On Bertrand Russell, Syndicalism and Political Diversity
In yesterday’s post (here), I noted that it is a characteristic feature of Bertrand’s Russell’s early political thought to unbundle government functions. Then I relied on his (1916) essay, “War as an Institution,” which argues for a world federal state in order to ensure perpetual peace. (My page-numbers zare to the 1960 edition of The Principles of Social Reconstruction. The book also appeared as Why Men Fight Stateside.) The idea of unbundling is developed in the fourth essay of the volume, “Property.”
Since this essay relies on his defense of syndicalism. It is worth saying something about his argument for it first. In the first essay of the volume, “The Principle of Growth,” syndicalism is offered as a “remedy” the fact that in a capitalist society “the ordinary wage-earner need have no purpose beyond earning his wages.” (p. 27; this claim is more persuasive in an age of very lengthy work days.)
Russell goes on to present syndicalism as a “valuable…check upon the tyranny which the community may be tempted to exercise over certain classes of its members. All strong organizations which embody a sectional public opinion, such as trade unions, coöperative societies, professions, and universities, are to be welcomed as safeguards of liberty and opportunities for initiative.” (p. 27)
So, we can put Russell’s point as follows: for the individual producer syndicalism is a site of initiative. Initiative is rather important to Russell’s picture of (civilizational) growth, which requires bottom-up initiative. In the third essay, “War as an Institution,” this point is also given a political inflexion: syndicalism, “give[s] men more and more political control over their own lives.” (p. 69) For Russell one of the key features of what we may call ‘modern alienation’ caused by mass and global society is the sense of powerless by the individual. (This is one feeding ground for militarism on his view.)
For society, syndicalism is, thus, a means to help ensure the survival of liberty by creating a social force capable of organizing resistance by (a coalition of) special interests to top-down tyranny. In my digressions on Russell I have not been mapping his debts to his godfather, J.S. Mill. But it is worth noting that here Russell uses a typical Mill-ean theme and, thereby, pushes back on the Benthamite suspicion of special/sinister interests. Instead, here Russell looks forward to Michael Polanyi’s articulation of the ways in which sectional public opinion is a means to resist (say) fascism. (Of course, this is why tyrant-friendly authorities attack them.)
I don’t mean to suggest — I kind of implied it, alas, in one of my earlier posts — that Russell is in all respects a friend of all forms of social agonism based on interest. For example, he is a critic of class conflict on the work floor. As he puts it in “Property:” “The purpose of the capitalist is to secure the maximum of work for the minimum of wages; the purpose of the wage-earner is to secure the maximum of wages for the minimum of work. A system involving this essential conflict of interests cannot be expected to work smoothly or successfully, or to produce a community with any pride in efficiency.” (p. 69) Notice Russell’s emphasis on the grounds of collective pride (which links up with his idea that a dynamic political society must generate non-warlike pride and honor).
However, Russell treats syndicalism as a second-best option. The first first-best seems to be the coöperative movement. But Russell seems to think coöperatives are impossible in some industries (like railways), and in these he proposes syndicalism (p. 97). It’s not wholly clear what causes the underlying difference unless, perhaps, that he thinks in some industries economies of scale or huge capital investments are necessarily operative.
But it would be misleading to treat Russell as an outright advocate of one form of organization or the other. He prefers a kind of diversity of approaches in political economy. This is very nicely illustrated by what I take to be a key paragraph (it’s the last of the essay) which I quote in full:
We see here converge a number of themes in Russell’s political theory at this stage of his life. First, there is a rejection of private capitalism (which he also thinks drives the bad sort of imperialism). Second, for Russell there is no perfect form of economic organization because none of them is capable of integrating all salient interests and having the right sort of (ahh) social externalities. Russell doesn’t discuss corporatism (then popular on the European mainland), but it’s pretty clear why he would have been critical.
That is to say, a diversity of approaches in political economy can capture multiple kinds of interests. And this does justice to our multiple identities (as producer-consumers as patriots etc. with different geographic commitments). This anticipates Lippmann’s reinterpretation of Madison’s account of representation.
Third, the Achilles heel of his approach is that it requires a public spirited State that can function as an impartial arbitrator without (one might say) the material base to support it. This weak link in his chain of argument is also visible in more liberal theories I favor so not uniquely a problem for his approach. But oddly he doesn’t seem to recognize the problem at all here. This is odd because when he discusses the roots of militarism, he is quite clear on how the state can be captured or corrupted to non-public spirited ends.
Fourth, Russell is very removed from, say, Schumpeter’s ideas that treat centralization as inevitable by-products of modernity and capitalism. Without embracing (say) principle of subsidiariness (sp?), Russell does seem keen to unbundle and geographically distribute governmental functions. (We saw this in his account of empire and world federation, too.) And when there are more self-governing features in a political economy, the more likely this seems possible with modern communications technology. So, Russell both echoes Green’s social liberalism and really anticipates a lot of the republican inspired projects in democratizing work today.*
*I thank Alexander Klein and Sander Verhaegh for discussion of this material.