Socialism

Michael Lebowitz: Socialism for the 21st Century — Re-inventing and Renewing the Struggle

[The following presentation was delivered to launch La Alternativa Socialista, the Chilean edition of The Socialist Alternative, in Concepcion, Santiago and Valparaiso, November 2012.]

By Michael A. Lebowitz
SolidarityEconomy.net via Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

Jan 9, 2013 – Every socialist in the 21st century should try to answer two questions.

First, why don’t workers put an end to capitalism – given its destruction of human beings and the environment (something Marx was so conscious of). In particular, given the declining standards of life for decades in the United States, the economic disaster in Europe and the current crises, how is it that the system is reproduced without a significant challenge by the working class?

Second, why did the working class within what has become known as “real socialism” [the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe] allow those systems to revert to capitalism without resistance from the working classes, who were presumably its beneficiaries?

These two questions are interrelated both in practice and theory. In terms of practice, the failure within capitalism certainly had its impact upon the shaping of “real socialism”. And, in turn, the character of “real socialism” contributed to the view of workers in capitalism that socialism was not a desirable alternative. I can recall many arguments about socialism with my father, who was a machinist, and I remember in particular his comment, “Why would I want a bigger, stronger boss?”

On the theoretical level, the two questions are linked because we rarely explore the question of what kinds of people are produced under particular relations of production. There is no lack of discussion, for example, among Marxists about the rate of profit in capitalism, economic crisis, the intricacies of the so-called transformation problem, and indeed the process of exploitation itself. But there’s little examination of the working class as subject and how that subject is shaped within capitalist relations of production.

Capitalism cripples workers

Marx certainly didn’t make that mistake. In his book, Capital, he explained what capital is — that it is the result of the exploitation of workers. But, in addition to demonstrating that we are dominated by our own products, he also described at length what happens to workers within capitalist relations of production. Workers dominated by the logic of capital are merely the means to capital’s goal, the goal of profits. And in the process, they are crippled. The capitalist division of labour under the system of manufacture deformed workers. Did the introduction of machinery, though, change the one-sidedness that this division of labour produced? Marx answered: no, it perfected it. It completed the division between thinking and doing; it completed that deformation of workers.

This was the source of Marx’s passion. This was the source of his hatred for capitalism. Not simply the exploitation that creates capital but the deformation and destruction of human beings who are merely means for capital. Our products are a power over us — but not simply because they are a power. It is also because we are not. Capitalism does not simply impoverish us because it extracts from us the things we produce. It impoverishes us because of the people it produces.

And, Marx looked to an alternative – an alternative which he articulates in Capital. Indeed, that alternative is the premise of his book. He evokes there a society characterised not by the capitalists’ impulse to increase the value of their capital but by “the inverse situation in which objective wealth is there to satisfy the worker’s own need for development”. This “inverse situation” is the perspective from which Marx persistently critiques capitalism. He talks about capitalist production and how the means of production employ workers as “this inversion, indeed this distortion, which is peculiar to and characteristic of capitalist production”.

The spectre haunting Marx’s Capital is the vision of a society oriented to “the worker’s own need for development”, the inverse situation. It is a call to invert the capitalist inversion, a call to build a society oriented toward human development, one which recognises the necessity for the workers’ own needs for development.

Marx pointed to the need to create new relations that end the division between thinking and doing, the need to develop what he called “rich human beings”, that rich individuality that is all sided in needs and capacities. Very simply, it is the call to build a society of associated producers, a socialist society with productive relations through which people are able to develop. But that’s not so easy. If it were only a matter of calling for the negation of capital, capitalism would have ended long ago.

Marx grasped something that so many have failed to see since — that capital has the tendency to produce a working class that views the existence of capital as necessary. “The advance of capitalist production”, he stressed, “develops a working class which by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirements of this mode of production as self-evident natural laws”.

Here is the crux of the problem: capital tends to produce the workers it needs, workers who look upon capitalism as common sense. Given the mystification of capital (arising from the sale of labour-power), which makes productivity, profits and progress appear as the result of the capitalist’s contribution, Marx argued that “the organization of the capitalist process of production, once it is fully developed, breaks down all resistance”. That is strong and unequivocal language; and Marx added that capital’s generation of a reserve army of the unemployed “sets the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the worker”. Accordingly, he proposed that the capitalist can rely upon the workers’ “dependence on capital, which springs from the conditions of production themselves, and is guaranteed in perpetuity by them”.

Of course, we often struggle. Workers struggle over wages, working conditions and the defence of past gains. But as long as workers look upon the requirements of capital as “self-evident natural laws”, those struggles occur within the bounds of the capitalist relation. Subordination to the logic of capital means that, faced with capitalism’s crises, workers sooner or later act to ensure the conditions for the expanded reproduction of capital. And that’s why capitalism keeps going. It keeps going because we are convinced that there is no alternative — no alternative to barbarism. As a result, the “realistic” left, the so-called good left of social democracy, tells us that the best we can get is barbarism with a human face.

Alternative common sense

To go beyond capitalism, we need a vision that can appear to workers as an alternative common sense, as their common sense. To struggle against a situation in which workers “by education, tradition and habit” look upon capital’s needs “as self-evident natural laws”, we must struggle for an alternative common sense. But what is the vision of a new society whose requirements workers may look upon as “self-evident natural laws’? Clearly, it won’t be found in the results of 20th century attempts to build socialism, which, to use Marx’s phrase, ended “in a miserable fit of the blues”.

“We have to reinvent socialism”. With this statement, Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, electrified activists in his closing speech at the January 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. “It can’t be the kind of socialism that we saw in the Soviet Union”, he stressed, “but it will emerge as we develop new systems that are built on cooperation, not competition”. If we are ever going to end the poverty of the majority of the world, capitalism must be transcended, Chavez argued. “But we cannot resort to state capitalism, which would be the same perversion of the Soviet Union. We must reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project and a path, but a new type of socialism, a humanist one, which puts humans and not machines or the state ahead of everything.”

There, at its core, is the vision of socialism for the 21st century. Rather than expansion of the means of production or direction by the state, human beings must be at the centre of the new socialist society. This is a return to Marx’s vision of the “inverse situation” oriented to the worker’s own need for development, a return to the vision of a society which would allow for “the all-round development of the individual”, the “complete working out of the human content”, the “development of all human powers as such the end in itself”, a society of associated producers in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.

But the focus upon full development of human potential was only one side of Marx’s perspective. What Marx added to this emphasis upon human development was his understanding of how that development of human capacities occurs. In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx was quite clear that it is not by giving people gifts, not by changing circumstances for them, not by populism nor by those at the top deciding for us. Rather, we change only through real practice, by changing circumstances ourselves. Marx’s concept of “revolutionary practice”, that concept of “the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change’, is the red thread that runs throughout his work.

One aspect of this, certainly, was his explicit recognition of how the struggles of workers against capital transform “circumstances and men”, expanding their capabilities and making them fit to create a new world. But there was more. In the very act of producing, Marx indicated, “the producers change, too, in that they bring out new qualities in themselves, develop themselves in production, transform themselves, develop new powers and new ideas, new modes of intercourse, new needs and new language”. And, of course, the relations within which workers produce affect the nature of the workers produced. After all, that was Marx’s point about how capitalist productive relations “distort the worker into a fragment of a man” and degrade her/him and “alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process”.

Indeed, every human activity has two products; every human activity has as its result joint products — both the change in the object of labour and the change in the labourer themselves. In my book, The Socialist Alternative, I identify this combination of human development and practice as Marx’s key link. And, if we grasp that key link, we can see its obvious implications for building socialism. What are the circumstances that have as their joint product “the totally developed individual, for whom the different social functions are different modes of activity he takes up in turn’? To develop the capacities of people, the producers must put an end to what Marx called, in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, “the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour”.

For the development of rich human beings, the worker must be able to call “his own muscles into play under the control of his own brain”. And, not by themselves but through a democratic, protagonistic process. When workers act in workplaces and communities in conscious cooperation with others, they produce themselves as people conscious of their interdependence and of their own collective power. The joint product of their activity is the development of the capacities of the producers — precisely Marx’s point when he says that “when the worker cooperates in a planned way with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species”. Here, then, is the way to ensure that “the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly’.

Creating the conditions in workplaces and communities by which people can develop their capacities is an essential aspect of the concept of socialism for the 21st century. But it is only one element. How can the workers’ own need for development be realised if capital owns our social heritage — the products of the social brain and the social hand? And, how can we develop our own potential if we look upon other producers as enemies or as our markets — i.e., if individual material self-interest is our motivation?

Capitalism is an organic system, one which has the tendency to reproduce the conditions of its existence (including a working class that looks upon its requirements as “self-evident natural laws”). That is its strength. To counter that and to satisfy “the worker’s own need for development”, the socialist alternative we envision also must be an organic system, a particular combination of production, distribution and consumption, a system of reproduction. What Chavez named in January 2007 as “the elementary triangle of socialism” (social property, social production and satisfaction of social needs) is a step forward toward a conception of such a system.

Consider the logic of this socialist combination, this conception of socialism for the 21st century:

1. Social ownership of the means of production is critical within this structure because it is the only way to ensure that our communal, social productivity is directed to the free development of all rather than used to satisfy the private goals of capitalists, groups of producers or state bureaucrats. But, this concerns more than our current activity. Social ownership of our social heritage, the results of past social labour, is an assertion that all living human beings have the right to the full development of their potential — to real wealth, the development of human capacity. It is the recognition that “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.

2. Social production organised by workers builds new relations among producers — relations of cooperation and solidarity. It allows workers to end “the crippling of body and mind” and the loss of “every atom of freedom, both in bodily and in intellectual activity” that comes from the separation of head and hand. Organisation of production in all spheres by workers, thus, is a condition for the full development of the producers, for the development of their capabilities — a condition for the production of rich human beings.

3. Satisfaction of communal needs and purposes as the goal of productive activity means that, instead of interacting as separate and indifferent individuals, we function as members of a community. Rather than looking upon our own capacity as our property and as a means of securing as much as possible in an exchange, we start from the recognition of our common humanity and, thus, of the importance of conditions in which everyone is able to develop her full potential. When our productive activity is oriented to the needs of others, it both builds solidarity among people and produces socialist human beings.

There’s an old saying that if you don’t know where you want to go, then any road will take you there. I disagree. If you don’t know where you want to go, then no road will take you there. A vision of a socialist alternative such as that organic system summarised by the socialist triangle is essential if we are put an end to capitalism. Of course, knowing where you want to go is not the same as getting there. But, it is essential for indicating where you don’t want to go. And one place we don’t want to go is to a 21st century version of “real socialism”.

‘Real socialism’

To explain the nature of “real socialism” from the 1950s through the 1980s, I introduced (in my new book, Contradictions of ‘Real Socialism’) the concept of vanguard relations of production — a particular set of productive relations characterised by a vanguard whose logic was to deliver socialism to the masses from above and to do so without permitting that underlying population to develop its own capacities through practice and protagonism. There were definite benefits for workers. In particular, there was a social contract whereby the vanguard promised, among other things, full employment, job security, subsidised necessities and rising income over time — as long as the working class accepted its lack of power and the opportunity to develop its capabilities in the workplace and society.

