Introduction
There is renewed interest in the political theory of C.B. Macpherson (for example, Andrew, Reference Andrew2012; Hansen, Reference Hansen2015; Lindsay, Reference Lindsay2012; Neal, Reference Neal2012). Over the last few years Oxford University Press has republished most of his books (Reference Macpherson and Cunningham2010, Reference Macpherson and Cunningham2012, Reference Macpherson and Cunningham2013a, Reference Macpherson and Cunningham2013b, Reference Macpherson2014). In the introduction to the series, Frank Cunningham (like Hansen, Reference Hansen2015; Lindsay, Reference Lindsay2012) points out the increased relevance of Macpherson's corpus for a neoliberal era (Reference Macpherson2012). And Edward Andrew (Reference Andrew2012) recently published a defense of Macpherson's case for thinking of Locke as a possessive individualist. It was Macpherson's political theory of possessive individualism—the descriptive and normative conception of the human animal “as essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them”—which he ascribed to the core of the dominant liberal tradition (controversially starting with Hobbes) that propelled him to international fame in the early 1960s (Reference Macpherson and Cunningham2010: 3, quoted in Lindsay, Reference Lindsay2012: 133). In the decades that followed, he contrasted this possessive individualist ontology with a “developmental” liberal ontology of the individual “as at least potentially a doer, an exerter and developer and enjoyer of his human capacities” (Reference Macpherson2014: 51, quoted in Lindsay, Reference Lindsay2012: 134).
Macpherson mined this quasi-Aristotelian ethical liberalism from John Stuart Mill and shared affinities with socialist and Marxist conceptions of democracy that he had discovered as a young man. In this tradition, he included theorists such as T.H. Green, John Dewey, Ernest Barker and A.D. Lindsay (Carens, Reference Carens1993: 6; Macpherson, Reference Macpherson and Cunningham2012, Reference Macpherson and Cunningham2013a, Reference Macpherson2014; Neal, Reference Neal2012: 119–20). Macpherson's criticism of these thinkers, with whom he shared normative ends, was that liberalism's best version of itself can never be realized under a capitalist property regime. The reason for this is that the capitalists have the right to exclude wage earners from the means of production and the capability to extract power from them. Therefore, in a twofold manner the workers are hindered from developing and enjoying their human capacities (Macpherson Reference Macpherson and Cunningham2010, Reference Macpherson and Cunningham2013a, Reference Macpherson2014). While different aspects of his model of a political economy have been criticized by scholars such as William Leiss (Reference Leiss2009) and Peter Lindsay (Reference Lindsay1996) (who see merit in and develop his liberal democratic theory), Macpherson himself maintained until his final publication (Reference Macpherson and Cunningham2013a) that developmental democracy is only possible in a socialist economy and thus at the centre of Macpherson's political theory is the question of a transition into socialism.
In his recent book on the philosophical foundations of Macpherson's political theory, Phillip Hansen repeats Victor Svacek's well-known charge that Macpherson did not support Marx's case for a violent revolution and had also failed “to provide a [nonviolent revolutionary] theory or account of the transition to socialism, i.e., offer an answer to Lenin's question ‘What is to be done?’” (Reference Hansen2015: 10; Svacek, Reference Svacek1976: 414, 418). Macpherson's reply to Svacek's second assertion is often quoted:
An alternative theory of transition, flexible enough to adjust to changing constellations of social forces, is certainly highly desirable. I do not say that I shall never attempt it. But it would require a great deal of empirical study, assessing and predicting specifically and in detail all the actual and possible forces making for and against change. I do not regard that as my métier. There is still much to be done in improving the theoretical understanding of these forces (including the force of ideas), at a level of some abstraction. And by the principle of comparative advantage in any social division of labour I have thought myself better occupied with seeking to improve the theoretical understanding. (Reference Macpherson1976: 425)
Reading Macpherson's political theory into the tradition of critical theory, Hansen defends the former's political theory as nonetheless practical in that it does not need to “possesses direct instrumental efficacy” (Reference Hansen2015: 10). And Patrick Neal points out that “whether” the “realization” of Macpherson's democratic vision “occurs or not is a matter of contingency” (Reference Neal2012: 123).
I will suggest that these assessments of Macpherson (including his own) are correct only in respect to the period following the publication of his first book, Democracy in Alberta: Social Credit and the Party System (Reference Macpherson and Wiseman2013c). In the 1940s and 1950s, Macpherson began to orient his writings towards the tradition of political theory (the theoretical and historical understanding of ideas and doctrines) for which he is known today. In his early years, however, Macpherson was also concerned (like political scientists in general) with current events and the political institutions, forces and actors shaping those events. I suggest in this article that Macpherson in his earlier thought and work (1934–1942) outlined a theory of transition into socialism. He thought that a transition required human agency—individuals deliberately acting in the political arena to change the economic conditions under which they toil. What he agonized over was the kind of action and organization required to establish a socialist state.
