Francesco Saverio Merlino

Liberal-libertarian Socialism
by Gianpietro Berti

The original contribution of one of the still today most stimulating thinkers between anarchism, socialism and liberalism.

 

The figure-of Francesco Saverio Merlino is still an impressive and emblematic historiographical enigma. Although he was one of the leading thinkers in the history of socialism and, of course, the greatest thinker who can count Italian Socialism (excluding, of course, those who belong to the communist tradition as Labriola, Gramsci and others), he is still largely misunderstood and unappreciated. It is true that the same fate befell other philosophers, historians, sociologists, economists, but the Merlin's case is particularly significant when one considers that his thinking has been largely confirmed by the principal failure of the greatest social experiment of the twentieth century, namely the communist implementation and its catastrophe. Since it was a debacle and unequivocal and irreversible as the problem of its causes is the recurring theme that thirty years has plagued scholars of the phenomenon, how is it that still remains silent about this substantial work from Merlino?
Work, remember, that perhaps more than any had predicted exactly the failure of the "real socialism", outlining, with a century in advance, the reasons which led to the dissolution. You can give, of course, many explanations, but that is certainly more convincing to do with the fact that accepting the argument to the end of Merlin is to recognize the inherent "secularism" of their criticism, which is to say that those who are ideologically left struggling with difficulty to place themselves completely in such a position because it involves the waiver of any remedy as a radical response to the radical error of Marxism: Socialism of Merlin, in other words, there is a totally other, which is opposed to the wholly other offered by the University community (with all its variations), but a form of secular ethics and social vision of social transformation, involving a very complex and difficult to accept for the many implications of relativistic and liberals and substance.
We try now, very briefly, to establish three main points of thought Merlin's criticism of Marxism, the delineation of a proactive liberal-libertarian socialism, rejecting the relativist the port unidirectionality of history with the consequent myth of progress.