Precisely because of the nature of vanguard relations, though, the workers produced were not subjects able to build a new society nor, indeed, able to respond as the system ran into problems. But, there were further implications of this crippling of workers. In The Socialist Alternative, I noted that if workers don’t manage, someone else does; and, if workers don’t develop their capabilities through their practice, someone else does.

In ‘real socialism’, it was the enterprise managers who developed capabilities, and they emerged as an incipient capitalist class – a class oriented to the logic of capital but constrained by the logic of the vanguard. Their ultimate victory brought with it a very significant loss for the working class — the jettisoning of the social contract, i.e., the ending of job security, full employment, subsidisation of necessities, etc. — the loss of all the benefits that workers obtained within vanguard relations in this period. That loss was significant, and there is much nostalgia among workers about that period. But the point is not to return to it. “Real socialism” was never the alternative to which Marx looked — that “inverse situation in which objective wealth is there to satisfy the worker’s own need for development”.

We need to be explicit that “real socialism” is not where we want to go in the 21st century. We need to identify what we do want — we need the vision of a socialist alternative. Like the worst architect, for the revolutionary labour process we must build the goal in our minds before we can construct it in reality. But that is not enough — knowing where you want to go is not at all the same as getting there. Indeed, how is it possible to get there given that capital has the tendency to produce a working class that by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirements of capital as “self-evident natural laws”?

Struggle

The answer, I suggest, is that people do struggle even though mystified by the nature of capital. They struggle for what they see as fair, and they struggle against violations of their conception of fairness. This moral economy of the working class points to possibilities. Even though their goals in these struggles may be limited to ending the immediate violations of norms of fairness and justice and may be aimed, for example, at achieving no more than “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work”, people change in the course of struggle. Despite the limited goals involved in wage struggles, Marx argued that they were essential for preventing workers “from becoming apathetic, thoughtless, more or less well-fed instruments of production”; without such struggles, workers “would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation”.

People, in short, struggle over their conceptions of right and wrong, and what Marx attempted to do was to explain the underlying basis for those struggles. By itself, the moral economy of the working class can never explain its basis — why those particular beliefs as to what is fair are present — and thus why those norms can change. Accordingly, it is essential to recognise the importance of the moral economy of the working class but also to go beyond it. To grasp the conditions which underlie concepts of fairness at a given moment, it is necessary to move from the moral economy of the working class to the political economy of the working class.

In short, the starting point should be real people with particular ideas and concepts. To articulate what is implicit in their concepts and struggles and to show how these contain within them the elements of a new society is essential. To see the future in the present is what is needed if we are to build that future.

In The Socialist Alternative, I propose the importance of linking existing struggles to a focus upon the right of everyone to full development of their potential. I am convinced that this focus allows us to link separate struggles and to demonstrate the importance of a socialist alternative.

Accordingly, I introduced there the idea of a Charter for Human Development. The goal of such a charter is to try to redefine the concept of fairness. To stress that it is unfair that some people monopolise the social heritage of all human beings, that it is unfair that some people are able to develop their capacities through their activities while others are crippled and deformed, and that it is unfair that we are forced into structures in which we view others as competitors and enemies.

Is it possible to redefine the concept of fairness and to build a new moral economy of the working class? Certainly, it is not inevitable. But in this period of economic and ecological crisis, there is no alternative but to try. We are at the point when Marx’s statement that capitalism destroys human beings and nature has taken on a new urgency.

The choice before us has been noted often: socialism or barbarism.

The 15-hour working week predicted by Keynes may soon be within our grasp – but are we ready for freedom from toil?

By John Quiggin
SolidarityEconomy.net via Aeon Magazine

Sept 27, 2012 – I first became an economist in the early 1970s, at a time when revolutionary change still seemed like an imminent possibility and when utopian ideas were everywhere, exemplified by the Situationist slogan of 1968: ‘Be realistic. Demand the impossible.’ Preferring to think in terms of the possible I was much influenced by an essay called ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,’ written in 1930 by John Maynard Keynes, the great economist whose ideas still dominated economic policymaking at the time.

Like the rest of Keynes’s work, the essay ceased to be discussed very much during the decades of free-market liberalism that led up to the global financial crisis of 2007 and the ensuing depression, through which most of the developed world is still struggling. And, also like the rest of Keynes’s work, this essay has enjoyed a revival of interest in recent years, promoted most notably by the Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky and his son Edward.

The Skidelskys have revived Keynes’s case for leisure, in the sense of time free to use as we please, as opposed to idleness. As they point out, their argument draws on a tradition that goes back to the ancients. But Keynes offered something quite new: the idea that leisure could be an option for all, not merely for an aristocratic minority.

Writing at a time of deep economic depression, Keynes argued that technological progress offered the path to a bright future. In the long run, he said, humanity could solve the economic problem of scarcity and do away with the need to work in order to live. That in turn implied that we would be free to discard ‘all kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital’.

Keynes was drawing on a long tradition but offering a new twist. The idea of a utopian golden age in which abundance replaces scarcity and the world is no longer ruled by money has always been with us. What was new in Keynes was the idea that technological progress might make utopia a reality rather than merely a vision. continue

Science fiction is full of critical charge for socialists and radicals

By Benjamin Silverman
Red Wedge Magazine

Sept 4, 2012 – Sometimes, it’s good to just dream. The system is brutal, everyday brings new news of some great outrage — a Republicans makes an idiotically misogynistic statement, striking miners are butchered by the police — it’s easy for it to get you down. So we seek out escapes. But there is escapism and then there is escapism. There is the escapism of the Kardashians, reality TV, Twilight and the like, that dulls the mind while it dulls the pain. But then there is the escapism that allows us to go off on flights on fantasy, to dream for a moment about what could be, not just self-flagellate ourselves over the horror of what is.

In literature and film, science-fiction as a genre has that potential, which is sadly not often enough fulfilled, to be a true playground for hypotheticals. Peoples, societies, civilizations, species can be thrown up into the air in great “what if?” experiments. What would human society’s reaction be towards alien life, immortality, space travel, artificial intelligence, an end to want, the apocalypse? What would certain historical events and processes look like in totally different scenarios — the fall of the Roman Empire becomes Asimov’s “Foundation Series,” the American Revolution becomes Heinlein’s The Moon Is the Harsh Mistress, and the post-Civil War American experience for Confederate soldiers becomes the TV show Firefly.

This inherent potential of sci-fi to act as a canvas for societal “what ifs” has also a tradition within the broader socialist movement. Some might be quick to accuse such writings as “utopian,” that is, in Marxist terminology, ideas that are separated from the real living situation of now, with no idea of how to get from here to there or who are the actors that can carry that change about. And those accusations would be largely correct. But that’s not the point. These ‘utopian’ dreams have had a massive effect in popularizing and giving some flesh and bones to socialist ideas. continue

Nguyen Phu Trong Meeting with Raul Castro

Socialism and the Path to Socialism – Vietnam’s Perspective

By Nguyen Phú Trong
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam

Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, paid an official friendship visit to Cuba and gave a presentation at the Nico Lopez Party School of the Cuban Communist Party.

Following are excerpts from Party leader Trong’s presentation.

Socialism and the path to socialism is a fundamental and practical theoretical topic with broad and complicated content, demanding thorough and in-depth study. I hereby mention just a few aspects from Vietnam’s perspective for your reference and our discussions. And several questions are focused: What is socialism? Why did Vietnam choose the socialist path? How to build socialism in Vietnam step by step? How significant has Vietnam’s renewal and socialism building process been over the past 25 years? And what lessons have been learnt?

As you know, socialism can be understood in three different aspects: socialism as a doctrine, socialism as a movement, and socialism as a regime. Each aspect has different manifestations, depending on the world outlook and development level in a specific historical period. The socialism I want to discuss here is a scientific socialism based on Marxist-Leninist doctrine in the current era.

Previously, when the Soviet Union and its constellation of socialist countries existed, striving for socialism in Vietnam seemed logical and implicitly validated. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, socialist regimes fell in many countries and the worldwide socialist revolution began to ebb. Now, the cause of socialism has been revived, sparking widespread interest and heated debate.

It is true that capitalism has never been more widely accepted than it is now, and it has achieved great successes, especially in liberating and developing productive capacity and advancing science and technology. Many developed capitalist countries have established social welfare systems which are more progressive than ever before, thanks to strong economies and long struggles by their working class. However, capitalism cannot overcome its inherent fundamental contradictions.  We are witnessing a financial crisis and economic decline which originated in the US in 2008, rapidly spread to other capitalist centers, and has impacted every country around the globe.

In addition to this economic crisis with its related food and energy crisis, a depletion of natural resources and deterioration of the environment are posing great challenges to the existence and development of humankind. These are the consequences of a socio-economic development process which champions profits, considers wealth and material consumption the measures of civilization, and makes individualism the main pillar of society. They are the essential characteristics of capitalism’s mode of production and consumption.  The ongoing crisis once again proves that capitalism is anti-advancement, anti-humanity, and unsustainable economically, socially, and ecologically. As Karl Marx said, capitalism damages the things that constitute its wealth, namely, labor and natural resources. According to scientists, the current crisis cannot be completely resolved in the framework of a capitalist regime.

Recent social protest movements flaring up in many developed capitalist countries have exposed the truth about the nature of capitalist political entities. In fact, democratic regimes which follow the “free democracy” formula advocated and imposed by the West never ensure that power truly belongs to the people and for the people—the natural factor of democracy. Such a power system still belongs mostly to the wealthy minority and serves the interests of its major capitalist groups. A very small proportion, as small as 1% of the population, holds the majority of the wealth and means of production, controls most of the financial institutions and mass media, and dominates the whole society.

We need a society where development is truly for humans, instead of exploiting and trampling on human dignity for the sake of profits. We need economic development in parallel with social progress and fairness instead of a widening gap between the rich and the poor and social inequality. We need a society which yearns for progressive and humane values, a society of compassion, unity, and mutual assistance instead of rivalry for the selfish benefits of individuals and groups. We need sustainable development and harmony with nature to make our living environment clean for present and future generations, instead of exploiting, appropriating resources, infinitely consuming materials, and destroying the environment. And we need a political system under which power truly belongs to the people, by the people, and serves the interests of the people, instead of a wealthy minority. These are the authentic values of socialism, aren’t they?

As you comrades and friends know, the Vietnamese people have undergone a prolonged, harsh, sacrifice-filled revolutionary struggle against colonialist and imperialist domination to win national independence and sovereignty in the spirit of the slogan “There is nothing more precious than Independence and Freedom”.

National independence associated with socialism is the basic guideline of Vietnam’s revolution and the essential point of Ho Chi Minh’s legacy. His rich experience combined with the revolutionary theories and science of Marxism-Leninism led Ho Chi Minh to the conclusion that only socialism and communism can create a truly free, prosperous, happy life for every person in every nation. Advancing to socialism is the objective and the inexorable path of the Vietnamese revolution, harnessing the people’s aspirations and historical trends.

