Public Ownership and Socialism: Reading the 10-volume Collected Works of Marx and Engels
The status and role of socialist public ownership, especially state ownership, is one of the most hotly debated topics in today's society.
The problem seems to have arisen from the early 1990s, when the socialist systems in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and other countries gradually disappeared, and this disappearance was linked to the acceleration of the privatization process.
The formation and development of a diversified ownership structure, a major achievement of China's reform and opening up, not only shows the vitality of individual, private and foreign-funded non-public enterprises, but also reflects the continuous shrinking of state-owned enterprises and their lack of vitality. The contrast between the vitality of the public economy and the non-public economy seems to have formed a real criticism of the status of public ownership.
In theory, there are constant remarks such as "public ownership is not suitable for the market economy", "state-owned economy is the source of backwardness and corruption", and even that public ownership is a "socialist utopia".
What is the relationship between public ownership and socialism? Reading the ten-volume Collected Works of Marx and Engels can provide useful insights.
1. The abolition of private property is the basic mission of the Communist Manifesto
In November 1847, the Communist League, an international workers' group, held a congress in London, at which Marx and Engels were commissioned to draft a party program. This party program, the world-famous Communist Manifesto, was written in January 1848. At that time, Marx was 29 years old and Engels was 27 years old, both of them were quite young.
The Communist Manifesto (hereinafter referred to as the "Manifesto") is a summary of the struggle experience of the European workers' movement in the first half of the 19th century and a symbol of the transition of communist theory from utopianism to science.
The Manifesto begins with a magnificent statement: "A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism." This spectre is being haunted by the old European powers, from the Pope to the Tsar, from Metternich to Guizot. To this end, the Communists must openly explain their views and aims to the whole world. The Manifesto discusses its views from different levels, including the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the proletariat and the Communists, the socialist and communist literature, and the attitude of the Communists towards various opposition parties. The most core point is undoubtedly: "The Communists can summarize their theory in one sentence: the abolition of private property." [1] (p. 45) The Manifesto, which takes the abolition of private property as its basic program, was produced in such a historical era: it was the early stage of the development of capitalist society, but the contradiction between labor and capital was already quite acute. In particular, the process of primitive accumulation of capital written in blood and fire, whether it is the enclosure movement characterized by "sheep eating people" in rural areas, driving a large number of farmers to cities to become the cheapest "industrial slaves", or the exploitation of absolute surplus value by extending working hours, increasing labor intensity, and worsening labor and living environment, plus the bloody plunder of overseas colonies, all show the cruelty of capital exploitation and plunder of labor. Engels once wrote the book "The Condition of the Working Class in England", which fully revealed the situation of the proletariat at that time. In his works such as "Capital", Marx used the cruel reality of labor-capital relations as material for dissecting the essence of capitalism.
“When capital came into the world, from head to toe, every pore was dripping with blood and filth.” [2] (p. 871) The capitalists walked forward with their heads held high, and the workers followed behind. “One was smiling and ambitious; the other was trembling and shrinking, like selling his own skin in the market, with only one future—to be tanned by others.” [2] (p. 205) Marx and Engels’ understanding of the cruelty of capital exploiting labor first came from the large amount of actual materials provided by society. At that time, people of insight in European societies such as Britain, Germany, and France fully exposed the cruelty of capital. British workers’ inspectors, child labor committees, experts and scholars, and the British Museum all provided rich materials on labor-capital relations.
Marx and Engels' understanding of the cruelty of capital exploiting labor came from the dissection of the nature of capitalist relations or labor-capital relations. Marx's two great discoveries, namely the dialectical materialist conception of history and the theory of surplus value, enabled him to understand the capitalist labor-capital relationship and raised the society's understanding of this issue to a new level. "The capitalist is capital personified", and the mission of entrepreneurs can only serve the appreciation of capital. Therefore, Marx appreciated the passage in the "Critic Weekly": Capital is afraid of no profit or too little profit. "Once there is a proper profit, capital becomes bold. If there is a profit, it is guaranteed to be used everywhere; if there is a 20% profit, it will be active; if there is a 50% profit, it will take risks; for 100% profit, it dares to trample on all human laws; if there is a 300% profit, it dares to commit any crime, even at the risk of being hanged." [2] (p.871) This is undoubtedly the most vivid portrayal of the cruel nature of capital exploitation and plunder.
