant countries. They
believed socialism would be impossible unless communist parties pursued
a policy of rapid industrialization to modernize the country and develop a
working class majority. But even in China and the Soviet Union, where
rapid modernization succeeded and the working class became the majority,
no working class democracy ever materialized.
Other Marxists reasoned that when communist parties led armed
insurrections followed by policies of rapid industrialization they were
compelled to impose top-down programs and directives incompatible with
the messy, time-consuming process of bottom-up, participatory
democracy.4
There is substantial truth to these Third World focused
explanations because they reflect the underlying fact that rapid
industrialization is inherently resistant to democratic management.
However, it is important to note that none of these partial
explanations can account for the failure of socialists in the industrialized
West to establish working class democracies—either through revolutions
or elections. In the more developed nations of the global economy, the
revolutionary path to power has never succeeded. Some Marxists attribute
this to the enormous coercive power of the corporate state; others blame
4 Fagen, Richard R. “The Politics of Transition,” Monthly Review. (Nov., 1986).

the false consciousness imposed by capitalism’s ideological “hegemony”
over the entire culture.5
These Marxists highlight the political complacency fostered by
media-hyped consumerism, individualism, and the higher living standards
found in the industrialized core of the global economy. These conditions
produced a working class with no taste for revolution and a limited
enthusiasm for electing “socialist” governments. If elected, socialist and
communist politicians never attempted to democratize the economy.
Instead they settled for taxing corporate profits and promoting welfare
state industrialism. But the economy remained largely in private hands.
Even when a “socialist” government exercised power over major portions
of the economy, this power was never held by working people.
Ultimately, these are all partial, piecemeal explanations for the failure
of democratic socialism. Some theories focus on why it failed in poor
nations, others on why it failed in wealthy nations; some focus on power-
hungry politicians, working class apathy, or the inherent weaknesses of
either reform or revolution. However, universal failure would suggest that
there are more pervasive, underlying, structural reasons why neither
revolutionary nor reformist efforts to build democratic socialism have ever
achieved more than welfare state capitalism or statist industrialism. The
essential truth remains that genuine democratic socialism has not
5 As popularized by the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, cultural hegemony is the
domination of capitalist society by a ruling elite that imposes its beliefs and values upon
the entire culture. Through its influence over all the venues of cultural indoctrination,
education, and discourse capitalist ideology becomes the universally accepted ideology.
It justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural and inevitable,
perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather than as an artificial social construct that
benefits only the ruling class. See: Hoare, Quentin and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds.
SELECTIONS FROM THE PRISON NOTEBOOKS of ANTONIO GRAMSCI (1971).

succeeded anywhere, even though Marxists believed it would succeed
everywhere.
Is it possible that a rapidly expanding, multi-state, globalized industrial
economy—powered by an energy base of fossil fuels—is incompatible with
nationally restricted efforts to bring it under genuine democratic control? In
hindsight, it appears that the physical constraints and social requirements
imposed by globalized industrialism foster undemocratic, hierarchical
economic relations resembling either corporatist or statist political
economies that resist bottom-up, democratic governance. This is the most
feasible, comprehensive explanation for the failure of democratic socialism
in both emerging and mature industrial societies. The other piecemeal
theories discussed above are partially accurate, yet limited, derivatives of
this pervasive, underlying restriction on genuine economic democracy.
The problem solving theoretical principle known as Occam's razor
(or the law of parsimony) considers the strongest theory to be the one that
provides the simplest, most comprehensive explanation in line with the
evidence.6
The conclusion that economic democracy is incompatible with
the hierarchical, vertically organized structure of industrial production
meets these criteria. By its very nature, fossil-fueled industrialism
promotes extensive, highly integrated economies of scale that require top-
down managerial direction. Complicated, highly mechanized, global
chains of industrial production frustrate nationally confined, workplace-
centered economic democracy. They require an managerial elite to oversee
the planning, administration, and supervision these technologically
6 The law of parsimony, often referred to as Occam's razor, is the problem-solving
principle that the simplest viable solution tends to be the right one. Thus, when
presented with competing explanations, one should select the simplest, most
comprehensive, hypothesis with the fewest assumptions and compatible with the
evidence at hand.