Given the renewed interest in Macpherson, my primary aim in this article is thus to complement recent as well as past scholarship with a detailed account of Macpherson's early thought on the transition. This study of his formative years also supplements Leiss's Macpherson biography, especially his observation that Macpherson's master's thesis, “Voluntary Associations Within the State 1930–1934, with Special Reference to the Place of Trade Unions in Relation to the State in Great Britain” (Reference Macpherson1935, hereafter master's thesis), developed in relation to the rise of fascism.
An avowed socialist when he arrived at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1933, Macpherson perceived fascism as a response to the crisis of his time—severe income inequality and concentration of economic power that resulted in economic depression and made bourgeois democracy impossible. As we shall see in his thoughts from the time, culminating with an article on economic democracy (Reference Macpherson1942a), he viewed socialism not only as an offensive strategy, the aim of which was to create a more just and democratic society, but also as a defensive strategy for resisting fascism.
To uncover these beginnings, I also make use of hitherto unpublished archival material that provides a novel window into Macpherson's thinking and whereabouts during this period.Footnote 1 Specifically, I draw from two diariesFootnote 2 from his years as a graduate student (1933–1935) in London, the contents of which have yet to be commented upon, and a series of letters between Macpherson and his older brother, Brodie Macpherson.Footnote 3 I quote extensively to maintain the character of Macpherson's own voice on the experiences that most significantly altered his thinking. I also confine my use to his terms and historical and theoretical outlook in an attempt to understand and present Macpherson as he understood himself and the world around him.
From Toronto to London: An Overview
Crawford Brough Macpherson was born on November 18, 1911, in Toronto, and would die of emphysema in the same city at the end of the century, in 1987. The youngest son of two teachers, he grew up in a middle class family. In 1929, Macpherson began his undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, just as the Great Depression was unfolding. He graduated in 1933, moving to London in September for his graduate studies in economics at the LSE under the supervision of the political theorist and later Labour party chairman, Harold Laski, to whose work Macpherson had been introduced at the University of Toronto (Leiss, Reference Leiss2009: 26).
On October 5, 1933, after meeting Laski at the LSE for the first time, Macpherson wrote in his journal: “I'm to do modern political theory (since 1689), with a thesis on the place of voluntary associations in the state as seen in that theory, and have arranged to take some of the best lecture courses mostly by Laski, [R.H.] Tawney and [Morris] Ginsberg” (Oct. 5, 1933j). Throughout the first year, his academic work took second place to the time he spent with friends and his interests in classical music, the arts and architecture (Sept. 22, 1933j-June 26, 1934j). He did not write much on the thesis until the coming summer; he was discouraged, doubting his own abilities, comparing his confidence with that of others. The rise of fascism on the continent made him feel that his work was insignificant; however, he told himself in the winter of 1934: I will “push on with my German and my thesis work and hope that it will seem more important as I get on with it” (Feb. 1, 1934j). He planned to visit Germany in the summer of 1934 but ended up going to Scotland instead. Some of his friends visited the Soviet Union. He displayed no such desire, and was silent about the Bolsheviks in his journals and letters from the time.
As a democratic socialist he looked at the communist dictatorship of the proletariat with unease. However, he traveled to Italy, France and Spain in the company of friends, witnessing with his own eyes the rise of fascism on the continent. The fascists had seized power in Italy and Germany and were on the rise across Europe, as well as in England. Although England would later prove to be an exception to the trajectory of fascist ascendancy, Macpherson feared otherwise at the time and grappled with the question of whether the developments in Germany and Italy might also transpire in England.
This worry spilled into his master's thesis on the relation between labour unions and the British state, in which Macpherson, in Leiss's words, “directed his theoretical exposition […] explicitly towards a pragmatic end, namely a reckoning of the likelihood of fascism's success in Britain” (Reference Leiss2009: 41). Macpherson wrote within the theoretical framework of Laski's thesis about the sovereignty of the state in a capitalist economy. As Lamb and Morrice explain, “A vital idea of Marx and Engels was, Laski argued, the identification of the state not as a neutral organ serving society as a whole, but as a coercive power enforcing on the working class the social discipline essential to the preservation of the interests of capitalism” (Reference Lamb and Morrice2002: 798). Macpherson surveyed parliamentary legislation and judicial rulings that pertained to the power of unions and reached a conclusion that supported Laski's theory of the capitalist state and added the general observation that “the State regulates the place of trade unions always with a view to maintaining the existing property structure of society [independent of the economic system]” (Reference Macpherson1935: i). Leiss has pointed out that the concept of a property structure that Macpherson's master's thesis centred on was never fully defined and that it is thus unclear how much he owed to Marx for his understanding of capitalism at this stage (Reference Leiss2009: 26). Clear enough is that he operated with the notion that a capitalist economic regime produces two main classes—the capitalists or owners of the means of production and the unpropertied or working class—and that the relation between these two classes resulted in increased income inequality and the concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands. In the fourth chapter, which most reflected the immediate political concerns, Macpherson examined the aim and development of labour union policies in a capitalist, socialist and fascist state and in the period of transition from a capitalist into a fascist or socialist state, with specific attention to a potential transition period from capitalism to socialism in England and the danger of the fascists seizing state power. I will return to this analysis shortly, but first, it is in order to uncover the psychological and moral foundation of Macpherson's socialism.