The cruelty of capital’s exploitation of labor and the sharpness of the contradiction between labor and capital are derived from capitalist economic relations. Therefore, the only way to resolve the contradiction is to eliminate private ownership of the means of production and replace it with public ownership. This is the inevitable conclusion of the theoretical deduction in the Manifesto. Marx and Engels discussed the economic forms that will replace capitalist private ownership in the future society, such as public ownership, social ownership, collective and cooperative ownership, and also talked about state ownership. They believed that the state would still perform the responsibility of managing social property: "The proletariat will seize state power and, in the first place, turn the means of production into state property." [3] (p. 297) "Land can only be the property of the state" and "the national concentration of the means of production will become the national basis of a society composed of associations of free and equal producers." [4] (pp. 232, 233) In the dialectical materialist view of history, the ownership of the means of production is the foundation and core of economic relations. Therefore, the Communist Manifesto regards the elimination of private ownership as the basic purpose of its theory. It should be said that the name of the Communist Party also comes from this.
2. Realizing the liberation of human nature is the highest ideal of the Communists
In Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, there is a brilliant description of the essence of communism: “Communism is the positive transcendence of private property, that is, of man’s self-alienation, and is therefore the real appropriation of human nature by man and for man; it is therefore the restoration of man to himself, that is, to social humanity, a restoration which is complete, a restoration which is consciously realized and realised within the total wealth of previous development. This communism, as perfect naturalism, is humanism, and as perfect humanism, is naturalism. It is the real solution of the contradiction between man and nature, between man and man, the real solution of the struggle between existence and essence, between objectification and self-affirmation, between nature and necessity, between the individual and the class.” [5] (p. 185) This passage contains three meanings: first, the goal of communism is to achieve human liberation and the restoration of humanity; second, Marx deeply detests the alienation of workers and even the entire society in the capitalist world; and third, the abolition of private ownership of the means of production is proposed as a necessary condition or means to achieve the liberation of humanity.
Marx selected the concept of alienation from Hegel’s philosophy and made a profound analysis of the reality of capitalist society: the more wealth a worker produces, the poorer he becomes. “The appreciation of the world of things is directly proportional to the depreciation of the world of men.” “Labor produces miraculous things for the rich, but produces abject poverty for the workers.” [5] (pp. 156, 158) Under capitalist ownership relations, this is most prominently manifested as the alienation of labor. Marx analyzed the situation and results of labor alienation from different aspects: first, the alienation of labor objects, that is, the alienated relationship between laborers and their own labor products, because in the case of employed labor, the labor products not only do not belong to the laborers, but on the contrary become tools of domination and enslavement; second, the self-alienation of labor, that is, the activities of laborers in the production process are already alien activities that do not belong to them and will turn against their own activities; third, it leads to the alienation of human nature from humans, that is, labor, a human function, is alienated into an enslaved animal function, on the contrary, eating, living, reproduction and other animal functions have become the only things that laborers can feel are human; fourth, the alienation of humans from humans, that is, the entire capitalist society is in a state of contradiction and opposition between people. Not only are capital and labor in a state of contradiction and opposition, but there is also competition and contradiction between capital and labor.
Correspondingly, Marx also used the concepts of reification and personification, that is, the reification of people and the personification of things, to further analyze the alienated relationship in capitalist society. "The capitalist, as personified capital with will and consciousness, performs its functions" and never takes the production of use value as its direct purpose, but rather an endless movement to seek profit. [2] (pp. 178, 179) That is to say, as the representative of capital, the capitalist executes the will of capital. From this perspective, capital and capitalists have also departed from the essence of human beings and are also in a state of alienation.
Marx began his studies with philosophy and law, and eventually turned to the study of political economy. In his representative work and Marxist classic Capital, he used the term "commodity fetishism" from political economy to replace the philosophical concept of alienation to analyze the unequal and irrational reality of capitalist society.
"Das Kapital" begins with an analysis of commodities, the economic cells of capitalist society. Marx believed that all contradictions in capitalist society are contained in the internal contradictions of commodities, namely the contradictions between use value and exchange value, concrete labor and abstract labor, private labor and social labor, and unfold on the basis of the internal contradictions of commodities. Marx believed that just as in the religious world, once religion, which is originally a product of the human brain, is formed, it in turn dominates people and makes people worship the gods at its feet, and the same is true for commodities. From the perspective of use value, commodities are various attributes that meet people's needs and are not mysterious. However, from the perspective of value and commodities, their mysterious nature occurs: commodities, which are originally the products of human labor, now in turn dominate people's relationships and make people worship commodities. The exchange relationship between things replaces the labor exchange relationship between people and conceals the labor relationship between people. This is commodity fetishism.
