Translated from a text by Arian Schiffer-Nasserie
Confronting popular objections to criticism of the system & the question of the alternative
“But...”
5 Answers and 1 Conclusion
Anyone who presents a critical analysis of the system in this country can be sure of one thing. No sooner will the criticism have been voiced than someone will feel compelled to ask the following question, or something like it: “Yeah, I get your criticism, but what’s your alternative?”
This almost reflexive demand for an alternative intends to test the critic and is considered an unquestionably reasonable and successful retort to objections and criticism of all kinds.
The question is posed even more firmly and defiantly when it is evident that the criticism has identified the state-imposed economic and social order and its international competition for money and violence as the systemic reason for all kinds of conflicts, brutalities, and cruelties: “But what – please tell me – is your alternative?”
It’s actually not that difficult, given how brutal the realities are, to come up with a few more pleasant alternatives. But the criticism – regardless of its content and the arguments for it – should be assessed by whether the questioner finds the presented alternative acceptable.
And for a loyal citizen, no alternative is acceptable unless it is recognized as “realistic,” i.e. not “radical” but “within the rules and the law,” “democratic,” “non-violent,” “constitutional,” etc. etc. – i.e. only if it doesn’t question any of the interests that are made into law by the state and any of the ruling purposes and beneficiaries. This question is meant to discredit criticism of the system or otherwise knowingly refute the logical conclusions of the analysis. But first things first...
First, it’s not at all clear why an analysis with coherent arguments should be rejected just because it doesn’t offer a nice alternative.
Who, for example, would reject a medical diagnosis about an incurable and fatal disease? “And what, please tell me, is the alternative?” It’s quite possible to doubt whether the medical diagnosis is correct, i.e. whether it is based on correct data and facts, whether it draws correct conclusions from them, overlooks other possible factors, etc. Most certainly, however, the diagnosis of the fatal disease is not wrong because it does not have a better alternative. And even in this worst of all cases, a correct analysis without an alternative is by no means pointless or even useless. In this example, it saves the patient from useless, costly, burdensome or even harmful therapies and at least enables him to deal realistically with the time remaining.
Beyond the example, a critique that accounts for the necessity of the damages and conflicts known to everybody from the prevailing conditions at least stops people from making the moral recriminations that the members of bourgeois society are always throwing around. Or to put it another way: would anybody agitate against social parasites, people who are too lazy to work, criminals, foreigners, policy failures, mismanagement, speculators or, especially, enemy foreign countries and their leaders in Moscow, Beijing, etc., if they were aware that poverty, squalor, conflicts of interest, exploitation, environmental destruction, epidemics and crises, their state management and ultimately the competition between states for money and violence – which includes, by the way, war – are all parts of the systemic necessities of the bourgeois social order?
First interim conclusion: Criticism of the system is neither wrong nor useless if it doesn’t give an alternative to a real existing misery. Neither is the analysis false if it does not promise a happy ending. Nor is it useless to provide proof of the necessity of certain conflicts and damages since it stops people from idealizing the competitive class society as a moral community and, without any anti-fascist pleas, falsely blaming members of society who do not know their place, whether Jews, Muslims, immigrants, and especially the evil country abroad.
Secondly, it’s actually pretty easy to deduce the alternative from the conclusions that follow from every analysis and criticism.
Those who, for example, attribute their painful experiences with the costs of political rule to incompetent politicians, weak leadership and corruption will most likely be enthusiastic every four years about the campaigns of immaculate men and women with strong leadership skills who prove that they are capable of everything and anything with their model careers, their photogenic families and their enormous wealth.
And those who discover the deeper causes of environmental destruction, health damages, species extinction in the irresponsible consumer behavior of their fellow citizens are likely to be enthusiastic about the quality seals of the organic and fairtrade industries, about “consciously” and “self-righteously” consuming homemade lentil salads, and get on the nerves of their friends and families with moralizing reprimands.
And this too: Those who, in circular ignorance, attribute the country’s typical hardships, squalor and crime to a lack of decency among the lower layers may even find the eternal debates about the alleged decline in values, about tougher punishments, more social work and more police, more encouragement and requirements in schools and job centers, highly compelling.