Socialism as an Offensive Strategy
“I was just as Socialist a year ago as I am now,” Macpherson wrote on February 12, 1934, to his brother Brodie.Footnote 4 This statement is a reply to his brother, who had attributed Macpherson's socialist beliefs to his need to soon enter the “competitive struggle” for employment. Macpherson repudiated this idea by reminding his brother that he attained his socialist conviction prior to any such concern, referring specifically as a case in point to two socialist papers he wrote for the Anomalous Society in his undergraduate years and told him that although his future career is unknown, he is nevertheless “comparatively one of the privileged” (Feb. 12, 1934 l). He traced the roots of his socialist conviction to having been “seized with a sense of the injustice of this [capitalist] system” (Feb. 12, 1934 l).
Against his brother's claim that socialism is a “leveling-out process,” Macpherson insisted “that socialism is not intended to put people at or nearer a level; it is to remove the institutions and the system which prevents people from finding their own level in all aspects of life. Now, your level is almost entirely a matter of your property or your ability to get property; by removing this as the only great channel of self-expression it is hoped that people will find their own levels most justly” (Feb. 12, 1934 l). The moral foundation underpinning Macpherson's socialism was predicated on the liberal state's failure to furnish a fundamental universal democratic right to find one's level in life, or what he, nearly a decade later, identified in his essay (and to which I return to in the final section) on “economic” or “socialist” democracy as “the securing of an equal right of individuals to self-development” (1942: 416–17). He was convinced that capitalism was an economic system that was inherently unjust due to the institution of private property that hinders individuals from finding their own level in society and did not believe that capitalism could be reformed to “dispose of the root of injustices and [remain] sufficient” (July 27, 1934 l).
It is with a view to justice that Macpherson argued that socialism was compatible with human nature. He identified his brother as an adherent of “rugged individualism,” or what he referred to as the “philosophy of capitalism” (Feb. 12, 1934 l). His own social philosophy was socialism, which he found compatible with human nature:
I know as well as you that men aren't angels or Christians, yet it seems possible that men who will do such a big thing as to die with purely non-grab motives (as in “patriotic” wars), will be willing to order their lives less by the grab philosophy when the use of that philosophy shall have become not, as now, the only means to worldly success. Now, I grant you, you will find few to forego it, but how far is this due to “human nature” and how far to the fact that to get on in a capitalist world you've got to act in a capitalist way? I'm not denying that there is an aggressive spirit in men which must have an outlet; I only wonder if it must be that outlet? (Feb. 12, 1934 l)
While he doubted that the “abstract sense of justice” was stronger than the “instinct of personal struggle” in most people, he insisted that the “instinct to action” could be “expressed” in a different way than the “present disastrous one in economic competitive individualism mixed with capitalist feudalism” (Feb. 12, 1934 l). He questioned his personal observations on human nature from a historical point of view attained through his studies, stating that this—that of historicism—was the question for him: “For if my study of past political thought and history has done anything it has borne in upon me the truth of the generalization that in every age men always confuse the system they live under with the unalterable laws of human nature and that they have always been wrong, for the systems have changed” (Feb. 12, 1934 l). Macpherson thus worked with the premise that human beings were not inherently competitive, though they could and did act competitively under social conditions that encouraged such behaviour, in the same way as they could act altruistically under a socialist property regime.
The Question of Violent Revolution
His belief in a peaceful transition towards socialism, however, had been “shaken” by his time in England (July 27, 1934 l). He told his brother that while he himself “would be willing to give up considerable monetary advantage for the privilege of ceasing to live in a sick and shoddy civilization like today's,” he asked whether “everybody else feels sufficiently that way to make a peaceful Socialism possible” (Feb. 12, 1934 l). The question is rhetorically posed as he had already begun to doubt middle class support for a socialist transition. The “only realistic view to take” was that the middle class would be forced to accept a socialist economy if there was a “successful revolution” (Feb. 12, 1934 l). After he began to think of the peaceful transition into socialism as improbable, he named the “injustice” of the capitalist system and the “intellectual quality” of socialists in comparison to other politicians as the two reasons why he did not abandon his socialist views altogether (Feb. 12, 1934j).
Macpherson had raised the question of the necessity for armed revolution in the transition to socialism for the first time in his journal earlier that winter (Feb. 5, 1934j). During his 22 months in Europe, he met with people who had fled the continent in the wake of the fascist seizure of state power in Germany and Austria, and was profoundly affected by their views. The first and most significant among them was his housemate, Franz Neumann, former attorney for the German Social Democratic Party (1932–1933) and then researcher at LSE, who would later become known to the broader public for his analysis of Nazism, and who had fled Germany after he learned of his arrest order following the Nazi seizure of power.Footnote 5 Neumann's “ideas” and “experience” “turn[ed] some of” Macpherson's “notions upside down” (Feb. 12, 1934j). The political refugee not only anticipated a coming war between England and Germany; he welcomed it as a necessary step in the revolutionary cause. Macpherson reported in his journal:
For the sooner here [war] the sooner the opportunity to make a social revolution. For a successful revolution cannot be made now or in any time of peace or at the beginning of a war, but only when the army is tired, hungry & disillusioned. Then, they have arms, and a small determined minority within them can do the rest.
