Social change in progressive political thought: analysis and propositions

Abstract

The first part of this article explores the historic controversies that divided progressive movements in Europe over the issue of social change and more specifically the opposition between ‘materialists’ and ‘idealists’: put simply, while the first gave priority to economic structures and material interests, the second highlighted autonomous human action and ideas in explaining social progress. In the second part, this article argues that a particular articulation between interests and ideas constitutes a decisive driving force of social change. This renewed conception aims at overcoming both economic determinism and idealist biases by considering that a convincing ideology can provoke interests-based mobilizations and political support for progressive change.

Notes

 1. One of the most convincing definitions of ideology is the one given by Michael Freeden: ‘An ideology is a wide-ranging structural arrangement that attributes meaning to a range of mutually defining political concepts’. M. Freeden, Ideology. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 52.

 2. S. Mesure and P. Savidan, ‘La théorie critique’, Le dictionnaire des sciences humaines (Paris: PUF, 2006).

 3. F. Engels, Socialisme utopique et socialisme scientifique (Bruxelles: Aden, [1st edn 1880] 2005), p. 81.

 4. Engels, ibid., pp. 99–103.

 5. Engels, ibid., pp. 85–95.

 6. K. Marx, Capital (London: Penguin Classics, [1st edn 1867] 1992), Chapter 3.

 7. Marx, ibid., pp. 96–97.

 8. Marx, ibid., p. 97.

 9. Marx, ibid., p. 74.

10. Freeden, Ideology, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 5.

11. J. Jaurès and P. Lafargue, Idéalisme et matérialisme dans la conception de l'histoire (Paris: Etudes et Combats, 1895), pp. 26–29.

12. Several Marxists interpreted the Second World War as an example of this barbarity, a potential outcome of the crisis of capitalism if it is not followed by the instigation of socialism.

13. R. Luxemburg, Réforme ou révolution? Grève de masse, parti et syndicats (Paris: Petite Collection Maspero, [1st edn 1906] 1969), p. 15.

14. Although rare, there have been anti-materialist revolutionary approaches, such as the revolutionary syndicalism of Georges Sorel. For the author of Reflections on Violence (Paris: Editions Labor, 2006), socialism cannot be realized by reformist means within the framework of liberal democratic institutions, but must instead come to pass by a way of revolution, beginning with a general strike in which violence plays a driving and regenerative role. Against revolutionary communists, Sorel argued that this revolution would not result pre-eminently from the contradictions of capitalism itself. Rather, he held that it would be the outcome of the successful organization of the working class through union structures, and that it would be set in movement by mobilizing myths. Energy, the instinct towards violence and irrationality must, in his view, play a leading role in setting off the revolution. Sorel also refused the idea of a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat, since his thought was deeply anti-statist and anti-Jacobin. This anti-materialist approach, stressing on violence, was subsequently taken up by a wide range of contemporaries, including, most notably, both Carl Schmitt and Mussolini. Furthermore, although it may have had some intellectual influence, its impact on the Left remained marginal.

15. Neil Harding underlines that Lenin had a similar view, contrary to the Russian ‘revisionism’ at the time. N. Harding, Lenin's Political Thought (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Book, 2010).

16. Harding, ibid., pp. 28–32.

17. Harding, ibid.

18. Until the split leading to the creation of the Third International, most political movements vindicating Marxism called themselves ‘social democrats’. This term started designating the reformist and moderate branch only after the split of the labour movement between its radical and reformist wings.

19. K. Kautsky, The Social Revolution (Chicago, IL: Charles Kerr & Co., 1903), available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1902/socrev/index.htm.

20. Thus, although French socialists took part in elections and held parliamentary seats as of the end of the 19th century, in theoretical terms they accepted governmental participation only at the Party Congress of 1946—which did not prevent them from taking part in governmental revolutions after the First World War and during the crisis of the 1930s; see J. Moreau, L'espérance réformiste: histoire des courants et des idées reformists dans le socialisme français (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2007), pp. 106–112, 125–130, 134.

21. This point is made by G. A. Cohen (Ed.), ‘Historical inevitability and revolutionary agency’, in History, Labour, and Freedom: Themes From Marx (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

22. In the Soviet Union, by contrast, the determinist conception of history continued to prevail after the Russian Revolution, and was used as a means to legitimize the new regime. For instance, Nikolai Bukharin, an eminent member of the Soviet Communist Party, advocated in his Historical Materialism a form of socialism conceived as a science that could exactly predict social developments: following a violent revolution, the advent of socialism is presented as inevitable. Vandervelde, meanwhile, criticizes this rigidly determinist interpretation of Marxism. E. Vandervelde, Le marxisme a-t-il fait faillite? (Bruxelles: L'Eglantine, 1928), pp. 53–63.