But what is socialism? And how does one advance to socialism? This is what absorbs our thoughts—finding our way step by step, creating orientations and guidelines which fit the specific circumstances of Vietnam.

* * *

To date, though there remain some issues that need further study, we realize that the socialist society that the Vietnamese people are striving for is a society of prosperous people in a strong nation characterized by democracy, fairness, and civilization. It’s a society where the people are the masters, which has a highly-developed economy and is based on modern forces of production and progressive relations of production. It has an advanced culture imbued with national identity, and a prosperous, free, and happy people who are blessed with opportunities for comprehensive development. Ethnic groups in the Vietnamese community are equal, united, respectful and supportive of each other. A law-governed socialist state of the people, by the people, and for the people is led by the Communist Party and has friendly and cooperative ties with countries all over the world.

To achieve these goals, we should speed up national industrialization and modernization; develop a knowledge-based and socialist-oriented market economy; build an advanced culture imbued with national identity; boost human resource development; improve people’s living standards; promote social progress and fairness; ensure national defense; safeguard national security and social order; implement a foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, peace, friendship, cooperation, and development; proactively integrate into the world; build a socialist democracy; exercise national unity; expand the national unification front; build a law-governed socialist state of the people, by the people, and for the people; and build a stronger, more transparent Party.

The more we delve into reality, the more we are aware that the transitional period to socialism is a long, extremely difficult and complicated process because it needs to create a profound change in all areas of social life. Vietnam is bypassing the stage of capitalism and moving on directly to socialism from an obsolete agricultural society with low productivity further weakened by decades of wars. Constant attempts at sabotage by hostile forces have hindered Vietnam’s path to socialism, which unavoidably involves a lengthy transition period through various stages and forms of socio-economic organization accompanied by inevitable conflicts between the old and the new. By ‘bypassing the stage of capitalism’, I mean bypassing a regime of oppression, inequality, and capital exploitation, bypassing evils and political entities inappropriate to a socialist regime. This doesn’t mean that we must ignore the achievements and civilized values that humankind has achieved during the process of capitalist development. Indeed, the inheritance of these achievements should be based on an attitude of selective development.

The concept of a socialist market-oriented economy is a creative and fundamental theoretical breakthrough for our Party and an important fruit of the 25-year renewal process, which stemmed from Vietnam’s reality and accumulated experiences of the world. In our opinion, a socialist market-oriented economy is a multi-sector commodity economy, which operates in accordance with market mechanisms and a socialist orientation. It is a new type of market economy in the history of the market economy’s development. It is a kind of economic organization which abides by market economy rules but is based on, led by, and governed by the principles and nature of socialism reflected in its three aspects—ownership, organization, and distribution—for the goal of a prosperous people in a strong nation characterized by democracy, fairness, and civilization. This is neither a capitalist market economy nor a socialist market economy.

In a socialist-oriented market economy, there are multiple forms of ownership and multiple economic sectors. Economic sectors operating in accordance with the law are major components of the economy and equal under the law in the interest of co-existence, cooperation, and healthy competition. The state economy plays a key role; the collective economy is constantly consolidated and developed; the private economy is one of the driving forces of the collective economy; multiple ownership, especially joint-stock enterprises, is encouraged; the state and collective economies provide a firm foundation for the national economy. The relations of distribution ensure fairness, create momentum for growth, and operate a distribution mechanism based on work results, economic efficiency, contributions by other resources, and distribution through the social security and welfare system. The State manages the economy through laws, strategies, plans, policies, and mechanisms to steer, regulate, and stimulate socio-economic development.

Typical characteristic of the socialist orientation in Vietnam’s market economy is the combination of economics and society, the coordination of economic and social policies, economic growth in parallel with social progress, and fairness applied at every step, in every policy, throughout the development process. This means that we neither wait for the economy to reach a high level of development before implementing social progress and fairness, nor “sacrifice” social progress and fairness to the pursuit of mere economic growth. On the contrary, every economic policy should target the goal of social development and every social policy should create momentum to boost economic development. Encouraging people to enrich themselves legally should go hand in hand with reducing poverty and taking care of the disadvantaged and those who have rendered great service to the nation. These are the principles required to ensure a healthy, sustainable, socialist-oriented development.

Our Party sees culture as a spiritual foundation of society and considers cultural development on a par with economic growth and social progress in its fundamental orientation toward socialism building in Vietnam. The culture Vietnam is building is progressive and imbued with national identity, a united-in-diversity culture based on advanced humanitarian values, where Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh’s thoughts play a leading role in social spiritual life, where we inherit and uphold the fine traditional values of all ethnic groups in Vietnam, absorb humankind’s cultural achievements, and strive to build a healthy, civilized society that promotes human dignity, higher knowledge, morality, physical fitness, aesthetics, and a fulfilling lifestyle. We believe that people should play the central role in any development strategy; that cultural development and human resources development are both the target and the momentum of the renewal process; that the development of education and training and science and technology should be priorities of national policy; that environmental protection is one of the vital issues and a criterion of sustainable development; that building happy, progressive families to be healthy cells of society and implementing gender equality are criteria of advancement and civilization.

A socialist society is a society that yearns for progressive and humane values based on people’s common interests, which is totally different from competitive societies based on the interests of individuals and groups. A socialist society fosters social consensus rather than social opposition and antagonism. In a socialist political regime, the relationship between the Party, the State, and the people is a relationship of entities unified in their goals and interests. Every Party guideline, every government policy, law, and action is in the people’s interest. The political model and overall mode of operation is that the Party leads, the State manages, and the people are the master. Democracy is the nature of the socialist regime and both the goal and the momentum of socialism building. Building a socialist democracy, ensuring that real power belongs to the people, is the ultimate and long-term task of Vietnam’s revolution. We intend to unwaveringly uphold democracy, build a law-governed socialist State truly of the people, by the people, and for the people on the basis of an alliance between workers, farmers, and intellectuals led by the Communist Party of Vietnam. The State represents the people’s right to mastery and at the same time organizes the implementation of Party guidelines. There are mechanisms for the people to exercise their right to direct mastery in all areas of society and to take part in social management. We realize that a law-governed socialist State is by nature different from a law-governed capitalist State. Legislative power under a capitalist regime is really a tool to protect and serve the interests of the bourgeois class, while legislative power under a socialist regime is a tool to reflect and exercise the people’s right to mastery and protect the interests of the masses. By enforcing laws, the State enables the people to wield political power and dictate against all acts that violate the interests of the fatherland and the people. At the same time, we define national unity as a source of strength and a decisive factor for the lasting victory of the revolutionary cause in Vietnam. Equality and unity between ethnicities and religions are constantly promoted.

Being well aware of the Communist Party’s leadership as a factor that decides the victory of the renewal process and ensures a national development in line with socialist orientation, we pay special attention to party building, considering it a key and vital task for the Party and the socialist regime. The Communist Party of Vietnam is a vanguard of the Vietnamese working class. The Party was born, exists, and develops for the interests of the working class, the laborers, and the nation as a whole. When the ruling Party leads the nation, it is acknowledged by the entire people as their vanguard. Therefore, the Party is the vanguard of the working class, the laborers, and the Vietnamese nation as a whole. This doesn’t mean playing down the Party’s class nature, but reflects a more in-depth and more complete awareness of the Party’s class nature since the working class is a class whose interests match the interests of the laborers and the nation as a whole. Our Party unswervingly considers Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh’s thoughts as the ideological foundation and lodestar of our revolutionary activities, and considers democratic centralism as the basic organizing principle. The Party leads with its platforms, strategies, and policy guidelines, with its communications, persuasion, mobilization, organization, and supervision, and with Party members’ role models and unified leadership of personnel work. Considering corruption, bureaucracy, and moral deterioration as threats to the ruling Party, particularly in a market economy, the Communist Party of Vietnam demands constant self-reform, self-rectification and rejection of opportunism, individualism, corruption, bureaucracy, waste, and moral deterioration within the Party and the entire political regime.

The renewal process, including the development of the socialist-oriented market economy, has truly brought about positive changes in our country over the past 25 years.

Vietnam used to be a poor, war-torn country, with devastated human lives, infrastructure, and environment. Food and other necessities were in critically short supply, and people’s lives were extremely hard, three-fourths of the population being below the poverty line.  That was the reality in Vietnam before the renewal process.

Thanks to the renewal process, the economy has been growing steadily over the past 25 years at an average annual rate of 7 to 8%. Per capita income has increased 11 fold. In 2008 Vietnam escaped from its former status as a low-income country. From a country with chronic food shortages, Vietnam now not only ensures its own food security but also has become a leading exporter of rice and other agricultural produce.  Industry has developed rapidly with industry and services now accounting for 80% of GDP. Exports have increased steadily, topping 100 billion USD in 2011. Foreign investment had climbed to nearly 200 billion USD by the end of 2011. Economic growth has enabled the country to escape the socio-economic crisis of the 1980s and improve its citizens’ living standards. The poverty rate falls 2 to 3% every year. It went from 75% in 1986 to just 9.5% in 2010. Vietnam completed the eradication of illiteracy and popularization of primary education in 2000 and popularization of secondary education in 2010. The number of tertiary students has increased 9 fold over the past 25 years; 95% of Vietnam’s adult population is literate. Many common diseases have been successfully contained. The poor, children under 6, and the elderly are provided free health insurance. The child malnutrition rate has been slashed 3 fold. The new-born mortality rate has fallen 6 fold. Life expectancy has increased from 62 in 1990 to 73 in 2010.  Vietnamese cultural life has expanded to include an ever-wider range of cultural activities. Vietnam now has about 25 million internet users and is one of the countries experiencing the fastest growth of IT technology. The United Nations has recognized Vietnam as one of the leading countries in reaching its Millennium Development Goals.

So it can be said that the renewal policy has brought about very positive changes in Vietnam: economic growth, higher productivity, rapid poverty reduction, a higher standard of living, reduced social problems, more political and social stability, ensured security, enhanced national posture and strength, and greater trust in the Party’s leadership. Reviewing 20 years of renewal, our 10th National Party Congress remarked that the renewal has recorded “great achievements of historical significance”. In fact, the Vietnamese people are now enjoying better living conditions than at any time in the past. That’s why the renewal initiated and led by the Communist Party of Vietnam has received the Vietnamese people’s full and active support. Renewal achievements in Vietnam have proved that socialist-oriented development not only has a positive economic effect but also resolves social problems much better than capitalist development at a similar development level.

Despite all these achievements, there remain shortcomings, limitations, and new challenges to be overcome in Vietnam’s pursuit of national development.

Economically, the quality of growth remains low, infrastructure development is uneven, the efficiency and capacity of businesses—including state-owned enterprises—are limited, the environment is polluted in many areas, and market management and regulation are inadequate.  Meanwhile, competition is becoming fiercer with globalization and international integration.

Socially, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, the quality of education, healthcare and many other public services is low, culture and social ethics are deteriorating, and crimes and social vices are becoming more complicated. In particular, corruption, waste, and the deterioration of political ideology and personality morality are tending to spread among cadres and Party members.