As soon as war is declared he [Neumann] will go back to Germany & fight in the German army so as to be ready after the war has worn on for a while to swing or help in an armed revolution. It is rare to find a man so sure of the necessity for a social revolution as to will and do such things for it in a cold rational light. For there is nothing of the fanatic about him […] it is simply that he seems to take it for granted that that is the only thing worth doing in the world, & is impatient with the obtuseness of anyone who doesn't see it that way. Yet this is not from faith in any socialist-dogma but from his own deeply rooted view of human nature which he has got through his experience.
He joined the German army a few months before Nov. 11, 1918, and was stationed in Saxony. Just as the Revolution of Nov. 7–8 was breaking out, these troops were ordered to move against the Czechs. There were 2000 troops; of them 200 absolutely refused to go; a ballot was taken among the soldiers in which very few voted so that the 200 were enough to swing the decision. After getting this settled, they occupied the University of Frankfurt, imprisoned the Director, barricaded the streets and fought.
During the Kapp Putsch [March 13, 1920] he was president of the student union at Leipzig and the students asked the Chief of Police for arms to repel the Putsch. They were given them on condition that they found themselves also to fight against the Communist revolutionists as well as the fascists. They promised, got the arms, and immediately handed half of them over to the Communists so that the fighting was slightly more general than the Chief of Police bargained for.
From experience like this he concludes that in any political struggle only force of arms will prevail, and that the only way to get Socialism is to have a war then a revolution. (Feb. 5, 1934j, emphasis added)
Neumann's experience and stand on revolution and the use of force challenged the young Macpherson's reformist principles. As democratic socialist, Macpherson opposed violence and unconstitutional measures. Meeting an experienced and committed revolutionary was a rude awakening to the realities in Europe—a world apart from his books, discussions and classes in Toronto. He appraised Neumann's views and evaluated how they affected him:
It is hard to discredit this view now; if I had read it in print I should have refuted it easily in my mind, but hearing it from a man who has been an active leader in two revolutions & who holds the view so utterly that it never occurs to him that it could be doubted nor that its implications for him could be refused, facile arguments against this view are not so forthcoming. The very fact that there are men who feel & believe this way makes this view all the more likely to be the true one. The only thing is that though what he says may be true of Germany it may not hold for England. Is it a universal maxim, or one which is true only for the peculiar circumstances of contemporary Germany, that only armed revolution can achieve substantial political change & that education, propaganda & constitutional means are no good? (Feb. 5, 1934j)
Instead of answering whether or not he thought a violent revolution was required for a transition also in England, he turned to reflect on his mood: “My mind is getting a lot of rude shocks these days; I feel more third-rate, useless, aimless and faithless every day […] The sense of values on which I prided myself a year or two ago is gone and there seems to be nothing to take its place” (Feb. 5, 1934j). His values had been fundamentally challenged by the realization that violent revolution was likely a necessary precondition in the transition towards socialism. This led to a conflict between his conscience and his intellect. Whereas he began to think that violent revolution was likely required, he could not get around to supporting the means advocated by the Third International.
Nine days later, on February 14, 1934, after having heard Laski give a talk in a series on Marxism, Macpherson noted in his journal that the only development in Laski's thought concerned revolution: “He seems more inclined to the necessity for forceful revolution in the change to any socialism. Yet he was quite clear that we in England at any rate should aim first at constitutional procedure, the conditions not being ripe for rev[olution]” (Feb. 14, 1934j, emphasis added). Until then, Laski, like Macpherson, “was firmly committed to democratic socialism of a non-dogmatic sort and to its achievement by peaceful means. But as the economic crisis deepened throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and the rise of fascism began to threaten the social progress achieved up to then, he became convinced that some degree of violence would inevitable accompany the transition from capitalism to socialism; only at the end of the war and the electoral victory of the Labour Party modified this stance” (Leiss, Reference Leiss2009: 27). In entertaining the necessity for a violent revolution at this time, as will become clear in the next section, Laski, in Macpherson's estimation, departed from the constitutional approach adhered to by the majority of the unions and the Labour party's membership.