23. F. Bon and M.-A. Burnier, ‘Eduard Bernstein et le triangle socialiste’, Mouvement Social, 87 (April–June 1974), p. 99.

24. E. Bernstein, The Preconditions of Socialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1st edn 1899] 1993), p. 199.

25. A. Colombani, ‘Etat et solidarité. Qu'est-ce que la social-démocratie?’, La Vie des idées, (November 2006), pp. 4–5.

26. Bernstein, The Preconditions of Socialism, op. cit., Ref. 24, p. 201.

27. Sorel follows Bernstein in this position (as in other aspects in his critique of historical materialism). G. Sorel, ‘Les polémiques pour l'interprétation du marxisme: Bernstein et Kautsky’, in La décomposition du marxisme et autres essais (Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France, [1st edn 1900] 1982), p. 16. One finds a similar view in the Belgian socialist, Vandervelde. Vandervelde, Le marxisme, op. cit., Ref. 22, p. 128.

28. In an approach inspired by Polanyi, Sheri Berman analyses the emergence of social democracy as a reassertion of the power of politics against unfettered markets, while fascism was the right-wing version of that ‘counter-movement’ against the harsh liberalism of the time. Sheri Berman, The Primacy of Politics, Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 6.

29. Sorel supports this approach in his defence of Bernstein against Kautsky. G. Sorel, ‘Les polémiques’, op. cit., Ref. 27, pp. 14–15.

30. J. Jaurès, ‘Aux instituteurs et institutrices’, La Dépêche, 15 January 1888, in Pages Choisies (Paris: F. Rieder et Cie Editeurs, 1922), pp. 92–93.

31. Vandervelde, Le marxisme, op. cit., Ref. 22, pp. 90–94. Vandervelde cites the passage in De Man which perfectly illustrates the latter's focus on the subjective and moral dimensions of socialism: ‘Ultimately, the social inferiority of the working classes is grounded neither in political injustice, nor in an economic prejudice, but rather in a mental disposition. The key feature of this inferiority is the working classes’ own belief in their inferiority. They are put in an inferior position because they “feel” that they are’ (author's own translation). Vandervelde, Le marxisme, op. cit., Ref. 22, p. 113.

32. For Sheri Berman, social democracy could initially be defined not only as a non-Marxist socialism that reasserted the role of politics, but also as an inherently communitarian vision. Berman, The Primacy of Politics, op. cit., Ref. 28, p. 17.

33. J. Jaurès, ‘L'idée de patrie’, L'Armée Nouvelle, in Pages Choisies, op. cit., Ref. 30, pp. 443–446; see also Bernstein, The Preconditions of Socialism, op. cit., Ref. 24, p. 165.

34. K. Dixon, Les évangélistes du marché: les intellectuels britanniques et le néolibéralisme (Paris: Raison d'Agir, 2008). Some of the founding movements of neoliberal thought date back to the 1930s. Cf. S. Audier, Aux origines du néolibéralisme: le colloque Lippmann (Paris: Le Bord de l'eau, 2009); F. Denord, Néolibéralisme version française: histoire d'une idéologie politique (Paris: Demopolis, 2007).

35. This model was characterized by active macroeconomic policies aiming at increasing the demand-side of the economy and by high wages and social protection to combine growth, full employment and social stability.

36. B. Jobert (Ed.), Le tournant neoliberal en Europe (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1994).

37. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, an economic determinism leading to the absence of politics was a characteristic both of orthodox Marxism and of orthodox economic liberalism. Berman, The Primacy of Politics, op. cit., Ref. 28, p. 6.