We realize that Vietnam is now in a transitional period towards socialism. During this transition, socialist factors have been established and developed, intermingling and competing with non-socialist factors, including capitalist factors.  The intermingling and competing are more complicated and aggressive in the current context of market opening and international integration. Along with positive aspects, there will always be negative aspects and challenges that need to be considered wisely and dealt with timely and effectively. It is a difficult struggle that requires spirit, fresh vision, and creativity. The path to socialism is a process of constantly consolidating and strengthening socialist factors to make them more dominant and irreversible. Success will depend on correct policies, political spirit, leadership capacity, and the fighting strength of the Party.

At present, we are revising our growth model and restructuring our economy with greater priority being given to quality and sustainability by focusing on infrastructure, human resources and administrative reforms. Socially, we are continuing to pursue sustainable poverty reduction, improve healthcare, education, and other public services, and enrich the people’s cultural life.

Theory and experience agree that socialism building means creating a new type of society, which is by no means an easy task. The challenges and difficulties before us require that the Party’s leadership role be matched by the creative ideas, political support, and active participation of the people. The people will accept, support, and enthusiastically take part in carrying out the Party’s guidelines when they see that those guidelines answer their needs and aspirations. The ultimate victory of Vietnam’s development is deeply rooted in the strength of the Vietnamese people.

At the same time, the Party’s directions and policies must originate not only in the reality of Vietnam and its history, but also in the reality of the world and era in which we all live. In today’s globalized world, no country can stand aloof from the world community and its complex interactions. We therefore intend to proactively integrate into the world and implement a foreign policy whose pillars are independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation, and shared development. Vietnam is committed to multi-lateralization and diversification of its international relations on a basis of equality, mutual benefit, and respect for national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

Even more important is that we should be consistent and firm on the foundation of Marxism-Leninism, a scientific and revolutionary doctrine of the working class and the masses of laborers. The radical scientific and revolutionary characteristics of Marxism-Leninism are lasting values and have been pursued and implemented by revolutionaries around the globe. It will continue to develop and prove its vitality in the reality of revolutions and scientific development. We need to selectively accept and supplement in the spirit of criticism and creativity of the latest ideological and scientific achievements so that our doctrine will be forever fresh, energized, and filled with the spirit of the era.

We are aware that ours is an extremely complex and unprecedented undertaking, which will require us to learn the lessons we will need as we go along. The steps we have already taken are just the first steps of a long journey…The goals of socialism may be the same in every country, but the methods necessary to achieve those goals are diverse, depending on the specific circumstances of each country.

Our journey will demand all of our ingenuity and vitality.

www.talkvietnam.com

November 17, 2012

From Bbs.people.com.cn
May 6, 2008

Today China’ s statesmen use slogans like ‘One World, One Dream’, ‘Harmonious Society’ and ‘Scientific Development Concept.’. And yet all these terms were used in Kang Youwei’s utopian blueprint ‘Da Tongshua’. To westerners it might seem strange that the same men who in the 1920s embraced the radical ideas of Marxism, in the 1980s led China through pragmatic market reforms. And yet if one understands the mindset of their predecessor Kang Youwei, the seeming contradiction will not seem so strange. Kang laid out a vision of a world socialist republic, in which boundaries of class, race, nation, sex, family, and language were entirely abolished. A futuristic direct democracy in which virtue was the only competition. And yet the same visionary utopian, let the incredibly pragmatic 100 Days Reform. The pragmatic Mao Zedong of the 1930s, spoke of the same three staged Great Harmony, while pursuing moderate polices and alliances with the Kuomintang. If the theoretical foundations and historical experiences of Marxism-Leninism are seriously examined, it becomes clear that the market reforms of Deng Xiaoping and his successors to not represent a radical break with the vision lay out by Mao Zedong.

To observers ignorant of the basic fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist theory, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, appears as a major break with Marxist principles, however scientific study of the historical experiences and theories of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao reveal that there is in fact much continuity between Chinese Socialism and the historical legacy of Marxism. Despite antagonisms with Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, Mao Zedong’s development of Leninist theory actually laid the groundwork for market reforms. Marx and Lenin had both seen capitalism as a necessary stage of development, and had condemned any attempt to leap from feudalism into socialism. Lenin has seized power in 1917 when Russia was still a semi-feudal nation; nonetheless he saw the role of the proletarian as one of leadership in the bourgeois democratic revolution. In the 1920s Lenin established the New Economic Policy which was very similar to the Chinese economy of the 1980s, and allowed market forces to regulate areas of the economy. Mao Zedong followed the model of the New Economic policy during the Yanan period. Having learned from the Soviet experience, Mao never launched a vigorous campaign to wipe out capitalism like Russia had during the ‘War Communism’ era. In his development of the theory of New Democracy, Mao recognized that the national bourgeoisie would have a major role to play for many years after the revolution. During the First Five Year Plan, Liu Shaoqi ensured that the state cooperated with the national capitalists. No attempt was made to wipe out private industry only to ensure that there was no exploitation. Stalin had recognized in his theory of socialist economics that the law of commodity and value still applied to socialist nations.[1] Socialist nations were not free from the objective laws of economics, instead it was their responsibility to study those laws and harness them.

Xue Muqia belonged to the generation of Chinese radicals who idealistically joined the Party in the 1920s and yet saw the need for market reform in the 1980s, while little known in the west his textbook on political economy laid the theoretical foundations for Deng Xiaoping’s epic reforms. Xue was a leader of several major workers movements in the 1920s and 1930s, and in the 1940s he governed the economic policies of large provinces. A supreme pragmatist, Xue admitted that he had not read ‘Das Kapital’ until the 1960s. Like Deng Xiaoping, Xue used his exile during the disaster of the Cultural Revolution to return to the Marxist classics, and find a way to save China from the brink of collapse. Immersing himself in the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, Xue saw how the feudal-fascist reign of terror by the Lin Biao-Gang of Four clique stood against Marxist ideas. With the victory of genuine Marxists over the ultra-equalitarianism, Xue proceeded to complete his masterpiece on political economy. Marx and Engels had laid out the need for a lower and higher stage of communism. Xue pointed out that during the lower stage of communism, the law of supply and demand, and commodity relations still governed.

Mao had recognized in his ‘Critique of Soviet Economics’, and ‘On The Ten Major Relationships’, that Stalinist over-centralization would be harmful to the economy. The lessons from 10 Major Relationships bear a striking resemblance to the Four Modernizations of Zhou Enlai, and the market reforms of Deng Xiaoping. Mao recognized that contradiction was the key to expanding the economy. To increase military power, it was necessary to cut back on military spending and put resources in the civil economy. To increase heavy industry it was necessary to invest in light industry and agriculture to build foundations. To expand the communes it was necessary initially to make the districts smaller. All of these brilliant insights were abandoned during the Great Leap Forward and the feudal-fascist rule of Lin Biao.[2] Marx had pointed out that just as reactionary social relations could harm production so could over-futuristic social relations. The Gang of Four had attempted to impose radical equalitarianism while China was still emerging out of feudalism. This allowed various bad elements to take advantage. In addition the productive areas were punished and the wasteful areas rewarded. No incentive existed to expand the economy, and an anti-democratic bureaucracy dictated to the economy. Xue saw that overambitious goals would be ‘punished’ by the objective laws of value.

Upon taking power Mao’s chosen successor Hua Guofeng attempted to find a balance between reform and opening up and the First Five Year Plan, while this was a progressive step it failed to create the economic dynamism needed to compete with the imperialist west and social imperialist Soviet Union. After the disasters of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, many in the party idolized the First Five Year Plan period. However Deng recognized that a 1950s style economy could not compete in the 1980s. Deng returned to the scientific ideas laid out by Mao, and followed Mao’s command to ‘seek truth from facts’. Deng initiated radical reforms in both industry and agriculture. Just as Mao had recognized the peasants would play a decisive role in political revolution, Deng recognized their supreme role in economic revolution. Deng created a more democratic collectivist system. Because of China’s low level of development, it was not yet possible to create an ‘ownership of the whole people’. Instead collectives would be democratically owned by those who worked. [3]Collectives were separate from the state economy and were responsible for their own profits and losses. The trend towards smaller collectives had been taking place since the Great Leap Forward. Deng legalized and expanded this trend by creating the household responsibility system. [4]The system made local households responsible for their own profits, and gave them the option of farming for private surplus profit. Instead of rigid plans, Deng created more indirect planning through guidelines. Another imposition was the creation of a dual pricing system that recognized supply and demand. [5]

Marx had stated that during socialist development ‘to each according to his work’ was the principle that governed not ‘to each according to his needs’. Mao had stated that the only criterion for correct theory was practice. That was exactly what Deng Xiaoping did with the Special economic Zones. The SEZs were essentially scientific experiments that sought to test the merits of opening up and reform. The spectacular success of the early SEZs convinced even conservative party members to continue Deng’s policies.[6] The rapid growth of foreign trade and rural development helped China’s productive forces grow at an incredibly rapid rate. Despite difficulties and inequalities the Chinese Communist Party succeeded in lifting more people out of poverty than any organization or government in human history.

Hu Jintao has greatly expanded on the principles of the Three Represents, and applied it in a manner to create a more just society. The theorists of Deng Xiaoping theory recognized that reform and opening-up would necessarily create dangerous social divisions. Nevertheless they foresaw that the danger of China falling even further behind the imperialist nations, was a far greater threat. While inequality has grown at an appalling rate, the rise in productive forces has given the state the power to deal with inequality. As of 2008 only 60% of China’s population remains rural and state-owned industries account for less than 40% of the economy.[7] Jiang Zemin’s Three Represents did not mean abandoning the plight of the peasants and workers. Jiang simply recognized that in line with Deng Xiaoping Theory, the best way to help the poor was to increase productivity. Hu Jintao’s concept of a Harmonious Society called for a more even development of China’s produce. Hu Jintao has also devised plans to revive China’s fledging state owned industries. By introducing more democratic management structure, and modernizing to compete in the market, state owned companies may suceed in securing their permanent role in China’s ecnonmy.

The achievement of the Chinese Communist Party is of epic proportions. If the CPC succeeds industrializing and modernizing a nation of 1.4 billion people, it will be a feat without parallel in history. Despite constant demonization from the imperialist west, China has become a model to many developing nations. The last task remaining for the CPC is the creation of democracy. The CPC has already granted the left-Kuomintang 30% of the seats in the People’s Congress, and allowed rival parties to hold high government office. [8]As social productive forces increase China will strive towards democracy. However China cannot and does not seek to build an inequitable bourgeoisie democracy, instead China seeks to construct a shining Socialist Democracy in which the voices of all people are expressed, and which at last allows the Chinese people to reach their full human potential. The achievement of a Harmonious Society will be the realization of Kang Youwei’s dream of the Great Harmony. The construction of Socialist Democracy will prove to be an even great challenge, and even greater source of inspiration than that of the socialist economy.

Andors, Stephen. 1977. China’s industrial revolution: politics, planning, and management, 1949 to the present. New York: Pantheon Books.

Borthwick, Mark. 1992. Pacific century: the emergence of modern Pacific Asia. Boulder: Westview Press.

Eckstein, Alexander. 1977. China’s economic revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hsu?eh, Mu-ch?iao. 1981. China’s Socialist economy. China knowledge series. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.