Francesco Saverio Merlino

Criticism of Marxism

After Stirner, Proudhon and Bakunin, Merlin is the anarchist thinker that, most of all, confronts the relentless scrutiny of a discussion on the theoretical legacy of Marx. The distinctive feature of Merlin is that he is critical of the German Communist from the reading of Capital, and thus from an economic approach. Stirner had attacked the philosophical Marx, Proudhon in economic, political and philosophical profile, Bakunin considering the ideological, political and strategic. None of these three authors had read, however, the Capital (Bakunin knew only the book, but very superficially). Merlin instead takes up the major guidelines of anarchist thought from analysis of the work of major thinkers of Trier. The unique Merlin contribution is to demonstrate that the positive indications for the construction of socialism Marx outlined magnum opus (i.e., the implicit idea of economic planning) are the exact counterpart of the proposed policy of the dictatorship of the proletariat planning requires dictatorship, the dictatorship in turn can not stand without planning.
This organic-in need relationship is derived, in the opinion of Merlin, from the essential methodological Marx determined based on abstraction, namely the creation of a heuristic model designed to explain comprehensively the specific facts of the diversification of the real. This model, which defines the concrete as unity of the manifold, while it is paradoxical for the formal logic - because the reduction of the multiplicity of sensitive data unit is the task of not concrete knowledge, but abstract things - is quite rational for dialectical logic. The concept of unity in multiplicity is possible for the German Communist should be able to grasp the reproduction of the concrete in thought, in order to achieve a coincidence of the abstract and the concrete through their dialectical unity. It is, in other words, to explain the relations of production, not in their bare empiricism, but since they correspond to their most intimate and presumed essence. With this method, the historical process is taken as the basis of which the capital is the result, but the capital itself is referred to as a starting point for the correct recognition of its historical assumptions.
So the concept of abstraction is fundamental in Marx because it combines the analytical procedure with the need to rebuild all of the concrete historical reality. With this procedure strongly Hegelian, which tends to match the logical categories with real determination to grasp the whole through the mediation of the parties, Marx is convinced that he had grasped the economic law of motion of modern society.
Hence, in the opinion of Merlin, resulting in Marx's essentialism aims to eliminate all the "exceptions" of economic life, such as possession, rent, monopoly, interest. For Marx, it all boils down, in essence, the law of exchange value based on the quantification of labor time embodied in goods and enshrined in the employment contract between worker and capitalist, that is, between capital and labor. So thanks to this procedure have not addressed the problems of sociological, political, historical, ethnographic, ethical, anthropological and the whole issue of socialism is reduced to the struggle between capitalists and workers. The methodological essentialism leads Marx to create a theoretical model free from any specific historical, geographical, ethnographic, cultural, i.e., the set of real differences which determine the different historical contexts. That is to say that Merlin the economicistic essentialism underestimates the problem of complexity, irreducibility and uniqueness of the real.
The same essential and intrinsic to the fallacious theory of deterministic downward trend in the rate of profit, for which the growing disproportion between the constant increase of capital and the decrease of variable capital should lead to a progressive accumulation and centralization of the means of production and capital in the hands of a few owners. For Marx, the real limit of capitalist production is capital itself because its value (profit) requires the unlimited growth of production as an end in itself, through the development of the productive forces of social work, but this development is in conflict with the narrow end of which is the enhancement of existing capital. The real contradiction of the system, in other words, between the social power, which raises the capital, and private power of the capitalist social conditions of production. This contradiction is likely to become increasingly strident lead to the dissolution of the capitalist relation. Hence the general proletarianization relentless creation of a "reserve army" that will lead to a greater supply of labor force needed to compress the minimum subsistence wages, generating a radical antagonism between the proletariat and capital. As is well known, Marx says that, given the growing disproportion between the increase of constant capital and the decrease of variable capital, there will inevitably be a gradual accumulation and centralization of the means of production and capital in the hands of a few owners.
The Merlin criticism of Marxian determinism is therefore crucial. The socialist revolution set out by the German Communist emerges, in fact, as the simple result of the contradictions of capitalism. Having discovered that a part of the worker's job time is stolen by the capitalist, Marx's political economy pulls her arms around this premise and builds all of its socialism. The result is a kind of schizophrenia because the theoretical Marxian critique, after marrying the classical political economy, socialism, forces them to make divorce. Merlin therefore realizes the true nature of Marxism: it is a, at once a revolutionary and pseudo-theory a pseudoscience because it is a science when it is not a revolutionary theory and revolutionary theory when it is not a science. In conclusion, the scientistic character of capitalism is a kind of methodological essentialism, full of charm theology but unable to stand the test of specific facts (as history will take care punctually to demonstrate).
According to Merlin there is an inseparable link between historical determinism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The idea of the dictatorship of the undervaluation of the role of political power and connections between this and economic power. The design shows a dictatorial considered unavoidable historical fact (the proletarian revolution and the advent of communism), which is to circumvent the problem of a socialist political science. The result is a mystifying concept, that the working class, came to power, it will suppress itself as a class and it will become extinct even his dictatorial power. The paradox of the absurd provides simplistic Marxist conception of the suicide of the working class, something that has no equivalent in the historical experience. There will instead be the advent of a hierarchical and totalitarian society. The Marxists, in fact, conceive the realization of socialism as a great industrial company, its directors, divided between officials and simple workers. These are not remunerated in cash, but good work. The fundamental criticism of Merlin is devoted to Marxist doctrine of "transition" On the one hand Marx criticizes the bourgeois economy and attacks the capitalist system, the other adopts the budget of the capitalist entrepreneur.
This is because, according to Marx, communism can not be completed immediately, namely the corporate structure summarized in the formula "each gives according to his ability and receives according to his needs" must be satisfied instead of collectivism. Not so allocation according to need, but according to the quantum of work done by the individual and measured in relation to the quantum of social work. Ultimately, warns Merlin, communism or Marxist collectivism is the status quo without the capitalist and addicting the bureaucracy.

