This is a guest-post by Dr. Paul Cockshott of Glasgow University. It reports back from a high-level conference held in Berlin as part of an on-going series of discussions between European political movements and elements of the governments of Venezuela, China and other countries that claim to propose an alternative to the ‘Washington Consensus’. Dr. Cockshott’s wider political views can be viewed in the online copy of his book, Towards a New Socialism.

On Friday the 19th of this month I attended a conference in Berlin that had been called under the sponsorship of The World Association for Political Economy (WAPE), Scientists for a Socialist Political Economy (SSPE), Transcend International and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS) to discuss the issue of how it might be possible to transform the EU economy into a socialist economy.

WAPE is a body set up about 3 or 4 years ago apparently at the initiative of the Chinese Academy of Social Science to act as a forum for socialist political economy which could be an alternative to the Washington Consensus of neo-liberalism. SSPE is a smaller group of co-workers accross Europe and Latin America working towards the same goal. Transcend International, is led by Johan Galtung, a very eminent social scientist and founder of the peace studies movement. The RLS is a well established left-social democratic thinktank in Berlin.

Speakers included Hans Modrow a former DDR president, and Heinz Dieterich, a prominent Mexican/German sociologist who reputedly had considerable influence on Chavez. What is interesting here is that it brings together elements of the Chinese government with other “anti-Washington consensus” nations like Venezuela, in the context of Left reformation in Europe. The Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung is a subsidiary of Die Linke, the party set up to challenge the older German Social Democratic Party.

The proposals put forward were a significant break both from traditional western social democracy and from its eastern variant. Instead of seeing the transition to socialism as being something that was to be achieved by nationalisation of industry within the confines of the nation state, the focus was on:

1. The assertion of positive rights for labour against capital.
2. Radical monetary policies.
3. A programme for participatory democracy at the European Union level.

It was proposed that the Euro be tied to labour time. Currently the Euro is equivalent to the value created by about 2 mins of labour. It was proposed that the European Central Bank be put under the direction of a value policy committee – similar in some ways to Brown’s monetary policy committee, except that it would be made up of economists nominated by the parliament plus lay members chosen as a citizens jury by lot. German economists Bartsch and Stamher presented interesting accounts of how they were working on complete national accounts in terms of labour time.

Once the value of the Euro had been stabilised in terms of time, the Euro notes would have their time content printed on them. This would immediately raise the question in the minds of European workers: why am I only being paid 20 or 30 mins for each hour I work? The issue of exploitation would rise to the top of the political agenda.

Instead of firms being nationalised, which raises all sorts of issues relating to expropriation or compensation, I feel the focus should be on directly abolishing wage slavery in a manner analogous to the abolition of slavery in the USA by the 13th amendment. It was suggested that we should aim for a European constitutional right not be exploited. If employees were being paid less than the full value added by their labour, trades unions should have a legal right to claim the difference back from the employers.

Whilst this would make all firms unprofitable, they would not be unviable from the point of view of their then principle stakeholders – their employees. To relieve firms of the burden of debt, there should be general debt amnesty affection all public and private debt other than banks obligation to private depositors up to a maximum of 30K euro. The vast majority of private depositors hold much less than this. The rentier class, who hold millions in deposits would, on the other hand , face the euthansia of which Keynes spoke.

Alongside this were proposals to shift the tax basis of the EU from regressive indirect taxes to progressive taxes on income and property provided that such tax changes were passed by EU wide referenda.

Another significant feature of the conference was the active participation of a Chinese representative who was anxious to impress on us that China should not be thought of as a capitalist country but one that was strongly committed to socialism. What credibility one gives to that is a matter of judgement, but what is new is that the Chinese should be actively seeking to both to translate western Marxist works into Chinese, and that they should be sending participants to European Left conferences.

This was a follow on to the Barqisimeto programme proposed in Venezula in 2009, and a further follow on conference will be in Suzhou City, China in May 29th-30th.

Contributions to the conference are available in full here. Some very important stuff by Carsten on the use of labour accounts in the national accounts. Also Ding’s paper which gives important insights into the progress of Marxist development in China.

Key documents of the Berlin programme are to be translated into Chinese and published in the official Journal of Marxism there.

Many questions arise, but I will concentrate on a couple that Dave has asked me to address. First, how does this set of proposals correspond with the Marxist tradition and secondly how does this apply to the British context.In both these cases I must plead special interest as I was involved in the discussions behind the proposals.

Whilst the downplaying of nationalisation is a break with the Marxist tradition that dates from the 2nd International, it is arguably a return to the ideas that Marx himself had prior to the establishment of that international. Marx criticised the tendency in German socialism that relied on state aid. He argued for an economy in which labour accounts would replace money. The measures proposed in Berlin are very influenced by that, and also arguably by the economic ideas of the Dutch council Left of the 1920s. The aim is the abolition of the wage relation. That comes first, once that is achieved the associated producers can move voluntarily to a planned economy accross Europe.

As to the British context. We are living in an interregnum between the nation state and the continental federation. Already we are sufficiently far down the path, that individual national movements towards socialism in Europe are unviable. The implication is that in the future a pan-European socialist party will have to form to contest politics at the Union level, including pushing for increased democratisation of the EU institutions. So long as parties conduct politics at the national level they are addressing a political forum that lacks the economic power to allow socialist political economy to be put into practice set against supra-national financial practices and institutions.

The very existence of national parties also lends credence to cross class “national” interest whenever European issues are raised and militates against the necessary cohesion of the European labour movement.

Paul Cockshott