“Fiat Socialism” book launch

An ocean with shores

By Carlos García Hernández

Originally published in Spanish in El Común on 2nd December 2022.

The video at the end of this article was recorded at the launch of my book Fiat Socialism on November 23^rd at the Foundation for Marxist Research in Madrid. The book will be published in English in the near future.

By my side were three great intellects and good friends, Eddy Sanchez (President of the Foundation for Marxist Research), Manuel Monereo (political scientist, lawyer and former Member of Parliament for Podemos) and Stuart Medina (economist and President of RedMMT). As always, all three made very valuable observations and I am very grateful to them. However, Manolo Monereo’s intervention was of special relevance, not only because of his familiar depth and brilliance, but also because of what he taught me about the different approaches to socialism.

Monereo framed fiat socialism within normative socialism and counterposed this perspective to historical socialism. Thus, he related fiat socialism to the Austromarxism of Max Adler and Rudolf Hilferding. Certainly, the book shares with these authors the relevance of Kant’s work, i.e., the preeminence of propositions over concepts and of predicates over historical laws. However, from the perspective of historical socialism there is another way of approaching socialism, which according to Monereo is “more Marxian” which “starts from the contradictions of the present, elucidates how these contradictions create opportunities for socialism and then rides on it. […] Socialism would be a possibility that capitalism opens up in its evolutionary process based on recurrent crises, in that tendential clash between productive forces and relations of production”.

I would like to take the opportunity offered by the words of the great Manuel Monereo to assert, through fiat socialism, the need to propose socialism based on normative assumptions. The construction of a socialist alternative must be built from propositions that can be corroborated, refuted, measured and exhaustively analyzed in their formulation. I believe that this would help to overcome a great error of judgement that (with the exception, indeed, of schools such as Austromarxism) the left made. That error was to opt for Hegel instead of Kant. This mistake was not made by capitalism. The consequences are there for all to see.

If instead of renouncing historical socialism we renounce socialism built on propositions, the mystification of ad hoc approaches appears. Then there only remains the faith that the next crisis within the theses of capitalism will engender an antithesis in the form of contradictions so a synthesis will arise that eliminates the contradictions and proves us right. But until when? Contradictions will also appear irremediably in the new order of things. What shall we do then with these contradictions? How shall we eliminate them this time? History itself shows that we will not do so, but will remain stuck in them, or, as Kant says, they will make us move away from “the continuous shores of experience, which we cannot leave without risking a shore-less ocean”.

Capitalism dodged this bullet. Instead of attempting the impossible task of eliminating contradictions, it embraced them and tried to polish its propositions with them. This is the most reasonable attitude. All human existence is plagued by contradictions. Why should relations of production be an exception if contradictions permeate our family lives, our school lives, our political militancy, etc.? Social relations are always subject to contradictions.

What then is the problem with capitalism? The problem with capitalism is that its propositions are simply wrong. Fiat socialism is an attempt to demonstrate this and to build an alternative socialist system based on better propositions than those of capitalism.

It is at this point that modern monetary theory appears in fiat socialism, as a means to achieve full employment of real resources without creating inflation, not as a panacea. For fiat socialism, modern monetary theory is a way of constructing predicates that explain the monetary economies of production which Stuart Medina mentions in his speech. These predicates result in propositions that demonstrate that the postulates of capitalism, especially in its neoclassical and neoliberal form, are wrong. In my opinion, it is fundamental that the left undertakes this exercise of entering the arena of propositions to fight in it against neoliberalism because it is there where the battle is decided. We cannot overlook this intellectual effort. If we do so by citing our lack of ability, we abandon our attempt to understand the functioning of the monetary economies of production and our analysis comes to nothing. In doing so, we hand victory to neoliberalism. In other words: we cannot maintain that we are capable of understanding (nothing more and nothing less) the meaning of the historical contradictions that are engendered in the capitalist mode of production, but we are not capable of demonstrating reliably and beyond any doubt that (for example) in the monetary economies of production it is impossible for taxes to finance public spending.

Two conclusions can be drawn from what has been said above. One is that the interest of fiat socialism in modern monetary theory is only and exclusively the possibility opened up by this theory to achieve the ends of socialism. The second is that, instead of attempting the impossible task of eradicating the contradictions arising between the productive forces of the monetary economies of production, what the left must do is devote its efforts to eradicating abuses.

If fiat socialism is only interested in modern monetary theory as a method of directing full employment without inflation to further the ends of socialism, the struggle for socialism is only justified because socialism is a political and economic system in which the abuses inherent in the capitalist system of production are combated. These abuses are primarily economic in character, since the logic of capitalism’s deregulated markets is incompatible with the provision of basic human needs, but socialism must also extend the struggle against abuses to all fields of social relations. The elimination of suffering through the struggle against abuses, not the attempt to eliminate contradictions in the monetary economies of production: that must be the goal of socialism. That is why fiat socialism does not define socialism as a system in which the means of production must necessarily be wholly public, but as a system in which universal access to five things is guaranteed: full employment, full and prudent utilization of natural resources, a guarantee to every citizen of food, shelter, clothing, health care and education, social security in the form of pensions and subsidies, and a guarantee of decent labour standards.

Manuel Monereo rightly says in his speech that this conception of socialism does not take into account the power conflicts that would be created within a capitalist society if an attempt were made to implement a political program such as the one proposed by fiat socialism. He is right and I am aware of it, but as Kant said: “one confesses that it is difficult to find pure soil, pure water, pure air, etc., and nevertheless, these concepts are necessary”. What I have tried to present in my book is a system in its purest possible form, without analyzing the obvious and enormous obstacles it would face. What I do point out, however, is that “monetary sovereignty allows the state to buy whatever is for sale in its own currency. Therefore, the size of the public sector can be decided democratically. If private initiative ceases to fulfil its social function or engages in manoeuvres to destabilize and sabotage the government, the electorate may democratically decide to reduce or even eliminate private initiative”.

In Spain, there is a Francoist oligarchy that would oppose fiat socialism by all means. It is the oligarchy made up of the crown, the catholic church, the mass media, a large part of the judiciary, a large part of the armed forces, the banks and the big tourism and construction lobbies. These are very powerful enemies whose patrons are none other than the European Union, NATO and the State Department of the United States of America. However, I believe that fiat socialism could gather behind it a great social majority in our country that would be capable of creating splits within the oligarchy. Likewise, fiat socialism should not be understood as a project restricted only to Spain, but its vocation is to reach places where things are different. In Eurasia, things are seen differently. That is why fiat socialism pays special attention to China and Russia, where I believe that people like Nikolai Platoshkin are already close to postulates similar to those of fiat socialism. The same is true of places like Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua, and I believe also in large sectors of society in India. These are places where fiat socialism would probably be more easily applicable.

Fiat socialism and normative socialism. Those were the main axes of the presentation that can be seen below. I invite everyone to watch the video. I hope that my book can help the socialist forces to recover the left shore of the Kantian ocean.

Euro delendus est

• Paperback (Spanish) available from Lola Books
• ebook (Spanish) – also available via various retailers
• Original article in Spanish: here