Commodity fetishism “arise[s] from the peculiar social character of the labour which produces commodities” [2] (p. 90), i.e., the peculiar social character of the transformation of private labour into social labour. This peculiar economic relation of commodity fetishism exists in the commodity form, i.e., as soon as the product of labour is transformed into a commodity, the commodity fetish relation arises.
Capitalism is the highest stage of commodity economic development, which has pushed commodity fetishism to its peak, and currency fetishism and capital fetishism have followed. "Gold! Yellow, shining, precious gold! Just a little bit can turn black into white, ugly into beautiful, wrong into right, humble into noble, old into young, coward into warrior... This yellow slave can make pagan alliances, split the same clan... make thieves gain high titles... make chicken-skinned and yellow-faced widows become brides again... Damn clod of earth, you whore who can be fucked by anyone..." [2] (p. 155) This line from Shakespeare's Timon of Athens was appreciated and quoted many times by Marx. It is also a sharp lash against commodity and currency fetishism.
Alienation and commodity fetishism complement each other and bring out the best in Marx's description of the nature of capitalism. Commodity fetishism, on the one hand, shows the social tendency of capital's inherent impulse to pursue profits; on the other hand, it also conceals the inherent nature and contradictions of capitalism. Therefore, Marx used a special section to analyze the origins and development of commodity fetishism, which is also the most exciting passage in "Capital". According to Marx's logic, the condition for the disappearance of commodity fetishism, which inverts the relationship between people in the world, is the demise of capitalist private ownership.
3. Capital will not disappear as long as it can release productivity
In The Communist Manifesto, Marx discussed the fate of the demise of capitalist private ownership, and on the other hand, he praised the "bourgeoisie for having played a very revolutionary role in history." This was not only reflected in the impact on medieval feudal relations, but also in the great contribution to the development of social productivity.
Thanks to the rapid improvement of the means of production and the great convenience of transportation, the bourgeoisie has drawn all nations, even the most barbaric, into civilization. The bourgeoisie has created huge cities, subordinated the countryside to the cities, subordinated the uncivilized and semi-civilized countries to the civilized countries, and subordinated the East to the West.
“The bourgeoisie, during its scarcely one hundred years of class rule, has created more numerous and greater productive forces than all preceding generations combined. The conquest of natural forces, the use of machinery, the application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, the steam ship, the railway, the electric telegraph, the clearing of whole continents for cultivation, the opening of rivers, whole populations called up as if by magic from the ground – what earlier century had even aspired to the presence of such productive forces slumbering in the lap of social labour?” [1] (pp. 33-36) This is the most fair assessment of the way in which the capitalist mode of production has opened the door to the social productive forces.
It is worth noting that while Marx revealed the inevitable trend of the demise of capitalist private ownership, he also clearly pointed out: "No social form can ever perish before all the productive forces for which it has room have been developed." [1] (p. 592) This is a basic view of historical materialism.
Marx lived in an era when the relationship between capital and labor was extremely tense, and it was from this that the saying "the death knell of capitalism has sounded" came. In the decades after Marx's death, there were indeed historical facts such as economic crises, world wars, and the birth of the Soviet socialist state. But who could have foreseen that the sick capitalist world would gain new energy from reforms such as Keynesianism and Roosevelt's New Deal, especially the new technological revolution after the 1960s, which made the capitalist system show considerable vitality.
In fact, even in the era when Marx and Engels lived, the capitalist mode of production was in constant change and development. Factory inspectors, child labor investigation committees, privy council medical officers, food adulteration supervision laws, etc., were all measures taken by capitalist society to ease the contradiction between labor and capital. Marx analyzed the economic forms such as joint-stock companies that emerged at that time from the perspective of the self-negation of private capital by "social capital".
But this means a major adjustment and development of the capitalist mode of production. After Marx, the social forms of capital such as joint-stock companies and exchanges have developed tremendously, as Engels commented in relevant articles. The development and contradictions of the capitalist mode of production are intertwined.
The international financial crisis that started in the United States in 2008 has pushed the international economic crisis to a new stage and level. New contradictions and new shocks have also tempered the means by which the capitalist world can regulate itself.
Replacing capitalist private ownership with socialist public ownership is an inevitable trend in the development of human society. However, we must also clearly realize that capitalism will never die out easily as long as the mode of production can accommodate the development of productivity.