The same applies, of course, to criticism of the system: Anyone who has come to understand that their own damages are inevitably included in this social order will probably not be particularly enthusiastic about constructively improving the very same social system which is causing the damages. Such a person will probably be more interested in getting rid of the causes.
And those who realize that the countless hardships of the present are, on the one hand, neither God’s will, required by nature or the human species, but that, on the other hand, there is no alternative to poverty, exploitation, environmental destruction, epidemics, conflicts, crises and wars under the prevailing conditions, will probably want an alternative in which the global competition between nations and corporations for the accumulation of capital, which includes the necessary oppression and damage of wage workers and the natural bases of life, is replaced by a worldwide cooperation between working people for the purpose of providing for their needs in the most sensible and pleasant way possible. That, by the way, is the revolutionary alternative!
Second interim conclusion: The supposed riddle about the alternative to the criticized reality is usually not a riddle at all. Rather, critique and alternative are – at least initially – two sides of the same coin.
Third, it is already clear from what has been said so far that a debate about alternatives is usually pointless.
An example: Someone who examines a defective bicycle and comes to the conclusion that a broken chain is the cause of his problem is unlikely to consider changing the tire or pedaling more vigorously as alternative solutions, or even to engage in a dialogue to discuss alternatives. Such a person simply fixes the old chain or gets a new one.
Of course, in any critical and unbiased analysis of the problem, one can be mistaken. In the example: Maybe the defective chain is the cause, maybe it is also a consequence of the actual problem, which has its deeper reason in the bottom bracket or in the sprocket...
Errors can therefore be made. These then inevitably also lead to unhelpful “solutions to the problem” – in the worst case, they even make things worse.
This can have different reasons:
1. Such errors can occur by chance. To err is human.
2. However, such errors are much more likely to occur if the problem is approached with biased presuppositions, i.e. if the solution is already known before the analysis and certain causes are categorically excluded. Such errors are then based on prejudices.
3. Mistakes are inevitable if you make the analysis of the root cause and the solution to the problem dependent on the means available to you regardless of the problem. For a hammer, as is well known, every problem is a nail. And for a democratic, modern and responsible citizen, every problem is ultimately a task for the government, the law and the institutions of the free democratic basic order, which are therefore always viewed as problem solvers and never as problem creators. Such mistakes are therefore based on the dogma of their originators, i.e. they are part of a so-called ideology. (More on this in the next step.)
However, in order to avoid unhelpful, useless or even harmful “solutions,” a correct, i.e. objectively accurate, analysis and criticism is essential. Here the need for discussion can arise. At the latest, when competing or contradictory solutions are proposed, a clarification is advisable to impartially and undogmatically, i.e. critically, examine the underlying analysis of the problem in each case for its correctness. And vice versa: an ostensible analysis of a problem does not become more correct by promising cheap, easy-to-implement and universally welcome alternatives. (Otherwise, all defective bicycles would be due there not being enough air in the tires).
Third interim conclusion: Discussions about alternatives are inappropriate and pointless as long as there is no verified and shared understanding of the problem and its cause. One can and even must argue about different analyses of problems and the correctness of a criticism if one wants to come to a real and collaborative solution to a problem. By the way, in most cases the solution emerges quite inevitably when there is clarity about the cause of the problem. So one must discuss the criticism, not the alternatives!
Fourth, the putative realism of those who skeptically ask for alternatives is neither realistic nor practical.
First of all, it’s clear: anyone who is confronted with a recurring problem will sensibly try to find the cause and, if possible, eliminate it, so as to not suffer from the same symptoms over and over again and, like old Sisyphus, have to fight against them in perpetuity – i.e., completely in vain. And vice versa: If you are aware that you have not yet eliminated the cause of a problem, you can hardly be outraged if the unpleasant consequences continue to make life difficult.
An example: Anyone who has had to deal with troublesome plants in a vegetable garden is usually aware that the problem must be tackled not just superficially but literally “at the root” (latin = radix) if they do not want to be faced with the same situation in the near future. The Latin word “radical,” i.e. “going to the root” of the problem, was derived from this logical and reasonable connection in antiquity. And in this sense, every sensible person also acts radically, i.e. simply logically. “For a start,” mind you....
