How to make a Socialist Constitution

It would be too much to say that drafting a socialist constitution is an art. Still, there are certain basic elements that need to be included to make the constitution a functional socialist one.

Is it enough to simply write the socialist claim into the constitution?

In the world there are several constitutions of obviously capitalist countries, which have a socialist claim. The Constitution of Portugal mentions a socialist claim in its Preamble; Article 3 of the Constitution of Tanzania makes the claim, that Tanzania would be a socialist state; the Preamble of the Constitution of Bangladesh sets socialism as a national ideal; the Constitution of Sri Lanka (which is by the way having Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka as the full name) mentions in Article 27 the goal to establish a “democratic socialist society”. These are not all countries in the world with a socialist claim, but the others like China, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba used to be fully socialist countries and restored capitalism while keeping the claim to be “socialist”.

It is very obvious that a formal claim without manifesting it in ownership relations, institutions and principles for organization will not change anything about the capitalist current. Therefore the next question:

What does a socialist constitution need?

The formulation of the tasks, rights and duties of the state organs, mainly those of the legislative organs, is of supreme importance. Without that the state obviously cannot function. The proclamation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in some form is necessary, though it does not matter if it is written in the constitution directly or meant indirectly. What matters is, if it exists or not. The same applies to the role of the vanguard party: It does not matter if it is formally written down or not; what matters is, if the party is actually a vanguard in the eyes of the working people or not.

The organizational principle is of importance: Democratic centralism.

Mao Zedong said about it in the context of the Communist Party of China:

We must affirm anew the discipline of the Party, namely:

(1) the individual is subordinate to the organization;

(2) the minority is subordinate to the majority;

(3) the lower level is subordinate to the higher level; and

(4) the entire membership is subordinate to the central Committee.

Whoever violates these articles of discipline disrupts Party unity.¹

Democratic centralism means in the end that the minority subordinates to majority decisions and that lower organs subordinate to the higher organs. The organs get elected from the bottom to the top. The higher organs are accountable to the lower organs and in the end the people. The right to recall the higher organs from below is what makes it different from bureaucratic centralism that prevails in capitalist countries. In capitalist countries you can have decisions at the national level that lower organs have to follow without any accountability and possibility to recall them except to wait for the next election.

For this the Soviet Constitution of 1936 established in its Article 142:

It is the duty of every deputy to report to his electors on his work and on the work of the Soviet of Working People’s Deputies, and he is liable to be recalled at any time in the manner established by law upon decision of a majority of the electors.²

The right to recall deputies existed not only in the USSR. The German Democratic Republic had it³ just like the People´s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia⁴. There was no difference if you were in Europe or in Africa, it is a universal necessity to ensure the democratic control from below. Accountability by the deputies was ensured in the GDR⁵ and the EPDR⁶ as well. No matter if Europe or Africa, without accountability there is no possibility of the electors to check up the work of their elected deputy.

Now to the question of economic relations. Socialism cannot exist without the abolishing of exploitation of man by man⁷. To achieve that status it is necessary to have the big companies in state ownership and the small and medium enterprises, such as farms, carpenter´s workshops, stores and therelike in cooperative ownership. The Soviet Constitution of 1936 says on this matter in Article 5:

Socialist property in the U.S.S.R. exists either in the form of state property (the possession of the whole people), or in the form of cooperative and collective-farm property (property of a collective farm or property of a cooperative association).⁸

Cooperatives of the urban petty bourgeoisie played no major role in the USSR. The GDR Constitution of 1968 mentioned the cooperatives of craftsmen as well “other socialist cooperatives” besides the agricultural cooperatives explicitly⁹. So these are an integral part of the socialist economy. The USSR nationalized industry, banks¹⁰ and tenement blocks¹¹ already by December 1917, but agriculture was still not remodeled in a socialist way. This is why Lenin wrote in January 1923:

If the whole of the peasantry had been organized in cooperatives, we would by now have been standing with both feet on the soil of socialism.¹²

Ownership alone is not enough, that ownership also needs to be managed in a certain way: A planned economy is of vital importance here. When state property and cooperatives would be just run on the basis of a market economy, they could not only not unfold their full potential, they would even be forced to work on a capitalist basis. The economic planning needs to uphold certain proportions in the economy, which Karl Marx already described in “Das Kapital”.

Economic planning needs proportionality to not overproduce on the one side and lack on the other side. But that alone is not enough as Stalin teaches us. We must uphold the “Basic Economic Law of Socialism”. While the basic economic law of capitalism is maximization of profits at any cost, that of socialism is the following:

The essential features and requirements of the basic law of socialism might be formulated roughly in this way: the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society through the continuous expansion and perfection of socialist production on the basis of higher techniques.¹³

Without this in mind, the interests of the working people are lost out of sight and we would end up in a soulless “technocracy”.

The next issue is that the economic plan needs to have the power of a law to be more than a wish list for Christmas. Lenin already demanded that the State Planning Commission of the USSR gets such powers¹⁴. And indeed, these powers were granted. This is why Stalin could say in 1927 on the XVth Congress of the CPSU:

Our plans are not forecast plans, not guess-work plans, but directive plans, which are binding upon our leading bodies, and which determine the trend of our future economic development on a country-wide scale.¹⁵

Based on all of therelike considerations the Soviet Constitution of 1936 states in Article 11:

The economic life of the U.S.S.R. is determined and directed by the state national economic plan with the aim of increasing the public wealth, of steadily improving the material conditions of the working people and raising their cultural level, of consolidating the independence of the U.S.S.R. and strengthening its defensive capacity.¹⁶

Establishing a planned economy is not as abstract as someone might think. The big capitalist monopoly companies use planning measures for a long time. Lenin already used the German Mail as an example for a state-capitalist monopoly company using planning measures in 1917¹⁷. Today Lenin would probably instead take the American Amazon company as an example for a capitalist monopoly using cybernetic planning measures. Of course there are liberal politicians that want to return to the pre-monopolist stage of capitalism and condemn monopolies and planning completely. But that is not the socialist outlook. Lenin said on this matter:

We are in favour of centralism and of a “plan”, but of the centralism and plan of the proletarian state, of proletarian regulation of production and distribution in the interests of the poor, the working people, the exploited, against the exploiters.¹⁸

The problem is not the monopoly and the planning, but the question of who owns and runs it. This is the essential question of socialism and therefore also the essential task behind formulating a socialist constitution.