4. Socialism is not a static dogma
In the early 1880s, when discussing the distribution method of products in the future society in newspapers and periodicals, many progressive people believed that socialist society was not something that was constantly changing and progressing, but something that was stable and unchanging, and that there should be an unchanging distribution method. In this regard, Engels made a very pertinent comment: "I believe that the so-called 'socialist society' is not a static thing, but should be regarded as a society of constant change and reform, just like any other social system." [6] (p.588) In fact, Marx and Engels mentioned the view that "socialism is not static" many times. For example, as early as 1890, Marx clearly pointed out: "I do not advocate raising any banner of dogmatism." [6] (p.7) After the publication of Volume 1 of Capital, many people in France, Germany and other countries talked about Marxism. Regarding the clichés of the Malone type, Marx once said angrily: "One thing is certain, I am not a Marxist." [6] (p.487) Marxism and socialism are not static dogmas, and neither Marx nor Engels wanted to turn their doctrines into rigid and solidified things.
In fact, the proletarian revolutionary movement after Marx and Engels not only followed the basic principles of Marxism, but also continued to advance in accordance with new circumstances. In particular, Lenin's argument that the proletarian revolution would not necessarily break out and triumph in the most developed capitalist countries, but in Russia where all kinds of contradictions intertwined, and the great practice of the victory of the October Revolution proved the truth of the development of Marxism.
The Soviet model of socialist economic development of Leninism also follows the basic view of Marxism on socialism: replacing capitalist private ownership with socialist public ownership, replacing capitalist market economy with planned economy, and replacing the distribution system of wage labor with distribution according to work. This set of Soviet economic development model promoted the rapid development of the Soviet economy in the 1930s, and formed a sharp contrast with the depression of the great economic crisis in capitalist countries during the same period.
Therefore, the socialist countries such as Eastern Europe and China that emerged after World War II must have copied the Soviet development model. However, this model did not last long. The Great Depression in the 1930s and World War II prompted people of insight in Western countries to actively reflect and adopt a series of measures to strengthen macroeconomic regulation, including improving the social welfare system and formulating national economic development plans. There is no lack of practices that draw on the useful experience of some socialist countries. In an environment that is still a market economy in general, a series of macroeconomic regulation factors have been added, which has added new vitality to the capitalist world after the 1950s and 1960s. Coupled with the rise of the new technological revolution, the capitalist mode of production has become more powerful. But at the same time, the drawbacks of the unified public ownership and the extremely rigid planned economic system that severely suppressed people's enthusiasm and resource efficiency were also fully revealed, so the market-oriented socialist economic system reform also kicked off.
Socialism, including public ownership, can be connected with the market economy, which Marx did not foresee and could not have foreseen. Although Marx also said in his book Critique of the Gotha Programme that "it is obvious that the same principle that regulates the exchange of commodities (in so far as it is an exchange of equal value) prevails here" and "equal rights are still bourgeois rights in principle" [4] (p. 434), these discussions can only leave some clues and foreshadowing for our study of the relationship between socialism and the market economy.
Today's China, including the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, all established socialist countries on the basis of capitalism and underdeveloped social productivity, and therefore must get out of the historical misunderstanding of eliminating commodity relations. Not only developing countries, but even some economically developed countries cannot easily deny commodity and market relations if they embark on the road of socialism.
As Deng Xiaoping said, in the modern economy, both planning and the market are methods and means of regulating the economy, which can be used in both capitalism and socialism. [7] (p. 373) To get rid of the rigid Soviet model, we must start with market-oriented reforms and gradually move on to changes in the ownership structure.
The foundation of the planned economic system is a single public ownership structure. It is the single public ownership, especially the ubiquitous ownership by all the people or state ownership, that gives the rigid planned economic system unlimited power. Therefore, building a diversified ownership structure is also an inherent requirement for developing a market economy. Facts have proved that China's sustained high-speed economic growth over the past 30 years of reform and opening up has relied to a large extent on the power of non-public economies such as domestic and foreign capital.
In his 1847 article “The Principles of Communism”, Engels also mentioned that private property cannot be abolished all at once, “just as the existing productive forces cannot be expanded all at once to the extent necessary for the implementation of public ownership of property. Therefore, the proletarian revolution that is likely to come can only transform present society gradually, and private property can only be abolished after the necessary large amounts of means of production have been created.” [5] (p. 685) Engels’ basic view is that the elimination of private property still requires the mass production of means of production and the emergence of a large amount of social wealth. After the proletariat seizes power, the reform of ownership can only be carried out gradually. It should be said that the development of a multi-ownership structure in China today is not only a practical improvement of the socialist movement, but also in line with Engels’ spirit at the time.