Lardy, Nicholas R. 1978. Economic growth and distribution in China. Cambridge [Eng.]: Cambridge University Press.

Lippit, Victor D. 1987. The economic development of China. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.

McNally, Christopher A. 2008. China’s emergent political economy: capitalism in the dragon’s lair. Routledge studies in the growth economies of Asia, 75. London: Routledge.

Prybyla, Jan S. 1978. The Chinese economy: problems and policies. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

Riskin, Carl. 1987. China’s political economy: the quest for development since 1949. Economies of the world. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press.

Wei, Lin, and Arnold Chao. 1982. China’s economic reforms. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Xue, Muqiao. 1960. The Socialist transformation of the national economy in China. Peking: Foreign Language Press.

[1] Xue 16

[2] Xue 87

[3] Wei 49

[4] Lippit 24

[5] Ibid 68

[6] Riskin 135

[7] McNally 12

[8] McNally 45 “

Conquering a New Popular Hegemony: Harnecker on 21st Century Socialism

“In recent years, and in increasingly more countries, growing multitudes have rebelled against the existing order and without a defined leadership have taken over plazas, streets, highways, towns, parliament, but, despite having mobilized hundreds of thousands of people, neither the magnitude of its size nor its combativeness have enabled these multitudes to go beyond simple popular revolts. They have brought down presidents, but they have not been capable of conquering power in order to begin a process of deep social transformation.” — Marta Harnecker.

By Marta Harnecker
Translated by Federico Fuentes, via LINKS

This article seeks to reflect on the issues raised during the roundtable discussion, “State, revolution and the construction of hegemony”, that occurred at the VI International Forum on Philosophy, held between November 28 and December 2, 2011, in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Logically, here I once again repeat some ideas that I have expressed in other writings, but have ordered them differently, while further refining some of them. It was written in July 2012 and first published in English at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission. Now available HERE in a PDF file set up from printing as an 11 x 17 fold-over, doubled sided, collated booklet, in easy-to-read type. Click HERE for a straight-though 36-page PDF document.

* * *

Index

1. Our goal: a different socialism

1) A new socialism, far removed from the Soviet model

2) Returning to the original socialist ideas.

3) Participatory planning: a fundamental characteristic of socialism..

4) Socialism, direct democracy and delegated democracy.

a) Decentralization: essential for real participation.

b) Direct democracy and delegated democracy.

5) A new society that is not decreed from above.

2. Transition to socialism using the government as a lever

1) Neoliberalism bred 21st-century socialism in Latin America.

2) A dilemma: how to advance having only conquered governmental power

a) Using the inherited state to promote the creation of a new state built from below.

b) Transforming the armed forces.

c) A development model that respects nature.

d) Other challenges.

3) The need for a pedagogy of limitations.

3. Constructing a new hegemony.

1) Defining hegemony.

a) Bourgeoisie achieves popular approval for capitalist order

b) Bourgeois hegemony begins to break down.

2) The need for a political instrument and a new culture within the left

3) Political strategy for current situation: a broad front

a) Winning the hearts and minds of the immense majority

b) A new culture of the left

Our goal: a different socialism[1]

1) A new socialism, far removed from the soviet model

1. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union, Latin American and world leftist intellectuals fell into a state of confusion. We knew more about what we didn’t want in socialism than what we did want. We rejected the lack of democracy, totalitarianism, state capitalism, bureaucratic central planning, collectivism that sought to standardize without respect for differences, productivism that emphasized the expansion of productive forces without taking into account the need to preserve nature, dogmatism, intolerance towards legitimate opposition, the attempt to impose atheism by persecuting believers, the need for a single party to lead the process of transition.

2. So, why talk about socialism at all, if that word carried and continues to carry such a heavy burden of negative connotations?

3. To answer this question, we need to consider some important issues. On the one hand, just as Soviet socialism was collapsing, democratic and participatory processes in local governments began to emerge in Latin America, foreshadowing the “kind of alternative to capitalism that people wanted to build.”[2] On the other, by demonstrating in practice that people could govern in a transparent, non-corrupt, democratic and participatory manner, the political conditions in several Latin American countries were thus prepared to make possible the coming to power of the left through democratic elections.

4. These beacons that began to radiate throughout our continent were aided by the resounding failure of neoliberalism during the 1980s and 1990s and, more recently, by the global crisis of capitalism. An alternative to capitalism is more necessary than ever. But what should it be called?

5. It was President Chávez who had the audacity to point to socialism as the alternative to capitalism He called it “21st-century socialism,” reclaiming the values associated with the word socialism: “love, solidarity, equality between men and women and equity among all,”[3] while added the adjective “21st century” to differentiate this new socialism from the errors and deviations present in the model of socialism that was implemented during the 20th century in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.

6. Aware of the negative connotation associated with this word, Chavez dedicated himself to explaining to his people, through numerous public speeches and interventions, all the benefits that this new society would bring with it, in contrast to the situation created by capitalism. His interventions have been so successful that, according to various polls, more than half of Venezuela’s population prefers socialism over capitalism.

7. However, it is worth remembering that 35 years earlier in Chile, the victory of President Salvador Allende in the early 1970s, with the support of the leftist Popular Unity coalition, marked the beginning of the world’s first experiment in a peaceful transition to socialism. Although it was defeated by a military coup three years later, the experience left us with some important lessons. If our generation learned anything from that defeat, it was that peaceful progress towards our goal required us to rethink the socialist project applied until then in the world, and that it was therefore necessary to develop a project that was more in tune with the reality of Chile and the peaceful path towards socialism. Allende’s folkloric expression, “socialism with red wine and empanadas,”[4] seemed to capture this idea, pointing towards the building of a democratic socialist society rooted in national popular traditions.[5] So I believe that the Chilean experience should be considered the first practical experience that attempted to move away from the Soviet model of socialism and towards what we now call 21st-century socialism. continue

By Sidney Gluck
Political Affairs

August 18 2012 – The 21st century is witnessing an epochal change, something to be noted in the emergence of two economic poles-one dominated by Western capitalism and the other in the process of forming an association of former colonial countries in various levels and forms of economic development. Socio-economic changes have taken place in history similarly, but not with such an explosive and defining character. As an exception, capitalist colonial domination was part of its industrialization impinging on resources and cheap labor for greater personal gain.

There are now three forms of capital accumulation: privately owned industry, stocks, enterprises and financial capital; socially owned government accumulation utilized for industrial development, infrastructure, and forms of social obligations; and, social security wealth belonging to retired workers. Economic growth differs under the control of private and social forms of capital. The former is concerned with private individual accumulation. The latter is concerned with economic growth and improvement of the conditions of the working population, which creates the wealth in industrialized society.

The social security form of capital belongs to the people who have paid in during their productive years to support retirement and is a form of accumulation from their earnings placed in trust with the government for administration. For the past few years, this capital has been used and safely invested in the country and the proceeds added to the accumulation of the retirees.

The emergence of social capital reflects a major change in society, just as the emergence of private capital posited the change from feudalism to capitalism as an economic system and basis of social relations. The growth of social capital is inevitable as private capital ceases to expand domestic growth and job creation in developed Western countries, which comprise one third of the world’s population and where labor has succeeded through historic struggles to increase wages and living standards. Hence, industrial growth in developed countries has diminished or ceased. Investments have shifted to former colonial countries, including China, for the past thirty years, with incredible rates of accumulation reflected in the highest earnings of Wall Street despite the 2008 economic crisis, which ended for private capital in mid-2009 but persists in its fourth year with fifteen million still jobless and 17% poverty stricken.

At the turn of the century an organization was formed by Brazil, Russia, India and China, under the name BRIC and renamed BRICS after South Africa joined in 2005, with the intention of economic development without foreign private capital controls to counteract the negative effect of the Western capital invasion. This is indicative of the creation of a bipolar economic world. BRIC has now called a meeting in 2012 to organize trade and investment stimulating national economic growth with little emphasis on the military other than defense.

The epochal change we now witness diminishes the domination of private capital and opens the road to structuring harmonious societies that combine private and social capital to maintain and accelerate industrial development destined to create social security and sustain the working population, which, in any event, is the prime source of national wealth.

Wealth itself was generated by labor time in all forms of industrial production of commodities and salable structures, which ultimately exchange into the money form of accumulation in the marketplace leaving it to private finance to determine the direction of economic growth and avoid the consequences of economic crisis. A number of instances of government use of social capital in China are: loans to private corporations for the development of high-tech, the direct financing of necessary industries with low capital gains that assist major industrial and human needs such as energy, increased food production at affordable prices, increased minimum wages at a rate of 10% per annum until 2015 aimed at enhancing consumption to rebalance the loss of foreign markets to balance consumption at home to balance the loss of foreign exports, the enlargement of infrastructure and social services in the fields of education, health, etcetera and other social necessities.

One must acknowledge the fact that it is capitalism that developed industrial production, which is the basis for creating a society of plenty that could take care of all its population and eliminate exploitation. Long before capitalism under tribal communal society there was no exploitation of man by man. Elders ran a collective society, which lived off nature’s own production with little input of human labor other than gathering. That changed when some clever individuals learned how to use the forces of nature itself to increase nature’s own production. They ultimately enslaved others, creating class-dominated society. This continued for centuries, developing into control of extended agriculture terrain and animal husbandry which became the main means for human sustenance and growth-this, under feudal serfdom.

During the feudal era, private ownership in many forms developed in early stages where individuals produced desirable items as commodities and ultimately exchanged them for money. Individual production flourished and created a mass market. Some clever individuals set up facilities inviting producers into a “factory” where they sold their products to the owners devoting sales time to additional production for mass marketing. This relationship between owner and producers changed into another form of remuneration-that is, wages based on the total labor-time in the production process. This was the beginning of the capitalist wage-labor industrial system, which then went through a number of changes ultimately culminating in mass production and monopolization. Today the further development of high-tech, which reduces the direct labor time content, is taking place in undeveloped countries with cheap labor to the neglect of increasing production in the home countries where their capital base had originated. Thus, the wage-labor form of exploitation became the basis of industrialization and economic growth.

Adam Smith, in his “Wealth of Nations” did not deal with the exploitation developed with factory industrial production nor did he recognize the danger of economic crisis resulting from relative overproduction affecting market conditions. Troubled by the tendency towards crisis, he wrote a second book in which he expressed the feeling that “an invisible hand” corrects the economic crises in the system with no indication of relative overproduction and market disruption. The quantification of labor-time is basically the value of a commodity because the monetary payment to the laborer is only a part of the values created. The total labor-time is realized in the market in the form of money, and that is where the accumulation of wealth begins, since the money becomes a form of capital and can be re-injected into a growing economy and can increase financial private wealth accumulation in the market place. It was not until 1857 when Karl Marx published his first volume of Capital establishing classical economics which clearly indicated the source of wealth in labor time and the tendency of interruption of the process in periodic overproduction relieved by a shutdowns and economic crisis. Thirty years later, British economists supplanted this with neo-Classical Economics, which posited the market exchange as the source of wealth. The market is merely the area into which the inherent wealth in the commodity is exchanged for its value in money resulting in capital accumulation.