38. This inflection is clear in employment policies, since all the parties, including the centre-left ones, have integrated the postulates of neoclassical economics to tackle unemployment. B. Conter, ‘Plein-emploi ou chômage nécessaire: la stratégie européenne pour l'emploi, entre utopie et pragmatisme’, Politique Européenne, 21 (Autumn 2007), available at http://homepages.ulb.ac.be/~dmeulder/2008-2009/conter/PE-%20B%20Conter%20d%E9finitif%2015%20septembre%202006.pdf

39. P. Marlière, La social-démocratie domestiquée. La voie blairiste (Bruxelles: Aden, 2008).

40. It is necessary to reject both traditional Marxist determinism as well as the neoliberal one. R. M. Unger, False Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy, Volume 3 of Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

41. E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London/New York: Verso, [1st edn 1985] 2001).

42. Laclau and Mouffe, ibid., pp. 74–78.

43. E. O. Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias (London: Verso, 2010), pp. 368–370, 274–289.

44. Wright, ibid., pp. 176–178.

45. The classic Marxist prediction of a necessary collapse of capitalism and of an inevitable advent of socialism is not tenable anymore with the historic knowledge that we now have about the dynamics of capitalism. Wright, ibid., pp. 101–107.

46. Freeden, Ideology, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 126.

47. Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, op. cit., Ref. 43, pp. 286, 288–289.

48. J. M. Piotte, ‘La pensée politique de Gramsci’, in Les classiques des sciences sociales (Montréal: Éditions Parti-Paris, 1970), pp. 193–208, available at http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/piotte_jean_marc/pensee_de_gramsci/pensee_pol_gramsci.pdf; F. Ricci, Gramsci dans le texte (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1977), pp. 193, 208.

49. A. Tosel, Antonio Gramsci: Textes (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1983), pp. 142, 147.

50. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, op. cit., Ref. 41, pp. 179–180.

51. Laclau and Mouffe, ibid., pp. 191–193; C. Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, [1st edn 2003] 2005), pp. 56–57.

52. Laclau and Mouffe, ibid., pp. 56–57.

53. This very critical stance, deprived of any positive vision, characterizes other so-called ‘political realists’, as opposed to ‘political moralists’. W. A. Galston, ‘Realism in political theory’, European Journal of Political Theory, 9 (2010), pp. 385, 408.

54. See for instance, Unger, False Necessity, op. cit., Ref. 40; Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, op. cit., Ref. 43.

55. J.-C. Michéa, La double pensée. Retour sur la question libérale (Paris: Flammarion, 2008), pp. 229–230; J. Généreux, La Dissociété (Paris: La découverte, 2007), pp. 443–444; S. Critchley, Infinitely Demanding. Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance (London/New York: Verso, 2007), p. 10; S. Neiman, Moral Clarity, a Guide for Grown-up Idealists (London: Bodley Head, 2009); Sue Gerhard, The Selfish Society: How We All Forgot to Love One Another and Made Money Instead (London: Simon & Schuster, 2010). See also the attempt to redefine the ideology of New Labour by some intellectuals: Jonathan Rutherford, ‘Dispossession’, in H. Meyer and J. Rutherford (Eds) The Future of European Social Democracy: Building the Good Society (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Maurice Glasman, ‘Labour as a radical tradition’, in M. Glasman, J. Rutherford, M. Stears and S. White (Eds) The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox (London: The Oxford London Seminars, 2010–2011), pp. 14–34.

56. The insistence on a common identity, based on shared political values and on a common conception of the ‘good’ appearing in some post-structuralist writings, follows a similar logic. In this approach, it is not the articulation of common interests that the common ideology aims at clarifying, but rather a sense of common identity. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, op. cit., Ref. 41, pp. 46–50.

57. Political realists are sceptical regarding progress, because they believe that most human beings are not able to behave morally and are driven by self-interest, passion and emotions as much as by selfless ideals—unlike political moralists, who are more confident that the members of a society can reach a consensus on certain common principles of justice. Galston, ‘Realism in political theory’, op. cit., Ref. 53, p. 409.

58. If social mobilization and political support for progressive changes require some active contribution out of self-interest from the part of a majority of citizens, this involvement does not need to have the same intensity or take the same form for everyone. Since progressive transformations can be seen as a ‘public good’, there might indeed be some ‘free riders’ trying to get the advantages resulting from these changes without contributing to it (A. Buchanan, ‘Revolutionary motivation and rationality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 9 (1979), pp. 63–66). Nonetheless, instead of solving this problem by using coercion or moral principles (the latter is advocated by Buchanan, ‘Revolutionary motivation and rationality’, op. cit., Ref. 58, p. 73), a better solution is to build an ideology showing how these changes correspond to the interests of the majority of citizens so that they receive ‘in-process benefits’. These can be framed in terms of interest rather than feelings of solidarity and community as is often the case (Buchanan, ‘Revolutionary motivation and rationality’, op. cit., Ref. 58, pp. 68–71). Besides, the type of mobilization and of the new institutions involved by progressive change has to integrate the natural diversity of individual social and political involvement—some will want to be leaders and get the gratifications associated with that status, while others will be happy to be followers and enjoy the results of progressive changes with only a minimal contribution to it.

