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“Evolutionary and revolutionary socialists disagree about both ‘means’ and ‘ends’.” Discuss.

Historically, two major issues have divided socialist traditions: namely, the ‘means’ and the ‘ends’ of socialism. The term ‘means’ indicates the road to socialism: how it will be achieved; the ‘ends’ signify the end-result or nature of socialism once the road has been travelled, so to speak. The two main socialist traditions, revolutionary and evolutionary, have engaged in vast intellectual and political debates over the very nature of their common cause, causing splits and drifts within the ideology as a whole. This essay attempts to analyse the ideas behind both strands, and to assess the extent to which they disagree on the ideological pathways, and later destination, of socialism.

Many early, revolutionary socialists believed that socialism could only be introduced by the revolutionary overthrow of the existing political system, and accepted that violence would be an inevitable part of such a revolution. Indeed, one of the earliest advocates of revolutionary socialism, Auguste Blanqui, proposed the formation of a small band of dedicated conspirators who would plan and carry out a revolutionary seizure of power through use of propaganda and violence. On the other hand, Marx and Engels envisaged a “proletarian revolution” in which the class conscious working masses would rise up to overthrow the bourgeois, capitalist state. The first successful socialist revolution occurred in 1917 in Russia, when a band of dedicated and disciplined revolutionaries, led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, seized power. In many ways, the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 served as a model for subsequent generations of socialist revolutionaries.

During the nineteenth century, revolutionary tactics were attractive to socialists for two reasons. Firstly, the early stages of industrialization produced stark injustice, grinding poverty and widespread unemployment among the working class. Capitalism was viewed as a system of oppression and exploitation, and the working class was thought to be on the brink of revolution. Indeed, when Marx and Engels wrote in their “Communist Manifesto”: “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism”, they were correct. Secondly, the working classes had few other means of political influence: indeed, almost everywhere they were excluded from political life. The archaic, autocratic monarchies of Europe persisted, and these were dominated by the landed aristocracy; and where constitutional and representative government had developed, suffrage was usually restricted to the middle class through property qualifications. Even when the franchise was extended to the working class out of sheer fear of revolution, socialists deplored it – Pierre-Joseph Proudhon famously stated: “Universal suffrage is counter-revolution”. For the unenfranchised working masses, the only realistic prospect of introducing socialism lay with political revolution.

Such a belief in revolutionary action reflects the revolutionary socialists’ analysis of the state, and the nature of political democracy. Revolutionary socialists see the state as an agent of class oppression: a bourgeois vehicle to further interests of ‘capital’ and to debilitate those of ‘labour’. In their view, universal suffrage and competitive elections are but a façade, the purpose being to conceal the reality of equality and misdirect the political energies of the working class. Therefore, for revolutionary socialists, the class-conscious proletariat had no alternative: in order to build socialism, it has to first overthrow the bourgeois state through political revolution.

At this point, it is important to highlight the subsequent ‘ends’ of revolutionary socialism. The first occurrence immediately following a socialist revolution would be to instate a “dictatorship of the proletariat”: a temporary period during which the revolution would need to be protected against the danger of counter revolutionary activity from the recently dispossessed bourgeoisie. Once this had been established and the threat of counter revolution had dissipated, the abolition of capitalism would occur, creating a socialist alternative based upon cooperation and community. Furthermore, private property would be similarly abolished, pathing the way to common ownership of all property in a classless society.

Unfortunately for revolutionary socialists, while Marx had always advocated such ‘ends’ to be associated with the revolutionary movement, he said little about how it’s goals were to be achieved in practice. Therefore, when the Bolsheviks came to power, they believed socialism could be built through nationalization: the extension of direct state control over the economy. This process was not completed until the 1930s, when Stalin’s ‘second revolution’ witnessed the construction of a centrally planned economy, known as a system of ‘state collectivization’ ‘Common ownership of the means of production’ came to mean ‘state ownership of the means of production’ – or what the Soviet constitution called ‘State Socialism’. As a result, the revolutionary road has often been associated with a drift towards dictatorship and use of political repression. Furthermore, revolutionary socialism was drastically undermined by the counter revolutions of 1989-91. While this led many to write off Marxism as a spent world-historical force, it finally ended the central feud within socialism – namely, that of revolution vs. evolution - and the ideology was now fixed upon more constitutional and democratic means of achieving its goals.