elaborate, vertically integrated operations. Therefore, it becomes virtually
impossible to govern these political economies in a decentralized,
democratic manner—especially when chains of production override and
transcend national borders.
Even for the “socialist” countries that tried to remain detached from
the global capitalist economy, industrialization defied “democratic socialist
planning.” Without profit margins and market signals to influence
economic decisions and erratically adjust supply and demand, the
extremely complicated process of fossil fueled industrial production had to
be centrally planned to meet the multiple contending needs of the
workforce, the surrounding community, the entire nation, and the
sophisticated technologies needed to operate it.
Grassroots democratic control over this “pyramid of production” has
never succeeded at the national level and is hard to even imagine on an
international scale. Invariably, the nature of this giant, complicated,
hierarchical system resists democratic oversight and impedes bottom-up
decision-making procedures. Therefore, despite the polarized, antagonistic
ideologies of capitalism and “socialism,” the spectrum of real world
production relations compatible with carbon-powered, highly mechanized
societies is much narrower than these rival ideologies care to admit.
Whether they call themselves socialist or capitalist, all modern
societies generate a managerial elite of central planners or corporate
executives to oversee them. Even so, the enormity and complexity of
globalized industrialism defies strict, comprehensive control. However, by
occupying society’s commanding heights, ruling elites dominate the
decision making process and claim an inequitable share of the benefits for
themselves. They control the technologies of energy conversion and the

institutions of economic power; they use this power to shape society’s
political priorities and cultural institutions. Thus, the party officials and
state planners of “socialist” countries like China bear a remarkable
resemblance, in both appearance and function, to the top corporate
executives and government policymakers of their capitalist counterparts.
In each case, complex, centralized, mechanized, urbanized, fossil-fueled
economies beget a powerful industrial elite who attempt to control the flow
of energy, resources, money, power, and information.
While capitalist ideologues, in theory, extol the virtues of the
competitive “free market” and spurn state regulation, in reality corporate
executives revile competition and do everything in their power to avoid it
unless the game is rigged in their favor. As Marx pointed out long ago,
each successive bout of boom and bust reduces capitalist competition,
which inevitably succumbs to centralization and oligopoly. Instead of a
regulation-free competitive environment, giant corporations prefer a
corrupt “revolving door” relationship with government policymakers who
favor them with political influence, lucrative contracts, tax breaks, and
subsidies, while forcing small businesses to contend with regulatory
barriers and rigged markets that make competition nearly impossible. The
supposed separation between the public and private sectors is more artifice
than reality. At the pinnacles of power, capitalist elites circulate constantly
between highly integrated “private” and “public” sectors of social control.
Powerful industrial states, whether capitalist or statist, always
possess a well-funded national security apparatus of armies, propaganda
and intelligence operatives, police, courts, and prisons. These institutions
of social mind control, coercion, and violence are used in exactly the same

way: to defend and advance the industrial elite’s interests at home and
abroad and to suppress any significant dissent and unrest.
Beneath this powerful class of industrial “socialist” and capitalist
elites there are middle class functionaries, scientists, bureaucrats, and
professionals who provide the intellectual talents, technological expertise,
and managerial skills necessary to keep a complex society functioning.
This middle class lives better than the vast majority of the population
whose days are spent doing the mind-numbing, back-breaking, minimum
wage jobs needed to tend the bureaucratic-industrial machine.
Except for relative differences in social welfare, modern
conveniences, and purchasing power, these basic relations of production
have characterized all developed industrialized countries from capitalist
Europe and America to statist systems like the Soviet Union, its East
European allies, and China. Wherever you look, genuine economic and
political democracy has not proven compatible with the industrial mode of
production, despite the dedicated efforts of free-market libertarians,
anarchists, populists, radical democrats, communists, and socialist
revolutionaries to redistribute wealth and power. Instead, some
configuration of industrial rulers have always emerged and prevailed.
Thus, genuine socialism has never become a reality despite the best
intentions of those who struggled to bring it about. Instead, their best
intentions and noble aspirations were eroded and warped to fit the
structural imperatives of modern industrial society. The result became the
various versions of statist industrialism that passed for “socialism” during
the 20th century. With few exceptions, all of these statist systems had re-
integrated themselves into the global capitalist system to one degree or