Of course, it becomes more difficult if the law prohibits the logical elimination of the cause. For example, someone who is faced with unaffordable rent and insufficient living space isn’t allowed to just occupy the space they need or stop paying rent. And anyone suffering from an acute shortage of money is not allowed to solve their problem by obtaining ample amounts of legal tender from a copy machine, someone else’s bank account, or by digitally manipulating payment transactions. Such alternatives are simply forbidden and so are relegated to the realm of Hollywood fantasies by so-called “realists.”
Conversely, the legal and therefore much-praised possibilities for pursuing interests prove to be an inexhaustible source of small and large disappointments. The universally celebrated opportunities to compete in school, on the labor and housing markets, for old-age security and health care, checking accounts, booking vacations, and private life in the family turn out to be a series of bankruptcies, bad luck, and mishaps for some people. Critics even know why this is: where there is competition for opportunities, there must necessarily also be losers. And the competition of wage workers for opportunities to produce the wealth of others and to reproduce their own proletarian plight, which is seen as an “opportunity,” naturally does not serve the wage earning competitors but the state and capitalist organizers and beneficiaries of the whole program.
Should the diagnosis be correct – as Marxists try to prove with their analyses of the competition over property, the production and circulation of capitalist wealth including finance capital, the theory of the state including the political economy of education, the welfare state, etc., and the theories of the family, fascism, imperialism and war – then the logical and consistent fight against the causes is confronted with new challenges. The desired “alternative” is then not only in “criminal” violation of the private interests of the owners and the legal requirements of the state, but is directly against the existing order and its capitalist beneficiaries themselves. So anything like this is not only prohibited in the same way as counterfeiting and squatting. Such a thing is “sedition.” That’s why representatives of “radical” criticism are monitored by the state as a precautionary measure and not infrequently suppressed. (The demand for the alternative therefore always contains something that is convicting and defamatory in relation to the critic and might cause him serious hardship along the lines of: Let’s get him to say where his criticism leads so we can charge him with endangering democracy and the market economy).
Finally, there is another very important reason why radical criticism – which is, “first of all” merely reasonable, consistent and logical – is not only poorly received by the state authorities and the wealthy beneficiaries of the ruling social order, but why such criticism is usually also rejected by one’s wage earning fellow citizens, regardless of how compelling the underlying arguments might be:
Precisely because this critique does not stop at combating unpleasant effects – in the manner of, for example, labor unions, charities, tenants’ associations, peace activists, consumer, environmental and patient protection activists – precisely because radical critique turns against the causes themselves, it also questions those principles and institutions on which not only the damages but also the very existence of those who are damaged depends: Property, money, wage labor, law and, above all, the state power which protects and demands this relationship of coercion; without its laws and its welfare state, no wage dependent individual could make a living under the conditions of competition and class antagonism.
Unfortunately, wage-dependent citizens who are in need of a state ususally do not judge criticism of the system in terms of the objective coherence of the arguments and the conclusions put forward; instead, they sense that the criticism questions or even attacks everything on which their existence “just happens” to depend under the prevailing conditions. As a rule, their reaction to “radical” criticism and communist alternatives is correspondingly defensive or even hostile....
Such so-called “realists” think that money is actually a great invention – but, please, distribute it fairly. For them, capitalists are and always will be “job creators,” regardless of their objective economic purpose. Even if they are laid off by them, they are still job creators, even if they allegedly “neglect their responsibilities.” So-called realists have no radical qualms about land ownership and the real estate market – housing should just be “affordable.” And above all, so-called realists have no fundamental criticism of state rule, its violence, its financing and its punishments, if these were used “justly” and if please, please, there wasn’t another war on the horizon, at least not in our country... And if they weren’t citizens but pigs in a fattening farm, they would probably come to the balanced judgment – loosely based on Bertolt Brecht – that the feed and the medical care are all right; only the butcher is a bit disturbing...
Fourth interim conclusion: So-called realists are incorrigible idealists. They idealize their dependence on capital and the state, on money, jobs and the law time and again, turning them into useful institutions for pursuing their interests, i.e. they believe in “their” job, in “their” employer, in “their” rights, their freedom and, above all, in their state, which is ultimately there for them or “should at least be there.” So-called realists confuse their opportunism with acuity. That’s why they can’t make any sense of their damages. For unpleasant experiences with school, the labor market, banks, landlords, crises, the institution of marriage and even world wars, they – almost incorrigibly and with inexhaustable outrage – blame bad actors, i.e. bad teachers, speculators, spouses and politicians with bad intentions, without whom everything would “actually” be so nice. In the end, they do not like radical, i.e. “in the first instance” correct analyses of the ruling purposes and their inevitable sacrifices because they fear – rightly, by the way – that they are calling into question those institutions which they falsely affirm to be useful means for pursuing their interests.