Capitalists compete but also monopolize, circumvent competition, control prices and wage-labor relationships. Monopolization leads to a higher level of capital investment magnifying exploitation. Ultimately, financial capital dominates the system and withdraws support for industrial capital in countries with high labor costs. The USA is an example for the last 30 years. Today there is not enough industry to absorb the available work force without expansion, which might have to take place with government assistance. Finance capital investment in low labor cost countries generally includes high tech which adds profit because it requires a small labor force further increasing profits.

The present economic crisis in the USA is an excellent example of the fact that the capitalist class itself has split into two functions-financial and industrial-with finance, the dominant factor, resulting in a cessation of industrial growth, neglect of existing industries and the continuation of an economic crisis for workers and the middle class. Investments overseas have created more profits in 2010 than in the history of Capitalism. True, industrial capital seeks a profit and wealth accumulation, but at least jobs are created contributing to national economic development and adding to the level of consumption.

Financial capital has dominated the capitalist system in the United States since the election of Regan in 1980, abandoning national industrial growth. In a historical sense, it has lost its right to run society. In fact, the Glass-Steagle Act, which regulated finance capital, was eliminated before the turn of the century. It is the real enemy to change, standing in the way of mass industrial development in total disregard of human conditions. Interestingly, financial capital itself in Western Europe is in trouble. The German capitalist class is an exception in its sense of history and its adaptation to change. When it took political power in the early 1870′s, it established the Welfare State to protect itself under capitalism; it has maintained a multi-party political system, representing various economic sectors. Furthermore, sensing world changes among former under-developed countries, they have established economic relationships with emerging countries, especially with China, welcoming Chinese capital investments in their own country and establishing mutual trade relations.

The German capitalist class recognizes the development of a bipolar world and is adjusting itself to participate in the changing international economic relations. Germany recognizes the growth potential of an organization named BRICS, which is planning an international meeting of former undeveloped countries in the spring of 2012 to foster economic unity, working with each other in trade and investment and no military involvements. This is a second pole in a bipolar world that is growing, notwithstanding denigration in the Western press, with the prospect of raising material investment and trade to stimulate living standards for where two-thirds of the world population resides.

Obviously, the world is changing in a positive direction. The only thing that would stop it is a war. There is only one country conducting military maneuvers and occupations on a global scale. Sorrowfully, it is the USA, which is not being supported by Western European nations as exemplified in the so-called NATO bombing in Libya which left the USA holding 75% of the bag for an operation in this guise. The New York Times wrote about that, and they agree. Just think about how federal money (which is social capital), now spent for destruction, could be used to revive industries and create jobs, which will then reduce the denigration of life in a humanist approach to improving living standards. Such a saving of capital by the federal government, as a result of reducing the Pentagon budget and the conduct of wars, can become accumulated social capital to be deployed in high-tech as well as protecting the country, its terrain, services, and people. Private capital can still be involved profitably, along with social capital and grow the economy to take care of the whole population.

In fact, Karl Marx observed, after noting class differences in France, “the Bourgeoisie will continue for a long time after the establishment of a socialist economy”, appreciating the creativity of private capital. The Chinese put it a different way: “the creation of a Harmonious Society” combining private capital with government social capital in economic growth for the sake of improving the condition of the entire population. Hence, one might say that the continued growth of industries will depend upon national economic planning rather than individual capitalist enterprises and politics. This is an economy buttressed with government and private finance guided by a national growth plan. Furthermore, government-financed loans to private enterprises, oftentimes in joint-ventures, solidifies growth and achieves the national plan; but this could not happen with the dominance of private capital since the plan would have to be based on national requirement rather than private interests with necessary compromises but socially and financially successful.

China is on that road, though it faces many contradictions in a society still plagued by feudal relations and the contradiction of wage-labor relationships with an overall vision of building the first high-tech industrial economy in the world under national planning. Do they have problems? More contradictions than any other country ever-because their population is fraught with multiple human natures reflecting productive relationships of different eras being molded into harmony, a process which is not an easy task. We are now observing higher levels of contradiction in the development of democracy in China which ultimately, based on the majority, would be the wage working sector as it develops a massive unity supporting a government that continues to develop the country without private capital domination. We should take our hats off to the successful Chinese leadership especially under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, the former concentrating on guiding peaceful foreign relationships and the latter dealing with domestic questions, and both, leading the development of the next five-year plan which never has, nor will include the development of armed forces other than defensive necessities, because everybody knows where the threat comes from…and it is not the European countries.

By 2016 China has projected that their national production will equal that of the USA and then, surpass it. When one considers the fact that the Chinese are spending 90 billion USD per year for defensive military, one cannot help but realize how much social capital, that would be consumed in building offensive military forces, is being saved and used for socially productive purposes. This is a good example of why they were able to grow so rapidly and became the second largest economy in the world and destined to become the largest by mid-century, by tripling production to satisfy their population of 1.3 billion and growing. One must note this is the development of a harmonious society-by combining the use of private and social capital to achieve a centralized national plan.

Capital and Capitalism as categories are now historically different. “Capitalism” as a system developed capital as a form of money hoard used for continued exploitation and private accumulation. Accumulation of capital has divided in two forms with different social contents. The Chinese political system welcomes private capital investment in its multi-capital system but demands that private capital is invited to function together with social capital as part of, but not in control of, the national plan. Thus, social capital is now invested by the Chinese government as well as by Chinese individuals. That is a new production relation and historic contribution to humanity. In the last analysis, based on its ability to produce, this structure of capital investment will ultimately lead into a kind of high-level tribal existence, sans class aspects, with productive output reaching a level filling the needs of all. Let us call THAT Communism! “Socialism” is a historically necessary transitional stage to the ultimate state. To quote Karl Marx, the essence of socialism is reflected in his words: “from each according to ABILITY, to each according to CONTRIBUTION”.

This Marxist conception of economic and social development was based upon the bourgeoisie continuing and even growing, within a harmonious society and overall economic plans not in the hands of but requiring, private capitalists who must adjust to the laws of humanistic social development as the objective of industrialization. Beyond that, Marx described the ultimate productive and social relations as “from each according to ABILITY, to each according to NEED”-which might be called a humanity and planet protecting industrial system without class antagonisms.

In the turn of the 21st century we are witnessing a movement in that direction, essentially an economic development to achieve humanism and social justice-an idea first created by Jesus and followed throughout centuries of religious sentiment, which, in the latter part of the 18th century in England, saw the first expression of the idea of socialism when religious movements (not the religious institutions) demanded of the new government that they add “a bit of socialism” giving the vote to men (today we include women).

The lesson is-”capital” itself is not the enemy. Capital now exists in two forms-private and social. Private capital is welcomed since it carries with it knowledge of industrialization that is the heart of building a society under present forces of production. Therefore, the real lesson is building industries with full advantage of ability for NATIONAL development. Private accumulation is respected, provided it obeys the law and stays subordinate to a new form of democratic political structure yet in the making. Private capital accumulation must be guided and combined in a new socio-economic relationship; otherwise we will have nothing but continuing economic crisis and the kind of anti-social decline we are witnessing today.

In the vernacular -Bless Occupy Wall Street- as Jesus the humanist might have done, having given his life to eliminate man’s inhumanity to man. Historic change has created a positive direction for economic and social development, applying the humanism of religious sentiments with the addition of Marx’s economic vision so that politics will follow the social needs of humanity for true economic and political democracy and freedom.

Sidney J. Gluck can be reached at E-mail: sjgluck@aol.com

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
SolidarityEconomy.net via Freedomroad.org

This article was originally published on the website: Philosophers for Change, philosophers.posterous.com.

June 28, 2012 – A discussion of the future of socialism and social transformation must be grounded in two realities.  The first reality is the broader economic, environmental and state-legitimacy crises in which humanity finds itself.  In other words, the convergence of these three crises means that the necessity for a genuine Left capable of leading masses of people is more pressing than ever.  It means that while one cannot sit back and wait for the supposed “final” crisis of capitalism to open up doors to freedom — since capitalism is largely defined by its continual crises — it is the case that the convergence of these three crises brings with it a level of urgency unlike any that most of us have experienced.  Not only is there a need for a progressive, if not radical set of answers to these crises at the level of immediate reforms, but the deeper reality is that capitalism — as a system — is incapable of providing legitimate, sustainable answers to these crises, whether individually or collectively.

The second reality, and the central focus of this essay, is that any discussion of a progressive post-capitalist future must come to grips with the realization of the crisis of socialism in which every trend in the global Left has been encased.  This has been a crisis at the levels of vision, strategy, state power and organization. It is a crisis that cannot be avoided by either a retreat to pre-Bolshevik Marxism or slipping into the abyss of post-modernism.  The reality of the crisis of socialism can only be avoided at our own peril.

The crisis of socialism can be said to have emerged in the context of the Stalinist hegemony over the international communist movement, creating challenges for the global Left (and not just the orthodox communist movement) at multiple levels.  One level has been that of the question of the post-capitalist socialist state.  The revelations regarding the authoritarian rule of the Stalinist Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) shattered the sense of a genuine socialist democracy, even if one applauded the social accomplishments of the Soviet Revolution and its courageous sacrifices in the struggle against fascism.

In addition to the question of the socialist state, there emerged also the question of socialist strategy.  There was the matter of strategy in what has come to be known as the “global South” and the “global North.” In the global South, the Left-led national democratic revolutions, based on the alliance of workers and peasants, represented a major breakthrough in what had been a very Eurocentric Marxism.  The impact of the Chinese, Vietnamese and Cuban Revolutions, to name only three, not only reshaped Marxism, but also had an impact on other Left as well as progressive nationalist political tendencies.  Yet by the 8th decade of the 20th century, these revolutionary currents seemed to have stalled.  The Chinese Revolution, with the death of Mao, altered course and ultimately embraced what can only be described, non-rhetorically, as a capitalist road.  Movements and state systems that Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin has described as “national populist projects,” i.e., anti-imperialist projects led by elements of the nationalist petty bourgeoisie (and in some cases the national bourgeoisie) that never fully broke with capitalism, found themselves drifting either back toward the global North or following a cynical embrace of the Soviet bloc.

Strategy plagued Marxist-led movements in the global North.  Parties and movements that embraced social democracy all but abandoned anything other than the rhetoric of socialism and quite comfortably assumed the role of guardians of the welfare state under democratic capitalism.  In many cases such parties, e.g., the British Labour Party; the French Socialist Party, while championing progressive social legislation and popular rights in their respective nation-states, also advanced a rabid defense of ‘enlightened’ colonialism and imperial privilege for countries they came to govern.

Communist parties in the global North followed a different trajectory, but in general came to develop a strategy for achieving power based largely on a non-revolutionary interpretation of the theoretical approach of Italian communist leader Antonio Gramsci.  This interpretation, what the Maoists considered “revisionism” and what many other revolutionary Leftists saw as simply patently reformist, involved a protracted and largely electoral route to power.  But this route, even when it involved the creation of alternative institutions, e.g., worker cooperatives, was very gradualist and rarely able to accommodate itself to sudden shifts in the mass movements.  In fact, this approach placed a premium on the control of mass movements, and in many cases, the pacification of such movements, e.g., the French Communist Party in 1968.  These parties, not always unlike those out of social democracy, while rhetorically anti-imperialist, were inconsistent in practicing anti-imperialism against their own state/empire.