another by the end of the 20th century.7
Marxists have been hard pressed
to explain why.
This was especially perplexing for old school Marxists and
communists who wanted to believe that these statist societies were genuine
socialist systems at the vanguard of history, leading humanity down the
evolutionary road to communism. After all, why would a socialist nation,
supposedly run by and for working people, ever choose to reverse the
course of history and rejoin the capitalist system? However, once you
remove the ideological blinders, the answer to this question is much less
perplexing: the working class was never in power in any of these so-called
“socialist” governments.
Some Marxists claim these statist systems were actually socialist
because, unlike capitalist countries, state-planned enterprises were not
required to maximize profit and were not allowed to turn labor or means of
production into commodities. The government was the only owner of the
means of production and thus the only employer of the working class. It
guaranteed workers a job and didn’t restrict basic social needs like
education, housing, transportation, and health care to only those who
could afford to buy them.
However, the working class did not have any effective control over
these “socialist” governments. These statist systems were not democratic;
and the inefficient, unaccountable bureaucracies that managed every walk
of life were self-serving, impassive, insensitive, and generally unresponsive
7 Since 1960, Cuban “socialism” has remained a relatively self-reliant, partially state
planned society by default in many respects. The collapse of the USSR and the stiff
embargo enforced by the US imposed a level of self-sufficiency on the island that
largely removed the potential for greater reintegration into the world capitalist system.
If the embargo is lifted, these new conditions will alter Cuba’s domestic and global
economic relations. This externally and internally reinforced isolation is similar to the
situation of North Korea, although these two systems differ dramatically in many ways.

to public criticism. Even at its best, the quality of the jobs, goods, and
services provided by these state planned economies was highly
unsatisfactory for everyone except a politically privileged elite.
Thus, like capitalism, alienation pervaded every aspect of life under
statist societies. While the profit motive is the primary directive for
corporate elites, “communist” officials were motivated to please their
superiors in the chain of command by perfunctorily fulfilling the directives
of the central plan. This situation left most working people completely
alienated from, and disillusioned with, the grand ideals of “socialism.” So
when these centrally planned systems began to implode under the burden
of their own bureaucratic weight, corruption, and inefficiency, those who
imagined they could do better under industrial capitalism were not sorry
to see them go.
As the Age of Fossil Fuels draws to a close, there is an important
lesson to be learned from our brief, petroleum powered, roller coaster ride
through industrial civilization. Energy sources, and the technologies used
to harness them, are not socially or politically neutral. They have a
powerful influence over how society can be organized. They promote
some types of economic relations and discourage others. While
hydrocarbon powered industrial societies have proven incompatible with
genuine economic democracy, future societies will have to live without this
enormously rich, ecologically devastating energy source. The
decentralized technologies needed to harness alternative energy sources
may be much more conducive to democratic governance at the community
and workplace level. However, there is absolutely no guarantee that post
carbon societies will be more just or democratic. After all, feudal and slave
societies were based on renewable energy. Those who hope to build a less

alienating, more democratic future will have to pay careful attention to the
social and political consequences of the technologies they adopt to harness
renewable energy.

Democratic Socialism: An Impossible Dream?

More Related Content

What's hot

Similar to Democratic Socialism: An Impossible Dream?

More from Craig Collins, Ph.D.

Recently uploaded

Democratic Socialism: An Impossible Dream?