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Robert L. Heilbroner What Is Socialism?

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Robert L. Heilbroner What Is Socialism? Robert L. Heilbroner What Is Socialism? Following this article are comments by Lewis Coser, Bogdan Denitch, Michael Harrington, and Michael Walzer, to which Robert Heilbroner in turn replies.-EDS. B eyond the welfare state lies the terra characteristics that we would expect to be incognita we call socialism. It lies there more associated with a new chapter of human by assumption than by reconnaissance, for no history. one has yet observed this socialism in reality: This failure of nerve—for that is what I perhaps it will turn out to be a New Atlantis, think it is—carries serious consequences. It not a New World. But we assume that enables us to use the world "socialism" in a socialism lies "beyond" the welfare state way that is purely talismanic and devoid of because what we generally mean by Western any operational significance. Worse, it en- socialism is a set of institutions and cultural ables us to evade questions and dilemmas that attitudes, of social structures and lifeways, are posed by the analysis of socialism as a that is qualitatively different from those we chapter of history that lies beyond the welfare find under the prevailing state of affairs. state. These questions present painful, even Socialism, as most of us think about it, is not agonizing, choices to those socialists who are just an improved welfare state. It is another devoted to political rights and humanistic kind of society. culture as we know them in the West. That, What kind? That is a very awkward as well however, is a matter for later consideration. as difficult question, which most socialists, For we cannot discuss the structure of the especially Marxists, have been reluctant to culture of socialism until we have reached examine. When looking at past or present, agreement on the essential elements of the Marxists like to insist on the necessity of society that it is to displace. This leads us, as emphasizing the "socioeconomic formations" the first step in our argument, to consider the underlying each separate chapter of history. nature of the welfare state. In so doing, they force an observer to pay special attention to the interaction of social, A t first blush that seems an unmanageably" political, and economic dynamics characteris- complex task. There is not one welfare state tic of each epoch. But when socialism is but many welfare states. The misery of a mentioned, this tough-minded approach South Bronx drug "rehabilitation" center, the tends to be abandoned, even denigrated as crude measures of American anticyclical "counterrevolutionary." Socialism then be- fiscal policy are parts of the welfare appara- comes little more than a compass setting, an tus. So are the humane open penal institutions imagined landfall over the horizon, and no and sophisticated employment policies of effort is made to discuss even the most basic Sweden. 341 Nonetheless, I believe we can discern a privately owned aggregates of capital. This is common element that allows us to place all a fundamental aspect of capitalism—indeed, these varied institutions under a single rubric. its vital center—to which welfare reforms do This common element lies in the relation of not penetrate, or which they abridge only the welfare apparatus to its underlying slightly. That is why welfarism is a develop- socioeconomic formation, which is of course ment within capitalism and not beyond it, and capitalism. Welfare institutions, I think all it is why socialism must -hesitate before it will concur, arise mainly to cope with the declares that it can gain its objectives within difficulties and damages that are brought the boundaries of the welfare state. about by the workings of a capitalist system. There is also a second set of problems with The welfare state, in a word, is a kind of which welfare institutions deal. These prob- apotheosis of capitalism—the form that lems have to do with the culture of capital- capitalism takes in seeking its own salvation. ism—its bourgeois "superstructure"—rather Whether or not capitalism will find its than its operational stresses and strains. Here salvation, or whether it could survive its we find such symptoms as the anomic quality salvation, are questions we will disregard of life, the much-discussed malaise and here. For if we are to contrast socialism as a alienation of modern society, the degrada- socieconomic formation with that of the tions associated with commercialism, the capitalist welfare state, we must also agree on decay of the communal spirit, etc. To alleviate the difficulties and damages of capitalism to or offset these ailments we find a second array which welfarism addresses itself. And here of welfare measures that aim at restoring again, I think we can clearly identify the social morale, or at providing •a sense of sets of central problems. communality. The elaborate edifice of educa- They are two. The