In a letter to his brother written two days earlier on February 12, he had predicted: “capitalist democracy was doomed. That uneasy combination cannot exist much longer but either capitalism or democracy may win out, so that we'll have a Fascist capitalism or a Socialist democracy. As things are going now I should say the former was most likely” (Feb. 12, 1934j). In the same letter, Neumann's take on war and revolution was reflected in Macpherson's own prediction about the future:
I imagine that after all the big nations have gone sufficiently Fascist there will be another international war, which will be finished by socialist revolutions in the army and civilian populations followed by a socialist dictatorship of the most unpleasant kind and after that god knows what. If so it makes all this discussion rather useless. We can only wait and see. The riots in Paris last week have ended in an unconstitutional government of the right-wing which is a good first step to Fascism; the last reports of the time of writing this indicate that the socialist general strike & riot in Austria is being put-down with artillery in Vienna quite thoroughly and a fascist gov[ernmen]t being set up there, and so it goes. (Feb. 12, 1934 l)
Over the next month, Macpherson joined marches down to Hyde Park to attend various protests with the LSE Marxist club (Feb. 25, 1934j). And on March 4, Macpherson listened to a speech delivered after a demonstration at Trafalgar Square by a man he identified as “Gessner” in his journal (though he was unsure of his name), an Austrian socialist leader who escaped alive from the February Uprising, or what Macpherson referred to as the Fascist Heimwehr coup (Heimwehr was a paramilitary organization similar to the German Freikorps) which occurred the week of February 12, 1934. Of his conversation with Gessner, which left a strong impression on him and confirmed the fear he had expressed to his brother, Macpherson noted in his journal:
Ever since 1927 the Heimwehr party has been strengthening, with the assistance & direction of Mussolini who hopes there to build up a secure neighbour. The Socialist party has had constant opportunities to seize power in the whole country ever since, being armed, & trained & assisted by France & CzechoSlovakia, but being a Social Democratic party they disliked bloodshed […] By last year it was apparent that the Heimwehr would attempt a coup d’état, & the Socialists finally made plans for a general strike to be followed if necessary by armed action. They planned the strike for the morning of Feb. 12, 1934. Their plans for armed action were, for greater secrecy, divided into sections and only a few leaders knew of each one section. On the 11th they found out that the gov[ernmen]t was planning the total suppression of the Socialists on the 12th, but instead of rushing ahead their plans by a day the Socialist decided to wait to see the effect of the general strike before taking armed action. Also they preferred that the gov[ernmen]t + Heimwehr should start things, so that they would have the constitution on their side.
The result was that on the 12th all the Socialist leaders were arrested & imprisoned so that those who were left did not know the plans & couldn't use them. […] The detachments of Socialists in charge of the various armed Socialist strongholds (the municipal workers buildings) got no orders to begin an attack so they stayed in the Hausen ready. The Heimwehr police & gov[ernmen]t forces then mopped them up one by one bringing the whole of their forces against each separate Socialist detachment. Hence the Heimwehr victory. (March 4, 1934j)
The main lesson learned was that the socialist party missed the opportunity to proactively take action—violent action—outside the constraints of the constitution; as a result, the Heimwehr party beat them to it. Yet, in the case of Britain, Macpherson was still reluctant to support tactics outside the rule of law. For example, he opposed the 1934 Disaffection Bill (legislation against the circulation of communist propaganda among the armed forces), and appeared to take a principled stand against any infringement on civil liberties (July 27, 1934 l). He likened the ethics behind his brother's approval of the bill with that of the communists: “Perhaps you and the Communists are right, that you might as well try to condemn or justify an earthquake ethically as to sit in judgment on these things. Maybe it is ordained by nature that there are rulers and ruled and that to the extent of their awareness and of their force they will fight each other to death no matter what we think of it so we might as well get in on one side or the other or sit back and watch while we can” (July 27, 1934 l). These were urgent times as more and more European states fell into the hands of fascists, yet Macpherson still had time to sit back and analyze the situation in Britain.
The Fatal Policies of the Trade Unions and the Labour Party
Just like the Social Democratic party in Austria, Macpherson argued in his master's thesis that the British unions and Labour party strived for socialism through “democratic” and “constitutional” means only (Reference Macpherson1935: 217). In his examination of the aims of trade unions in the years before and after the fall of the Labour government in 1931, he concluded that the unions remained faithful to “constitutionalist philosophy” for a democratic transition to socialism (217). The Communist Party of Great Britain, on the contrary, advanced socialism by “force and dictatorship” (217).
Macpherson outlined Labour's future plans through a study of the annual union congress. This was warranted, as the party “was built up largely by the trade unions, and the trade unions still have the largest voice in framing the decision and programs of the Party” (198). In detail, he surveyed the labour movement's strategy, until, and after, Labour was again voted into power. His main interest was in the potential policies of a future Labour government (the next election was expected in 1935) and their potential political outcomes:
[T]he aim of the trade union movement is to use it [the Labour party] to carry out a policy of rapid economic planning under central direction, including the immediate transference to public ownership [...] of the financial system, the basic industries and the land, and a reorganization of industries not under public ownership in such a way as to achieve efficiency and give trade unions a share in their administration and direction. This is to be done by purely democratic and constitutional procedures. Emergency powers are to be taken only temporarily, but the constitution will be altered by the abolition of the House of Lords. (223–24)
If these aims were implemented, Macpherson concluded, Britain would be transformed into a semi-socialist corporatist state. A Labour victory would thus result in the partial socialization of Britain's economy, giving effective control over finance and much of industrial production to the state. While envisioned by the unions as being a transitional stage to socialism, he made the case that these policies would not “ensure the attainment of a socialist economy” (227). Moreover, in the process, the trade unions would be reduced to a “largely administrative” role, as many of the unions' “functions” would be facilitated to a great degree by the semi-socialist corporatist state, as was the case in Germany from 1919 until its demise in 1933 (233, 235).