In connection with market-oriented development and a diversified ownership structure, Deng Xiaoping proposed the theory of the primary stage of socialism, which should be an important cognitive stage in the socialist movement. The gradual reform route of "crossing the river by feeling the stones" also points out the transformative and progressive nature of the socialist movement.
V. Adhere to the socialist path with public ownership at its core
There have always been many interpretations of communism and socialism. The Communist Manifesto has a special chapter entitled "The Literature of Socialism and Communism", which lists the conditions and characteristics of feudal socialism, petty-bourgeois socialism, German or "real" socialism, conservative or bourgeois socialism, and utopian socialism and communism. All the comments are incisive, such as the criticism of capitalist society by feudal socialism, which is "half elegy, half slander, half echo of the past, half threat of the future; it can sometimes pierce the heart of the bourgeoisie with its bitter, witty and sharp comments, but it is always ridiculous because it completely fails to understand the course of modern history." "Whenever the people followed them, they found that their buttocks were marked with the old feudal emblems, so they laughed and dispersed in a hurry." [1] (pp.54, 55)
Since the 20th century, especially after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist countries in the 1990s, various socialist schools have emerged one after another. Xu Juezai of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences's book "History of Socialist Schools" has a fairly complete summary of various socialist schools, including 25 schools of socialism, such as ethics, parliament, syndicalism, democracy, self-governance, foundation, ecology, and market. ① Although there are many schools of socialism, the one chosen and followed by the Chinese Communists is Marxist socialism pioneered by the "Communist Manifesto", which is a scientific socialism with public ownership as its core.
Socialism is a movement of constant change and development. The Soviet model characterized by single public ownership and planned economy has become a thing of the past, and the socialist market economy model with Chinese characteristics has shown great vitality. As the economic subject and foundation of this new model, it is the ownership structure in which multiple economic forms coexist, or the basic socialist economic system. It is called the basic socialist economic system because in the multiple ownership structure, the public economy is the core, especially the state-owned economy plays a leading role.
Due to the development of the non-public economy and the relative contraction of the public economy, and because it takes time for state-owned enterprises to adapt to market-oriented reforms, people tend to make irrational comments on the status and role of public ownership, especially state ownership, and believe that state-owned enterprises lack vitality in a market economy environment. They believe that, except for some public product sectors that still need to be provided by state-owned enterprises, privatization is the only way out for the reform of competitive state-owned enterprises.
After 30 years of reform, through the separation of government and enterprises, mergers and reorganizations and other reform measures, state-owned enterprises have unloaded their heavy historical burdens. A large number of large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises have become stronger and firmly play a leading role in promoting the development of the national economy. With the further deepening of market-oriented reforms, large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises can fully exercise their autonomy in market operations, which will surely enable China's state-owned economy and even the entire public economy to play a greater role.
For quite some time, public opinion at home and abroad has attacked public ownership, and claimed that the direction of China's market-oriented reforms must be similar to that of Russia. However, practice has proved that China's state-owned enterprises have become more solid in market-oriented reforms and firmly play a guiding role in the development of the socialist economy.
Since the outbreak of the international financial crisis in 2008, governments around the world have launched fiscal rescue policies. People have commented that this is the bankruptcy of market liberalism and the victory of the country's macroeconomic control ideas. The 4 trillion yuan fiscal stimulus measures and nearly 10 trillion yuan of additional loans launched by China in 2009 are the most powerful in the world and ultimately contributed to the rapid recovery of the Chinese economy. In this process, China's state-owned economy played an extremely outstanding role.
Due to the collapse of the socialist countries in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the international socialist movement was generally at a low ebb for a long period of time. The socialist banner raised by China's reform is bright and eye-catching, attracting the attention of the world. The Chinese Communists have always adhered to the basic spirit of the Communist Manifesto and have not forgotten their mission in the development of the socialist market economy.
References: Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Volume 2) [M]. Beijing: People's Publishing House,
The Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Volume 5) [M]. Beijing: People's Publishing House,
The Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Volume 9) [M]. Beijing: People's Publishing House,
The Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Volume 3) [M]. Beijing: People's Publishing House,
The Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Volume 1) [M]. Beijing: People's Publishing House,
The Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Volume 10) [M]. Beijing: People's Publishing House,
Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (Volume 3) [M]. Beijing: People's Publishing House,
①See Xu Juezai: History of Socialist Schools, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2007 edition.
(Author: Researcher at the Institute of Economics, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)
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