However, this shift towards evolution was not a recent fixation. As early as the late nineteenth century, support for revolution began to wane, at least in the advanced capitalist states of western and central Europe. Capitalism had matured, and the ‘urban proletariat’ had lost its revolutionary character and integrated into society. Wages and living standards began to rise; working men’s clubs, trade unions and working class political parties sought to protect the interests of the working classes; and the extension of political democracy led to the extension of the franchise to the working classes meant that the working classes were not seen as a revolutionary threat, and many had become somewhat politically conservative as a result of these new liberties. The effects of such developments were that socialists now sought an alternative, evolutionary, democratic and parliamentary route to socialism. Indeed, even Karl Marx was prepared to speculate about the possibility of a peaceful transition to socialism in the advanced capitalist states.

The Fabian Society institutionalised the idea of evolutionary socialism in the UK. The Fabians were headed by intellectuals Beatrice and Sidney Webb, who believed that socialism would develop naturally and peacefully out of liberal capitalism via a very ‘patient’ process. This would occur through a combination of political action and education: political action required the formation of a socialist party which would compete for power against established parliamentary parties; education would convert elite groups to socialism and help them to recognize that socialism was indeed morally superior to capitalism. Fabians, like all evolutionary socialists, saw the state as a impartial arbiter, rather than a bourgeois vehicle for furthering its own interests, and this directly influenced their view of the nature of political democracy. For ‘evolutionaries’, democracy can be used as a tool for furthering the interests of the working classes, rather than a hindrance for them. In this light, Fabian ideas had a great influence upon the SDP in Germany, which had previously been bent upon a more Marxist strategy to achieving its ‘ends’. Fabian ideas mixed with those of Ferdinand Lassalle, who argued that the extension of political democracy could enable the state to respond to working class interests and envisaged socialism being established through a gradual process of social reform, introduced by a benign state. Such ideas were developed more thoroughly by Eduard Bernstein, whose “Evolutionary Socialism” developed ideas which paralleled the Fabian belief in gradualism. Bernstein backed the development of a democratic state, which made the Marxist call for revolution redundant and believed that the ballot box would encourage an evolutionary growth out of capitalism. Such ideas influenced the formation of the Australian Labour Party in 1891, the UK Labour Party in 1900 and the French Socialist Party in 1905, and from 1970 onwards, Communist parties throughout Europe were committed to pursuing a democratic road to socialism, and maintaining an open, competitive political system once their goals were achieved. As a result, it is evident that the ‘ends’ associated with the evolutionary path to socialism are the establishment of a democratic, socialist state, which would reform society, rather than revolutionise it. Furthermore, it would advocate equality and social justice within society, rather than be intent on a programme of common ownership and abolition of all private property. Moreover, historically, democratic socialism has tended to tame capitalism, rather than attempt to abolish it completely.

Having analysed the ‘means’ and ‘ends’ of both revolutionary and evolutionary socialism, it appears that the given statement is indeed correct. Indeed, the long lasting feud between Communists and Democratic Socialists over their ideological commitments during the early part of the twentieth century demonstrates the tension between the two strands. Their inconsistent views of the state and the nature of political democracy clearly illustrate the conflict of interests between revolutionaries and ‘evolutionaries’ within socialism as a whole. It is also important to add that the very nature of the ‘means’ of socialism is a direct reflection of the nature of the ‘ends’ of each schism: revolutionists advocate a hard-line Marxist state; Evolutionists propose a more democratic and egalitarian system of government. Therefore, it would be safe to conclude that the ‘means’ and ‘ends’ of any ideology are inextricably linked, and the character of one will directly affect the other.