The proactive delineation of a liberal-libertarian socialism

Merlin Socialism is based primarily on the distinction between essence and socialist systems, emerged as decisive epistemological clarity about the relationship between ethics and science. The purpose of Merlin is to arrive at a concept of socialism itself, of a socialism that is independent of socialist systems to implement it. This is to capture the essence of socialism to the underlying diversity of social systems. The distinction between essence and systems has some similarities with the classical division between Humean-Weberian statements of fact and value judgments in the sense that the essence can be understood as value judgments, while the systems may be considered a sort of reviews in fact, as a means can be verified and revised. The aim is to release the essence of the systems to show that the transition from having to be descriptive of the level of knowledge-level legal and ethical, it can only be conscious of not direct between the two plans. This is not deducibility systems (statements of fact) from the essence (value judgments) leads Merlin off the positivist field.
Socialism must be the result of continuous efforts and corrections. In this Merlini's conception complete secularization of the socialist must be equal to its essence, which, however, can not be enclosed in a fixed form because its content is an ethic. The epistemological assumption of this conjugation between socialism and ethics derived from the definitive knowledge of the inability on the part of socialism, to come to formulate an economic conception that is both a theory of scientific knowledge and a theory of social transformation. In other words, we recognize that there are a bourgeois economy or a socialist economy, but only one science of economics and seeks guidance in this knowledge is neutral as possible within the limitation that it inevitably arises, enter into society empirically the principles of freedom and equality.
According to Merlin socialism is a tendency of mankind and consequently of the history, and indeed it, as a theory, is the awareness of this tension. Just because socialism is just a trend it is necessary to overcome all forms hitherto proposed (systems) to achieve a universal idea, which in turn is merely a summary of the history of human civilization. Socialism, therefore, isn't another civilization , a "wholly other" than the existing , we are , namely, the abandonment of any idea of revolution and the ultimate acceptance of reformism. Socialism, in fact, must contemplate the maintenance of competition, the individual possession, the multiplicity of exchange rates, the mediation of money and the different remuneration of work, can not therefore emerge as the abolition of classes.
However, Merlin does not flatten on the existing. Just the distinction between essence and systems gives you the ability to configure the same essence as a sort of utopian tension, while the systems have the task of mediating with the real. The first is the ideal, never quite reached the goal of freedom and equality, the latter form the theoretical and practical translation of the values of socialism in the evolution of history and as such act as the link between dynamic and changing the deduction on this and the universal goals of the future. With this distinction Merlin tries to escape socialism, that is, value judgments, to vanity project for its historical purposes beyond the contingency of the moment. No system, in fact, can indeed completely socialism, as this would make a prisoner of opinion in fact value judgments. This leads, thanks to this interpretation, to the very acute conclusion that there are systems that can kill socialism. Merlin, in fact, outlines and anticipates what will be the catastrophic outcome of its achievements: Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, Cuba, etc..
The socio-economic project cannot bring to completion the consistent and complete coincidence of instances of freedom and equality, but only an ethical sense of justice that can raise the two terms in a higher synthesis. However, it is a summary of the reasons for the antagonism of the individual and those of society, between the departments of liberal and social issues. We're here, we should point out, the true origins of liberal socialism, after Proudhon, located in Merlin his first conceptual formulation. Without a doubt he should be considered the precursor of this doctrine.
In liberal socialism justice is both distributive and retributive because it represents the individual and society. These two poles are at the same time, a necessary and contradictory realities: on one side should not be restricted in any way, the other can not live by themselves. On the ideological level they express, in the economic, hedonistic subjectivism and marginal utility, in ethics, personal responsibility in the collective life. This difference where the individual is responsible duties to the society and society recognizes the individual's inalienable rights, is the crux of the encounter between socialism and strong speculative freedom, rights and duties of the individual and the rights and duties of the community. In liberal socialism of Merlin the primacy of subjectivity in ethics and economics, does not mean the acceptance of methodological individualism because he does not move to a Durkheimian conception of social science.
In his view political individualism is unable to meet the ethical demands of distributive justice. Merlin emphasizes the ethical concept of justice for what the individual must join the community must spring from a moral consciousness, as the history makes the conditions of justice, but it fulfills its purpose. Consequently Merlin comes to the formulation of its socialist legal system in the key of socialism because the idea of freedom and equality are not fully achievable. He is aware that you can not achieve real equality so that men are hopelessly uneven and will become even more so because of economic development. It can only act on equality of starting conditions, that is to say that Merlin socialism does not exceed the dictates of democratic liberalism. Since you can not achieve material equality, work should continue on the feeling of solidarity. Merlin situates Socialism as halfway between a liberal conception (the primacy of individual rights) and a libertarian conception (trying to harmonic convergence between individual and society). Ultimately, however, Merlin comes out of the concept of liberal democracy since the abolition of the state waiver, arguing the need for permanent institutional structures. Also recognizes the inability to abolish the fundamental logic of capitalism: the market.