first are the difficulties tion is partly supported for this purpose. that emerge from the "anarchic" nature of Services are provided to the sick or the aged, capitalism. Anarchy does not mean an not only for economic but for "social" absence of any logic or order in capitalism— reasons. Indeed, the very presence of a there is the famed, and indeed remarkable, government that declares its interest in the "mechanism" of the market. The difficulty, protection of the environment, in "law and rather, is that the logic and order of capitalism order," and in the public weal, fills the need solves some kinds of problems only by for an explicitly moral social concern to which imposing others. The market resolves the the private sphere makes no contribution. The problem of "efficiency," for example, but it welfare state thus seeks to provide through the creates such problems as instability, unem- public sector a sense of communality that is ployment, maldistribution, and social neglect absent from the attitudes normally engen- of various kinds. dered by a bourgeois culture. The anarchy of the market is, of course, a To be sure, these attitudes of a bourgeois direct object of welfare redress. Fiscal and culture are themselves symptoms, not root monetary policy, urban renewal, unemploy- elements. Just as the anarchic aspect of ment compensation, social security, antipol- capitalism expresses deeper-lying problems, lution controls, industrial regulation and a so the familiar social ailments of modern long list of similar measures are typical capitalism also express more fundamental welfare measures that address themselves to attributes of the system—in particular, the the repair, containment, or suppression of the profoundly individualistic ideology and anarchic ills of capitalism. If the remedies are morality of a system built on a universalized often unsuccessful, the reason is that the competitive striving for wealth. And just as anarchic malfunctions reflect the working-out the welfare state seeks to remedy the problems of still deeper-lying core elements in the of the market while bypassing its core socioeconomic makeup of capitalism—above institutions, so welfare capitalism tries to all, the direction of productive activity by undo the excesses of its culture while leaving 342 untouched the acquisitive, privatized ethos planning, and for its culture on some form of that is inseparable from its economic struc- commitment to the idea of a morally ture. conscious collectivity. These two elements This is not the place to discuss the limited seem to me to be the only alternatives to the efficacy of welfare reforms, either in the anarchic character and alienated culture of sphere of culture or economics. Rather, what welfare capitalism. I wish to emphasize is that we discover the Let us begin with the economic issue. There problems of economic anarchy and social are iron necessities that govern the economic alienation (to use catchwords) in all capitalist activities of all societies. Provision must be societies, from the crudest to the most refined. made to satisfy needs for current consump- Whether we investigate West Germany or tion and to replace the worn-out capital of any Norway, England or the United States, we see period. Moreover a society facing technologi- economic disorders stemming from the cal change within, or environmental change mechanism of the market, and disaffection, without, will have to alter its patterns of erosion of social morale, and a troublesome inputs and outputs in order to maintain a radicalism among students, arising from the steady state of final consumption and capital cultural milieu. replacement. And last, a society seeking to My aloof tone may suggest a scornful increase its wealth must refrain from consum- denigration of the efforts of the welfare state ing, and must invest the resources and labor to offset these problems. Of course, once one that have been saved. sees the failure of welfare measures to grapple These essential tasks require the coordina- with the deepest roots of the malfunctions to tion of activity, often on a vast scale. Speaking which they are addressed, some critical stance in stylized fashion, there are only three ways is inescapable. Yet I am far from dismissing in which this can be done. Societies can trust the achievements of the welfare state as to the guiding hand of tradition for the hypocritical or insignificant. Indeed, it may maintenance of a fixed configuration of well be that the welfare state at its most activities; this is the "system" of tradition by advanced—as we find it in the Scandinavian which primitive societies secure their con- nations or in certain policies of the Nether- tinuance. Tradition will not, however, lands or Austria, for example—is the best we arrange things when the environment can do today to achieve humanist goals changes, or when new technologies enter or without jeopardizing key political and social when growth is sought (the two latter cases rights.
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