Fifth, asking for the alternative is a good joke in a time when allegedly there is no alternative.
Because if “there is no alternative” to any of the hardships of real existing capitalism and its state – and there isn’t any, according to the ruling democrats – then in a democracy there is no other choice than that between the right personnel for a subjectless rule that uncompromisingly enforces alleged constraints of capitalism against its victims. Ironically, this approximates the Marxist critique of bourgeois elections, which Tucholsky already knew 100 years ago would be banned if they changed anything except the ruling personnel.
At the same time, the question naturally arises as to why the alleged constraints so necessarily require a state with all its power and money in order to unfold their supposedly irrefutable validity. The much-vaunted constraints are obviously a violent matter, namely a property and economic order that would have no permanence without the permanent effect of state violence. However, the competition for property, for money and its accumulation, which is set in motion by this violence, then actually produces those laws which, by necessity, commit the whole of society, its classes and its state to the accumulation of capital, which at the same time “undermines the sources of all wealth: the earth and the worker,” as Marx put it in the first volume of Capital.
The “there is no alternative” (TINA) ideology is also a good joke because, on the one hand, its supporters don’t want to know anything about this necessity and its reason, i.e. the substance of the criticism of the system, and on the other hand, they prove it right in practice when they enforce and sign off on their system-relevant measures to the detriment of those affected. It is not uncommon for so-called “realos” from former labor, peace and environmental parties and alternative (!) lists to turn out to be the toughest dogs who do not shy away from any brutality as soon as they gain political power. That too would actually be a good joke if it weren’t so sad.
Incidentally, the history of “TINA” begins with the end of real existing socialism. As is well known, it saw itself as a revolutionary and at the same time real existing alternative to the capitalist system and promised social security and humane work for wage workers, reason in social relations and peace in international relations. As long as this point of view existed in practice in the form of socialist states in the East and communist parties in the West, there was also a need for capitalist states to deny the necessity of revolution by pointing to the fundamental reformability of capitalism or to loudly proclaim constructive alternatives and social reforms. This is obviously no longer necessary today. In the meantime, the hardships that are part of the system, including hunger, crises and war, have been transfigured into a subject-less and unhistorical TINA to which everyone must bow.
Fifth interim conclusion: As is well known, capitalism constantly reforms and revolutionizes itself, but in its irrationality and hardships it is indeed incorrigible. The exploitation of labor, the precarious reproduction of the wage workers, including unemployment, child poverty, elderly poverty, occupational illnesses, burnout, etc., the destruction of the natural bases of life, the permanent conflicts of interests, state rule, its costs, its violence and its wars – all are necessary under the prevailing conditions. Capitalism obviously does not lack alternatives.
Conclusion
The more or less harmless question “I understand your criticism, but what alternative do you propose?” is loaded, even if the questioner is not aware of it at the time of the question.
It’s clear that the question about the alternative can be meant in different ways: On the one hand, as a complete rejection of the criticism of the system, regardless of its substance, based on the predetermined dogma that all thinking, research and analysis must serve to improve the existing order, its state guarantor and its general terms and conditions. This is a politely presented ban on criticism in the form of a question.
On the other hand, the question about the alternative can be based on the wish that an improvement of the criticized conditions should “actually” be within the power and responsibility of the state and economic decision-makers or even “all of us” as voters, consumers, speakers, etc. Obviously, here too it is not the criticism but rather one’s own wishful thinking that is the progenitor of the thought.
The different versions of the question about the alternative have one thing in common: The objective content of the critique is completely pushed into the background. And thus the question – intentionally or not – undermines precisely the first and most important practical result, namely an examination of the critique for its objective coherence that aims at theoretical agreement. As has been shown, this agreement about the substance of the analysis of the cause is a prerequisite for deriving appropriate and collective practical conclusions.