Yet the radical challenges to reformist approaches to the struggle for power had their own sets of flaws.  For much of what came to be known as the radical or revolutionary Left, there was a failure to distinguish the political vs. the ideological struggle.  As a result, there was — and in many cases continues to be — a premium placed on purity.  The anti-capitalist struggle is all too often seen as the articulation of the “correct” direction and the denunciation of anything that is perceived as inconsistently revolutionary (that is, articulation by one or another super-revolutionary group-let or self-important individual).  Such an approach, even where it has gained appeal, has been temporary, grounded in subjectivism, and inevitably led to sectarianism, and ultimately marginalization.

The crisis of socialism has also played itself out at the level of Left organization.  In the social democratic tradition the tendency became clear even before World War I with the creation of mass parties that were almost alternative universes but where there was little internal democracy.  These parties were very self-contained but were not structured to even consider the possibility of a non-electoral struggle for socialism.

The communist tradition, on the other hand, largely based itself on the mythology of the Bolshevik Party, as advanced by the Stalinist bloc within the CPSU.  Admittedly this conception of the party was applied differently in different settings, but these parties tended to be highly centralized and frequently resistant to organized, principled internal struggle.[i] That said, in many countries communist parties became truly mass parties with varying levels of internal participation and membership activities.  In the global North they moved away from a self-conception of being insurrectionist parties. In many countries these communist parties, particularly those influenced by Soviet Marxism, paid less and less attention to the lower strata of the working class and agricultural populations. The radical Left, in response, sought a pure form of revolutionary organization to stand in contrast to the so-called revisionist or reformist formations that they perceived were misleading the masses.  Such pure organizations were ideally suited for individuals in their teen years or twenties but not for those who had a more protracted view of struggle.  They were also not conceptualized in such a way that they could build the sorts of strategic alliances necessary in order to conduct a serious struggle for power.

Efforts at renewalThe crisis of socialism has met with various efforts at renewal since the 1950s.  Maoism, for instance, represented an effort, from the Left, to address the stagnation of Soviet-based Marxism and the bureaucratization of the Soviet state and party (and the resulting creation of a new, dominating class).[ii] And while Maoism pushed the limits on Marxist-Leninist theory, it retreated at key moments, such as on the nature of the role of the masses in a revolutionary state, and the legitimacy (or otherwise) of a multi-party socialism.  Neo-Trotskyism saw itself also as a force for renewal.  Other Left tendencies that arose in the 1960s and 1970s, such as the Autonomists (in Italy and elsewhere), additionally positioned themselves as forces for socialist and/or Left renewal.

Despite the strengths of many of these tendencies, in the global South and global North, the fact remained that the radical Left failed to find a ‘remedy’ to the crisis of socialism, at least in its entirety.  Instead these political tendencies declined by the 1980s and while the case can certainly be made that there are countries where the Left movements of the 1960s have continued (and in some cases grown), as a global phenomenon there has been decline on the part of the radical Left that arose out of the 1960s/1970s, sometimes with the result that other non-left-wing, though seemingly radical currents have emerged to fill the void.

Yet a new set of Left renewal efforts began to surface beginning in the 1980s, sometimes introducing innovative theories and strategies while other times stalling (if not collapsing).  There is no consistency to such renewal efforts and they must all be understood in their particular circumstances.  That said, such efforts can be said to include but not be limited to: the rectification efforts that took place in the Communist Party of the Philippines (beginning in the early 1990s); the collapse of the Italian Communist Party followed by the emergence of the Rifondazione Communista (Communist Refoundation) tendency; the formation of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT); the rise of the Nepalese Maoists; the reformation within the South African Communist Party; liberation theology as it rose in both Latin America and, in a different variant, within the Black Freedom Movement in the USA; the emergence of Germany’s Die Linke (party of the Left); and more recently, pro-socialist movements in Latin America (advocating what they describe as being “21st Century Socialism”) as well as the construction of the Front de Gauche in France.

Regardless of the answers that they offered, what these and other efforts have shared in common has been a willingness to confront some of the major challenges in the crisis of socialism and move to articulate answers, and in some cases, new paths for exploration. This does not suggest that any of them have come up with ‘The Answer’ or that they have necessarily been correct in their analyses.  What is admirable is the courage at the level of theory to face what, to many, has been the Gorgon.  Several of these formations have been reexamining the role of electoral politics in the struggle for socialism, and more generally examining the alliances necessary in order to defeat capitalism and win a popular-democratic victory.  Some of the formations have been exploring the limits of armed struggle in the current age, particularly when contrasted with other forms of more non-violent though highly militant struggle.  And in almost every case, the limitations of the notion of a single, revolutionary party to both conduct the popular struggle but to also lead in a post-capitalist situation have been recognized, though what is left unanswered is the question of what are the real parameters that must exist for democratic, political discourse and action in a progressive, post-capitalist social formation.

These efforts at renewal have been largely within the context of the organized Left or what Chilean theoretician Marta Harnecker defines as the “party Left.” Other efforts have emerged within progressive social movements, such as Brazil’s famous Landless Workers Movement (MST) or the poor people’s movements in South Africa.  What distinguishes these efforts is that they are largely initiated or led by a core of Leftists but not necessarily individuals affiliated with an existing national Left organization or party.  The leftists in these formations did not necessarily emerge themselves from these struggles but in either case have made these struggles and movements their base.  Their framework is also not necessarily one that involves an over-arching narrative or strategic orientation, though this does not mean that they are opposed to such frameworks/orientation.  Rather, their principal ‘universe’ is that specific social movement.  In these progressive social movements, however, they tend to push for what was once termed “non-reformist reforms” (Andre Gorz) that challenges the nature of the system.  Such reforms, it should be quickly noted, are not pie-in-the-sky or ideological platitudes.  Rather they exist as visionary but eminently practical mass actions for social transformation, albeit focused in one sector.

Left renewal efforts within this sector in part reflects disenchantment and skepticism concerning the capacity of the organized Left to address the questions that have emerged from within the crisis of socialism.  In Latin America, for instance, movements among the Indigenous and the African descendant populations have frequently concluded that Left party and party-type efforts have either ignored them outright or marginalized their issues in the name of class or national sovereignty.  In many cases, the Left’s leadership has lacked real representation and a base from within the Indigenous and African descendant populations, as well as from among women.

As a result the mass formations that have emerged in these progressive social movements are very different from parties. They seek autonomy from parties and are not particularly interested in being perceived as instruments of party formations.  Many of them will coalesce, certainly in defensive battles, but also for certain offensive struggles, but this is not necessarily the same thing as the building of a national Left front fighting for power.

Harnecker has correctly argued that the future for genuine renewal rests with the unity of the organized Left/party Left and the Left that exists within the social movements.  The ultimate nature of that unity remains a question, but this writer would suggest that it would necessarily be a party-like formation or front that exists at a higher level than a confederation.

We should add that another source of renewal that has existed in relationship to the Left of the social movements has been the global justice movement.  Weakened in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks (and the repression, both physical and ideological immediately following), the global justice movement launched a serious challenge to neo-liberal globalization.  The mass demonstrations, such as in Seattle (1999) and Quebec (2001), to name just two, opened up a public discourse on the manner in which wealth and power were reshaping the planet.

The 11th September attacks took the wind out of the sails of this movement, in part by making, at least in the USA, such mass expressions of outrage appear to be “unpatriotic.” Additionally, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, increasingly repressive legislation was introduced throughout the capitalist world in order to weaken or suppress outright militant activism, all in the name of fighting alleged terrorism.  While the global justice movement was not crushed altogether, it had to shift gears.  Some elements of it made a successful transition into the global anti-war movements against US aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Some have been mobilized around Palestine and the growing Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions Movement.  But the thrust of the anti-neo-liberal globalization effort was blunted and no longer a focal point of discussion, at least until relatively recently.

The Arab democratic uprising and the rise of mass Left radicalismThe reshaping of the global Left, and quite possibly global politics, may have been found in the Arab democratic uprising (what some call the “Arab Spring” or Arab Democratic Revolution) that kicked off with the December 2010 rising in Tunisia. Though none of these uprisings can be described as “Left”, at least in traditional terms, and though in some places the Left played a role in the uprisings, e.g., Tunisia, the scale and scope of the uprisings has been so significant so as to send shockwaves around the planet that go beyond the Left.  In effect these uprisings were anti-neo-colonial and objectively anti-neo-liberal.  They were mass and were not religiously inspired (though drew upon various faiths for inspiration).[iii] And, contrary to many prior risings in the Arab World, they were not coups but rather were mass interventions that in many cases brought normal life to a halt.

The Arab democratic uprisings altered discussions about politics and resistance, much as did the Paris Commune in 1871.  The Paris Commune took the world by surprise.  It was a mass intervention rather than a coup in the middle of a crisis.  It was popular and democratic, and a rising of the urban poor and disenfranchised.  Both became major sources of inspiration.  And both raised or have raised significant questions regarding the struggle for power.  In the case of the Arab risings, the despairing populations in Europe and later the USA found encouragement in the scale of opposition to tyranny.  While the Arab risings were primarily aimed against authoritarian puppet regimes, the risings that started to spread across Europe (and later the USA in the form of both the Madison, Wisconsin demonstrations of early 2011 and later the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Together Movement) were against economic tyranny.

The risings in Europe and the USA, although inspired by the Arab democratic uprising, illustrated the emergence of another, albeit complicated source of Left renewal, something we could define as mass Left radicalism.  “Mass Left radicalism” in this case refers to a phenomenon of non-specific, multi-tendencied radicalism that has a real, though somewhat amorphous popular base.  It is not glued to one or another social movement but it is also not a coherent project.  It is an expression of a progressive undercurrent of opposition to neo-liberal capitalism but it has not translated, at least so far, into a specific political party or force.  It has found expression in massive demonstrations against austerity but also challenges to gentrification in many major cities around the globe.  It has become the voice of the alienated, or at least a portion of the alienated, but is different in its fundamentals from the right-wing populism that has also arisen in the context of the crises facing the capitalist world.

The manifestations of mass Left radicalism tend to be ambivalent with regard to the objective of state power. In part influenced by both modern anarchism and Zapatatismo, the popular expressions of much of this radicalism have taken the form of open resistance to neo-liberalism and austerity rather than a concerted fight for power.  In fact, there are elements of the Left that contend that fighting for power itself is problematic and that it should not be the objective of a Left project to do so.

To use a historical reference point, the Paris Commune was an uprising of the Paris working class but it was not an uprising of the French working class.  In other words, the Communards succeeded in gaining control of Paris but they did not launch or catalyze a national revolution (national in the sense of national in scale) though they hoped that others would join their movement. But they did not see themselves as limiting their struggle to Paris alone.