He identified two main problems with unions adopting a “static, administrative place in the state” (234). First, unions would become complacent with their new role in the state and not push for a full transition to socialism (227–33). As a consequence, the remaining power of the capitalist class over public opinion through the press, church and schools, together with “the hostility of the small traders and industrialists,” would generate sufficient support to vote Labour out of government (something Macpherson considered to be likely) (240). The “succeeding government in its attempt to make the rule of property secure would find an industrial structure [partly public ownership of the larger corporations] whose form expedited a transformation to a Fascist state” (240). The transformation to fascism would then be likely, since for the new government “no other technique than the Fascist one would be sufficient to ensure both the continued productivity of industry and the maintenance of control in the State by the property-owning class” (240).
The second problem with the static role of the unions was that the loss of the union's militantism would ease a fascist takeover (237–38). Weakened by their incorporation into the state, the unions would not have “the will and ability to resist” when the state turned against the workers’ rights and programs with the help of the fascists, which would “lead to their [the unions'] final destruction” (235). The unions' policy, he concluded, was thus self-destructive; a future Labour party would unwittingly pave the way to fascism. Not only were the unions’ policies insufficient for a transition to socialism, but if a future Labour government first turned England into a semi-corporate state and successively lost an election, fascists, aided by elements of the bourgeoisie, could then use these new powers in the state to their own advantage to defeat the Labour government at the ballot box in a subsequent election. The essential lesson to be learned from Germany, he concluded, spoke to the “British unions' inability to push towards full socialism when an active policy may be necessary to that end” (235). But these hypotheses might be merely academic, Macpherson feared, as he became increasingly convinced that the unions, and he himself, were imagining a scenario that would not have time to play out.
The Rise of Fascism in England and Europe at Large
The reason for this, as seen in letters to his brother from this period, Macpherson predicted that fascist capitalism would win the day before Labour could be voted into power again. He identified the economy and the war as the primary causes behind the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy. Fascism “sprang from the lower middle classes” who had been most affected by the economic downturn (July 27, 1934 l). The lower middle classes were desperate and joined the movement in hope that the fascists would turn the economy and rebuild the nation. The fascists’ patrons, however, were the “owners of capital who didn't care much for national regeneration but saw that this [fascism] would do away with the unrest which threatened their control by canalizing some of it in their favour and suppressing the rest with violence” (July 27, 1934 l). Or as he put it a month later:
But whatever sincerity there may have been in these ideals & these hopes at the time, it soon became obvious that the Fascist supremacy was becoming a system of force directed to maintaining the capitalist system, and I can see no new basis for believing that it is other than a definite engine of oppression of the majority in the interests of those who control the system. It is financed by the capitalist owners, all working-class organizations such as trade unions have been abolished and new Fascist controlled ones set up which can do nothing contrary to Fascist policy (Aug. 26, 1934 l)
Macpherson's analysis of fascism thus added to his master's thesis's Laskian theory that the capitalist ruling class used state institutions to maintain the existent property regime, the insight that they now used the fascists as a tool to maintain the capitalist system (by breaking working class organization and resistance) when the existent property regime was under severe threat.
In a letter from July 27, 1934, responding to his brother's charge that he made too much of the rise of fascism in Europe at large, and England in particular, he admitted that he “doesn't expect that Fascism here [England] will go to the lengths it has gone in most European countries, for the economic position of the lower middle class is not as bad here as there, and as you say the British are more stable or more habituated politically” (July 27, 1934 l). Nonetheless, he stood by his initial position that England was at risk: “The English mentality is no such stout bulwark against Fascist habits of thought as you have judged. A few years ago almost everybody paid lip-service at least to the idea of democracy; now almost nobody does” (July 27, 1934 l). He cemented this switch by a detailed analysis of the different classes and their receptiveness to fascism. First, he assessed the upper and middle classes: “All the middle class and upper class people I have met feel like you that ‘expediency must outweigh ethics’ […] and that a de facto dictatorship backed by force, where the economic stranglehold and politeness are insufficient, is the best thing to have now (or as soon as needed) in their own vital interests, or, as the most uncritical of them say, to save the country and the Empire” (July 27, 1934 l). He then assessed the classes on which fascism success rested—the lower middle (petite bourgeoisie) and working class:
Of course no matter how favourable the middle and upper classes are to it there will be no Fascism of importance until the lower class mentality is favourable. […] There is a small active socialist and communist minority & with them Fascism has no chance of acceptance. Then there is the large section of skilled workmen in the Trade Unions and the Labour party. So far their socialism is of the lukewarm variety which too easily changes into Fascism under sufficient stimulus. The real mainstay of any Fascist party is in the class naturally called lower middle, that is office clerks, shop assistants and the like, and it shouldn't be hard to get a lot of this class in. They feel themselves a cut above ordinary workmen (you can't conceive the extent of the snobbishness between class division in England), they are not already organized to any extent and the glamour of uniforms and pay and Saving Britain is calculated to act on them most strongly. The last class in the strata of English society, the unskilled manual labourers is meat for the Fascists, too. Not many of them are already organized, and such of them as aren't active socialists or communists are considerably attached to Fascism. For they are wretchedly off and very unsatisfied and don't know why. The Fascists hold out to them the prospect of more immediate action and betterment of their condition than any other party—they pay them and clothe them and give them action, and that makes a powerful appeal to uncritical minds in their state. (July 27, 1934 l)
He thus worried that the great number that were not active socialists or communists were easily lured to the fascists’ promise of a quick fix, as they were unaware of the real cause behind the economic downturn and the structural change required to fix it. The matter was bound to get worse, as the intent of the fascists was to protect the property system that caused the crisis in the first place. He saw this analysis confirmed by the growth of the British Union of Fascists, which he described to his brother as “a rapidly growing, well-organized and well-endowed body” that “relies rather on action than talk. Its members are drilled in military discipline with military objects and they boast about it publically as much as they dare” (July 27, 1934 l). However, as he expressed it a month later, they had “not yet reached the Hitler standard of sub-machine guns and howitzers” (Aug. 26, 1934 l).