Relativism and socialism

The epistemological criterion of the last phase of the thought of Merlin is given by the radical concept of relativity, i.e. by the irreversible finding that the values are subject to the functional forms of the mutability of history, so also the freedom and equality must be understood in a relative sense. Taken to its extreme, this concept means the permanent abandonment of the metaphysical principle of liberty which is a prerequisite unverifiable, but ideologically necessary, of the libertarian vision of the world. For Merlin, freedom is not an attribute inherent in a human, but the addition of certain faculties in a society, at some point, allows the individual. In other words, it is merely an expression of historical conditions, which may be progressive or regressive in itself and therefore a concept of absolute freedom, unconditional, is an abstraction that has no practical value. Hence, the permanent reduction of the relationship between consciousness and design, deep scaling of the ideals intended as levers of change. It is so eroded any notion of linear progress, in line with the changed cultural and scientific opened by Einstein's theory of relativity. Socialism turns out to be just a dream and everything is brought back in terms of a practical handling of this: the secularization of ideology reaches its final port.
Against this background, it follows that it is impossible to define - and thus create - a society totally freed from the dominion, for the simple fact that the same idea values of domination, of freedom and equality evaporate in the magma of an indefinite historical process, within which the contours of any planning will ultimately lose their significance and scientific ideal. In the radical negation of the historical, every revolutionary idea becomes meaningless because it does not make sense to the idea of a project to enter voluntarily against the course of history agnostic. Even if we recognize the need quota of the revolution should not forget that the same violent form of social transformation in the way of progress, and that humanity progresses not in favor of revolutions, but in spite of them.
What leads Merlin to this drastic question is the historical realism, which now becomes a radical sociological relativism in the sense that the facts should be considered in their historical and their uniqueness. The relativistic concept because it gives comfort to reform envisages a pluralistic response to the social problem. By what logic would have to accept the revolutionary way, when the latter, by definition, excludes a priori all the others? In conclusion, the reform is reflected in the statement of the essential value of liberal society as a necessary historical basis for further progress. Since everything is relative,you can not found the society with the use of any a priori principle , but only with the adjustments to the legacy of particularistic , whose peculiar substrate makes it impossible to develop a unified , uniform , linear - and therefore tend to egalitarian - society . It follows that absolute justice can never be reached because you can not give everyone the same equality and the well-being. This does not mean, of course, to accept the horizon of a pessimism whatsoever. We must however keep to the faith in the moral value of the idea of justice. Relativism, then, must not imply in any way historicist justificationism.
The downsizing of the concept of radical transformation is evident when considering the major part of society because, reduced to its ultimate essence, the central problem of economics is that of value, the central problem of politics is that of representation, the delegation of functions. This means that there is only one solution: how the economy is necessary for the market, so the policy is necessary for democracy. The waiver to lift the value, in economics, and to abolish the power in politics, opens the problem of management of these two dimensions in relation to social objectives.
On the economic means to combine socialism with the impersonal rationality of value, which implies, in turn, the maintenance of private property within a general cooperation of the means of production and exchange. May be attributable to the existing economic realities, such as a small rural property, and those relating to crafts and small industry, as part of a rationalization of anti-monopoly market.
In the political field the issue of delegation refers to the maintenance of democracy. The political dimension of society is born out of necessity and compulsion and co-adaptation from the fact that the social hierarchy is inevitable (because individuals are unequal). For Merlin social constraints, i.e. the customs, traditions, the demands of economic life, everything that leads to family formation and the association, is of the nature of what leads to freedom. From this point of view it makes more sense the anarchic distinction between State and non-state, has, however, the distinction between the liberal state and the not liberal state, so the question is not whether the state should be maintained, but how it should be formed.
The coexistence of democracy and the market implies the formalist reduction of socialism, its not that definitive ideological codification, which refers to the question of secularism, which, in turn, implies the continuous invention of a pluralism and a multi-socioeconomic and sociopolitical. Socialism can also be a radical transformation, but only in the sense of a change in cultural perspective, not a total change in the sense of material reality.
This is because the reality is one thing, the society is another: the social is only able to reflect reality. In other words, this means that socialism can change the society only insofar as it is allowed to change the reality. The realistic view is that it considers, in fact, that the fact that much can not be changed. Thus socialism can not just have an ontological foundation, precisely because the society realizes just what is possible, since the objective reality imposes limits to the human operator. The ontological foundation of socialism is therefore an indirect basis-spontaneous, i.e. as something that highlights the reasons for the community as such. It, however, does not have an independent political reason, it follows its need to combine with liberal democracy, the essence of which lies precisely in thoughtful compromise with reality. From this union can grow that kind of anarchy is merely possible that the realization of genuine democracy.