59. R. Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).

60. Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, op. cit., Ref. 43.

61. J. Jaurès, ‘La justice dans l'humanité’, Conférence in Pages Choisies, op. cit., Ref. 30, pp. 228–229; and cf. more recent studies: Martin L. Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Nicolas Baumard, Comment nous sommes devenus moraux. Une histoire naturelle du bien et du mal (Paris: Editions Odile Jacob, 2010), pp. 31–41.

62. R. Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Black Swan, 2006), pp. 241–267.

63. Vandervelde emphasized that, although socialism inevitably had a moral foundation—the rejection of injustice and the aspiration to a more just society—it also imperatively required the recognition that the main driver of human action, and in particular of mobilization for change, was usually material interest. Vandervelde, Le marxisme, op. cit., Ref. 22, p. 123.

64. Three mechanisms explain why altruism has been an evolutionary necessity. First, according to the theory of ‘kin selection’, natural selection pressure inclines us to make sacrifices for our relatives since they share our genes. Second, the theory of ‘reciprocal altruism’ explains cooperation among unrelated friends and strangers; and finally, the theory of ‘sexual selection’ shows that moral virtue can be an evolutionary advantage since it is attractive to both sexes. Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape. How Science can Determine Human Values (London: Bantam Press, 2010), p. 56.

65. The example of the progressive patriotism advocated by Jaurès and other socialists at the time is telling: originally supposed to lead to peace and the instigation of socialism, in reality it facilitated the alliance with right-wing political tendencies in 1914 that contributed to the outbreak of the First World War.

66. An example of this perfectionist or communitarian drift can be found in the way the principles of ‘laïcité’ and ‘republicanism’ are used in France as superior values, to be inculcated through schools, in opposition to cultural or religious principles. The banning of the Islamic headscarf in public schools in France was thus justified as a necessary means to affirm the values of the Republic to young citizens. Sophie Heine, ‘The hijab controversy and French republicanism: critical analysis and propositions’, French Politics, 7(2) (2009), pp. 167–193.

67. I present this proposition in Oser penser à gauche. Pour un réformisme radical (Bruxelles: Aden, 2010) and develop it further in a book to be published: Oser la liberté. L'individu comme objectif, le collectif comme moyen (Paris: Lattes).

68. B. Jackson, ‘We are all social-democrats now’, in J. Purnell and G. Cooke (Eds) We Mean Power: Ideas for the Future of the Left (London: Open Left, Demos, 2010), p. 49.

69. Cohen developed that kind of idealistic discourse against capitalism and markets: ‘The immediate motive to productive activity in a market society is typically some mixture of greed and fear … These are horrible ways of seeing other people (…)’ and these logics, according to Cohen, contradict the community dimension of socialism. G. A. Cohen, ‘Back to socialist basics’, The New Left Review, 207 (September–October, 1994), p. 9.

70. Wright defends a socialist conception embodying such selfless ideals. Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, op. cit., Ref. 43, p. 79.

71. See, for instance, E. O. Wright, The Real Utopias Project: Deepening Democracy – Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance (London: Verso, 2003); Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, op. cit., Ref. 43, p. 369 or Unger, False Necessity, op. cit., Ref. 40.

72. I differ in that respect from Wright's mild perfectionism. Indeed, even though he affirms that human flourishing should be neutral with respect to the conception of the good life (Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, op. cit., Ref. 43, pp. 13–17), he then adds that such flourishing must mean realizing all the talents and potentials of the individuals so that they can reach a meaningful and happy life. According to him, this first and foremost requires connections with other people, engagement in interesting work and activities and participation in communities (Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, op. cit., Ref. 43, p. 69). I support a less perfectionist conception of human emancipation which frees the individuals from current dominations and gives them the tools to decide for themselves what their freedom means. Without subscribing to the methodology and practical recommendations associated with it, my vision comes close to Philippe Van Parijs' general definition of ‘real freedom’ as the effective capacity of individuals to act on their life plans, to be in a position to actually make the choices that matter to them. P. Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All: What (if Anything) can Justify Capitalism? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).