He predicted that the fascist regimes would stay in power for a considerable time for they had the support of capital; they had diverted attention from internal problems by bellicose nationalism; identified an internal enemy/scapegoat to blame for the ills of the populace; applied the old and tested stratagem of divide and rule the majority; and fully used propaganda and censorship. For those who did not buy into any of the above, Macpherson noted that they “mostly keep quiet, fearing concentration camps, loss of their livelihood, or death” (Aug. 26, 1934 l). But, he added, “It can't last forever, of course; you can't fool all of the people all the time especially when they're hungry. Hitler and Mussolini will crash some day, perhaps not till after a last bid to maintain their power by starting a foreign war, which has hitherto always been a successful expedient for keeping in power a while longer, successful for obvious reasons” (Aug. 26, 1934 l). It was a prescient letter, foreseeing war and the eventual disillusionment with fascism. He ended the letter with a comparison of Germany four years earlier with England and Canada then and after to reinforce his point from the earlier letter: “I do not see any essential differences to prevent things here […] from developing along largely the same lines though I fancy they will not go so far, and will assume different names & forms” (Aug. 26, 1934 l).
Macpherson spent most of the fall writing. There are few journal entries from the winter and spring. He was preoccupied with the thesis and writing letters to his family and friends after his father's death in January (Feb. 12, 1935 l). He finished his master's thesis on a rented typewriter and defended without any revisions in April 1935. Two months later, in June, he sailed for Canada as planned. Before his departure, he learned, to his great relief, of his appointment as a lecturer in political theory at the University of Toronto (Leiss, Reference Leiss2009: 28). He had left Europe in tumult—in the wake of another world war.
The Transition into Socialism as an Offensive and Defensive Strategy
Back in Toronto, Macpherson continued his investigation into the causes of fascism. In light of the declining support for the British Union of Fascists after 1935, he asked why the fascists seize power in some European countries and not in others. Would fascists also seize power in North America (Reference Macpherson1936; Reference Macpherson1941; Reference Macpherson1942b)? In a 1941 review of a series of urgent books on the rise of fascism, he noted that they did not “include any democratic statement to answer the authoritarian attacks on the capacity of democratic government to cope with contemporary problems” (Reference Macpherson1941: 576). In tune with his master's thesis, he specified that such theory must contain an “analysis of the implications of the property structure for democracy” and “of the place of the concept of property in democratic theory” (576, emphasis added). Macpherson set out to fill this lack.
In the following year, in “The Meaning of Economic Democracy,” he sketched a democratic theory, which like his master's thesis centred on the question of property, and included a discussion of a transition into socialism. In the essay, he asked and answered three questions: “What are the ends or purposes of democracy? Why is a rearrangement of economic relations necessary today to provide any chance of those ends being realized? What rearrangements are most likely to provide their realization?” (Reference Macpherson1942a: 404)? The democratic theory he described and prescribed was thus more than a defense against right-wing authoritarianism, as it sought to answer how present liberal capitalist society should change to fulfill the democratic demands of its population. To answer the first question, Macpherson argued that political or bourgeois democracy encompassing the procedural processes and institutions of the liberal democratic state was insufficient to realize what he identified as “the democratic end” (405). His definition of the democratic end echoed his earlier exchange with his brother over the moral basis of socialism: every individual “has a right to live it [life] as fully as his capacities allow, always, of course, so far as is consistent with others having the same right. Democracy, in other words, is, and has always been, a protest against class privilege, which prevents some people, by reason of their class position, from having equal access with others to the means of self-development” (404, emphasis added). He claimed that currently capitalist political democracies were insufficient to secure the universal right to self-development according to a person's unequal capacities, because “increasing inequality of wealth and the increasing concentration of economic power” had narrowed “individual opportunity” (406, emphasis added). The right to self-development must not impede on someone else having the same right. Whereas it did in capitalism, it would not in a socialist property regime. Answering the second question, he thus concluded that the individual's right to the unrestricted accumulation of private property must go if economic democracy was to have a chance (409).
