richard-day-gramsci-is-dead

102 Gramsci is DeadHe is in fact accusing the Utopian socialists of not being adequatelyrevolutionary, a charge which is difficult to refute since Saint-Simon, like Godwin, clearly wished to be seen as a reformist. ‘Farfrom advocating insurrection and revolt,’ he proclaimed, ‘we areputting forward the only way to prevent the acts of violence whichthreaten society’ (Saint-Simon 1976/1823–26: 185). He believed that‘the leading industrialists’ should take control of the administrationof public wealth, but only by peaceful means. Indeed, although hebequeathed to marxists and anarchists alike the notion of governmentas the administration of things rather than of people, and is oftencited as one of the first proponents of a stateless society, his visionwas hardly socialist at all. It was if anything libertarian, or what wewould today have to see as neoliberal, in character. ‘What the nationwants principally is to be governed as cheaply as possible’ (184) hedeclared again and again, looking forward to a day when the functionof government would be restricted to ‘preventing the disruptionof useful work’ (105). Would Pinkerton cops and Plan Colombiabe going too far in this quest, or just far enough? Saint-Simon alsoargued that during the French Revolution it was ‘the industrialists’who suffered the most, since they ‘twice lost their capital’ (127)!From any number of textual indications of this sort, it seems clearthat his conception of ‘the industrial class’ did not adequatelydifferentiate between bourgeoisie and proletariat, and that thosewhom he expected to lead the coming reform were the owners, notthe workers. 2 Although they were more critical of capitalism and itsagents, Owen and Fourier also believed that the new age could onlybe ushered in by peaceful means. Owen insisted that revolutionarieswere ‘irrational’ (1973/1849: xxiii) and Fourier assured his readersthat the coming of Harmony would ‘in nowise disturb the establishedorder’ (1971a: 66). Therefore, it has to be acknowledged that Engelswas correct in asserting that these writers were not interested inemancipating a particular class by violent means.What about the charge that the Utopian socialists foolishly set outto address all of humanity at once? Engels’ tone here is, of course,characteristically mocking, and he is referring primarily to thelack of what he would have seen as an appropriately dichotomousclass analysis, coupled with an ignorance of specific conditions indifferent countries. But his remark can also be taken quite literally.Fourier believed that once people saw how well his system worked,it would ‘spread suddenly and spontaneously over the whole of thehuman race’ (1971a: 50). For Harmony, as the only mode of social