It was in his answers to the third question that he outlined a theory of transition to socialism. Just as he criticized the inadequate transitional policies for the Labour party in his master's thesis, he now dismissed the proposal that entailed merely the extension of state control “over the corporate concentration of wealth while leaving corporate private ownership of capital” (410). Instead, he favoured the socialist proposal that entailed the “socialization of all productive property” by the state that would ensure the full transition into socialism (410). He also supported the programme in which the industrial wage earners, through the unions, took gradual control of the management and ownership of the industry (414–15). However, he assigned this rank-and-file socialism from the bottom a supplementary role to the proposal for socialism from the top. Nowhere did he discuss exactly how a socialist party would initially seize control over the executive power of the state, but from his discussion of a likely violent counterrevolution by the propertied class, it is possible to infer that he worked with the assumption that a labour party seizes control of the government and the parliament not by a violent revolution, but through election (410). As much as Macpherson eschewed the topic of a violent revolution in this essay, he was now willing to discuss and justify the need for dictatorial powers throughout the transition period.
As I pointed out earlier, the Austrian situation and his study of England altered Macpherson's perspective on the need to suspend the constitution in the transition period. Yet he could not support such measure. In “The Meaning of Economic Democracy,” however, he both explained why this measure was necessary and addressed the criticism of such proposal. He had thus changed his mind. Dictatorial measures were now required, he argued, because of the asymmetry between state and corporate power: “A greater concentration of political power is needed to give the government the strength to deal with the great concentration of economic power” (411). For this reason, “the movement for economic democracy both on the political and the industrial level requires the development of units of organization with an increasingly wider scope and with increasing power” (420). He admitted that “the increase in scope and in power which is necessary both in the state and the trade unions brings with it the dangers of bureaucracy and oligarchy in both. But this is only to say that it is necessary to set an oligarch to catch an oligarch” (420). He suggested that the main reason behind the “distrust” “of the socialist theory of a transitional period either of dictatorship or at least of strong executive control, may be traced to the fear that the period would not be transitional” (414, emphasis added). But he argued that this danger was “exaggerated” and ended the article with an assurance as to why the period of authoritarian rule would only be temporary: “The main source of hope, from the democratic point of view, is that none of these movements for economic democracy is apt to go far without being pressed by such a force of popular will as may be sufficient to keep the new leaders responsive to popular control” (414, 420).
In a review article published two years earlier, Macpherson had suggested that “democracy and dictatorship are not [...] static opposites,” and that “the basis of the democracy we have now was established two and three centuries ago by periods of dictatorship or something very like it, and another such period may be required to make our present democracy complete or to make it serve the ends which the people desire. Whether such dictatorship may be required or not depends presumably on whether or not the requirements of the capitalist economy become incompatible with the democratic expression of the demands of the classes which capitalism engenders” (Reference Macpherson1940: 116–17). Leiss has identified this passage as “uncharacteristic” of Macpherson's overall thought (Reference Leiss2009: 49). It is my understanding that Macpherson's comment on dictatorial measures is consistent with his formal and historical analysis of capitalism in this period, which he thought had “become incompatible with the democratic expression of the demands of the classes which capitalism engenders.” Or, as he put it elsewhere, “the structure and purpose of democratic states no longer corresponds closely enough to the economic needs and possibilities [of the majority of the population]. Until a new correspondence is established liberty and constitutional government are likely to be in eclipse” (Reference Macpherson1941: 570).
Conclusion
In Macpherson's eyes, the Great Depression revealed that democracy and capitalism had grown incompatible. He assigned economic causality to political conflicts, legal rulings, legislation and the rise of political movements, but he also argued that it is through politics (parliamentary or unparliamentary actions over state power) that the economy can be transformed. As a newly converted socialist in Toronto he had thought that the transition to socialism could ensue by nonviolent means. In England he favoured victory through the ballot box, even after he became convinced that a revolution was most likely required to establish socialism. Back in Canada, anticipating violent resistance from elements of the bourgeoisie and the Fascists, he supported dictatorial powers and the use of violence as a transitional measure. And over thirty years later, in his answer to Svacek's claim that he had not “accepted the revolutionary way,” he wrote, “My reason for not accepting the revolutionary theory as necessary is fairly simple. It is not […] that I consider the probable cost in terms of denial of individual freedom to be always too high. That is a judgment that must be made for each time and place. I do not think it can be made in advance. But to assert the necessity of forcible revolution is to do just that” (Macpherson, Reference Macpherson1976: 424). As we have seen, throughout the 1930s and the early 1940s, Macpherson never—in his own name—supported a violent revolution as an initial step in the transition to socialism.