Both the Zapatista uprising of 1994 in Chiapas, Mexico, but also the Occupy movement — at least in the USA — did not or have not set as objectives the winning of state power.  While one can argue that the Communards in 1871 would have eventually gone for national state power in France, in the case of the Zapatistas and much of Occupy, a conscious decision seems to have been made against such an objective.[iv] While these movements are all quite different in scale, strategy, etc., they, at least at the time of the writing of this essay, share a sense of resistance framed more in terms of building an alternative to which they wish people to rally rather than articulating an alternative vision in the context of the fight for power.  The Paris Commune, probably due to circumstances, began the creation of a new society while Paris was under siege by the Germans and later by the collaborationist forces of the newly formed Third Republic.  In Chiapas the Zapatistas made the strategic decision to not make a move toward national state power, though they exist in a dual power situation in that state.  The Occupy Movement represented a statement against the toxicity of neo-liberalism.  Its leaders chose to stay away from proclamations and program.

The difficulty with all efforts that shy away from platforms and the fight for state power is that they actually misdiagnose the nature and objectives of the capitalist ruling bloc and, in so doing, create problems for any Left renewal effort.  The capitalist ruling bloc has no interest in a dual power situation or a situation of gross instability.  If a progressive social movement is not advancing, it will find itself retreating, at least eventually.  So, occupying space, no pun intended, brings with it the inevitable challenge of being encircled by the enemy and the exhaustion of the mass movement.  The Paris Commune could only have succeeded to the extent to which the insurrection spread to other parts of France and, thereby, undermined both the Third Republic and the Germans.  This takes nothing away from the Commune, nor anything away from the Zapatista uprising or the Occupy Movement.  It speaks more to limitations that need to be considered from the standpoint of movement objectives and strategy.

Mass Left radicalism can become a current within which a more coherent Left can emerge.  By “coherent” we mean both organizationally cohesive but also a movement with more clearly defined objectives that focus on power.  That result, however, is not inevitable given the existence of an ideological approach that, as mentioned previously, discounts the notion of the fight for state power.

The question of who makes historyThe emergence of the Occupy movement, and similar such phenomena in other parts of the world, is both symptomatic of the crisis of socialism and an attempt at Left renewal.  It is symptomatic in the sense that it speaks to the skepticism regarding political parties and state structures.  The thesis of the Occupy movement, to the extent to which there is a consensual thesis, is that the system is so rotten that progressive and Left forces must reject it and build an alternative.  While the assertion of the rottenness of the capitalist system is certainly correct, the approach that has been advanced by many forces associated with the Occupy movement represents a problematic strategy.

From the standpoint of the radical Left (including, but not limited to anarchists, communists, revolutionary socialists, revolutionary anti-imperialists), the capitalist system is rotten and cannot be fundamentally repaired.  That is a basic truism.  Yet there is a long distance between that assertion or conclusion and the realization of a progressive/revolutionary alternative society.  That distance can only be traversed through the construction of a strategy, program and organization(s) in order to make it happen.

It is here that a distinction develops, both in theory and practice, between anarchism and revolutionary socialism.  Contained within anarchism is the notion of exemplary action as the cornerstone of all work and the worshipping of the spontaneous movement.  The true revolutionaries, from the standpoint of anarchism, must — through their own behavior and actions — demonstrate the alternative course to which the masses must gravitate.  For revolutionary socialism, while the actions of the organized forces are critical, they are so only and insofar as they unite with the actual experiences, concerns and hopes of masses of the oppressed and dispossessed.  In other words, it is the masses that make history rather than a committed few.  This is where revolutionary socialism and anarchism diverge.  Ideological anarchists[v] tend to privilege the activities of the committed few who, through exemplary action, will inspire the masses forward, as if no preparatory work (including political education) is necessary.

It is true that throughout the 20th century there were those who embraced Marxism though followed paths that were not altogether different from anarchists.  Regardless of their courage and commitment — or the courage or commitment of anarchists — the approach represented by ideological anarchism misses the point regarding change and social transformation.  Change and social transformation must be brought about through mass action and mass intervention.  This means that a critical proportion of the oppressed and dispossessed must not only be inspired by the conscious radical forces but must themselves understand and embrace the change process that they wish to see play out.

The Stalinist approach to change was to introduce change from above.  It assumed that the revolutionary party was the equivalent of a purist religious sect that held a monopoly on the truth.  The concerns of the masses were always to be interpreted through the Party, thus there was no need for any forms of real mass representation, and certainly no need for alternative political structures that might contest with the Party.

Anarchists, of course, rejected Stalinist theory and practice, but at the same time fell prey to two problems.  One error was that of spontaneism.  The second was that of exemplary behavior, as mentioned earlier.  The spontaneism of anarchism is a formulation that believes that the masses will come to revolutionary conclusions on their own.  Within this framework organizing and activity is important at the level of campaigns and struggle, but political education and organization, not to mention conscious strategy is ignored if not perceived as a problem.  Spontaneism dovetails with ‘exemplary action’ in that those who hold to the latter believe that through their own actions the masses will rally to the ‘correct’ course.  In neither case do the masses end up making history, however.  In the case of spontaneism, the impact of reactionary culture (depending on the society it could be bourgeois, feudal or pre-feudal) is ignored with respect to its bearing on the consciousness of the oppressed.  Action is given a premium at the expense of theory and consciousness.

As positive as have been the eruptions in Europe and North America in opposition to the worst features of neo-liberal globalization, they potentially run aground to the extent to which they are influenced by anarchist frameworks.  The massive actions against austerity, for instance, in the absence of a program and strategy for power means that those in action are presumed to have an understanding of what happens if mass demonstrations fail to halt the course of neo-liberalism.  There is no reason that one should believe this to be the case.  Masses of the dispossessed, after demonstrating in their hundreds of thousands and yet seeing the ruling elites pursue reactionary courses, can come to any number of conclusions, not the least being the erroneous conclusion that mass action does not work.  For this reason mass action, theory and strategy must be seen as integral components for a movement for social transformation.  No one component can stand alone.

To be clear, none of this is aimed at trivializing (or “trashing”) either the Occupy movement or the movements in Europe (and elsewhere) against austerity.  They have been visionary, courageous and audacious! The challenge, as it was for Marx and Engels in examining the experience of the Paris Commune, is to establish the lessons to be learned, not only in this case from the Occupy and anti-austerity movements, but from responses to the crisis of socialism, and from there to then suggest a path forward.

Refounding the Left In the aftermath of the defeat of the Paris Commune Marx and Engels had to reflect on that experience and question some of their own propositions.  This level of both self-analysis and self-criticism has been repeated occasionally in Left circles, but more frequently the radical Left holds onto certain ideological assertions as basic canon rather than making a concrete and exhaustive analysis.

Addressing the crisis of socialism is our ‘post-Paris Commune’ moment, that is, we on the Left are called upon to assess the socialist experience in the 20th century rather than assessing one specific instance of the class struggle (as important as was that examination in the case of the Paris Commune or today in assessing the Arab democratic revolutions, the anti-austerity movements and Occupy).  Several important theorists have begun doing this work, such as Samir Amin, Marta Harnecker and Michael Lebowitz, not to mention leaders in some of the parties and organizations noted earlier in this essay.  For the remainder of this essay we will suggest a few propositions for further exploration as part of a process of Left renewal or refoundation.

The theory and practice of socialism: How should we understand socialism? We need to answer this in two ways with the first being at the level of theory and practice; the second, at the level of society.  At the level of theory and practice, socialism must be a phenomenon which is revolutionary, Marxist and democratic.  This distinguishes or should distinguish 21st century socialism[vi], at both the levels of theory and practice, from much of what went by the name of socialism in the 20th century.

Revolutionary: In the 1960s and 1970s much of the Left defined “revolutionary” in terms of either armed struggle; the rejection of the reform struggle (and those who engaged in it); and the nature of demands.  In the 21st century we must break with one-dimensional thinking.  The “revolutionary” in socialism must involve the extent to which it is prepared to introduce new theory and penetrating critiques.  Revolutionary must exist at the level of experimenting with new forms of organization and engagement. Revolutionary must also exist at the level of being focused on social transformation rather than being limited to social reform, and as such the need for a prioritization of the organization of the masses to emancipate themselves from all forms of oppression.

Marxist: Marxism offers a frame of analysis which is, simply put, unparalleled in revolutionary theory.  The dialectical analysis and the materialist conception of history exist as frameworks without which a true revolutionary movement will be stymied. But to say that the socialism of the 21st century must be Marxist does not mean holding on, uncritically, to various propositions from the 19th and 20th centuries.  A case in point would be how one views imperialism.  The nature of global capitalism has changed significantly since the publication of Lenin’s Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, yet too many people on the Left insist that the current realities must be fit into Lenin’s framework rather than studying the current reality and trends of global capitalism in order to come to appropriate conclusions.  Samir Amin and, in a separate way, William Robinson, though coming to somewhat different conclusions, have worked to understand the nature of actually existing global capitalism rather than using Lenin’s conclusions as the starting point.  It is the framework that matters.

Democratic: The “d” word has been used and abused.  The states that were formed in the aftermath of World War II in Eastern Europe were self-defined “people’s democracies” yet, particularly from 1948 onward, they were anything but that, despite often remarkable social service programs and educational institutions.  This use of the world “democracy” did great damage to the work of the Left.  Separately, and particularly since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the “d” word has been used increasingly in the mainstream, capitalist media.  In bourgeois discourse the term really means multi-party elections in an environment that favors a capitalist economy.  From the standpoint of genuine socialism, “democratic” should have a different meaning.  Learning the painful lessons from the experience of Stalin’s Soviet Union or the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia/Kampuchea, we must appreciate that “democratic” is not a rhetorical term nor should it be simply a vague objective.  “Democratic” should reference both a practice and an objective.  That is, socialists must be the strongest advocates for what Lenin called “consistent democracy”, including at the economic and political levels, but also democratic at the level of the operations of socialist organizations and mass organizations.  The recognition of the need for independent organizations out of progressive social movements has been a major advance in socialist theory and practice, but it must be understood that such recognition is not only for the period of struggle under capitalism but also for socialism.  And the negative experiences that have emerged under so-called actually existing socialism should teach us that democracy means real popular control. The State: The contemporary Latin American Left, along with the Nepalese Maoists, South African Communists and others, has raised some significant questions regarding the matter of the capitalist state.  Marx and Engels, as one may remember, in reviewing the experience of the Paris Commune, suggested that one of the lessons of the Commune was the need for a worker’s movement to smash the capitalist state.  Lenin, in his famous treatise, State and Revolution, reiterated this point, emphasizing the need for the withering away of the state once the oppressed had gained power.

Antonio Gramsci, while not disagreeing with these conclusions, nevertheless focused his attention on the challenge of building up an historic bloc of popular-democratic forces in favor of socialism during non-revolutionary periods leading to the eventual seizure of power.  One of Gramsci’s great contributions was to frame much of his analysis in terms of the specificity of Italy and the challenge of the largely northern Italian working class allying with the southern Italian peasantry (in a situation where southern Italians and Sicilians were — and continue today — to be viewed by many northerners as a separate and despised nation).  Yet the overarching challenge for Gramsci was the notion of hegemony and the work of the popular-democratic bloc in becoming a counter-hegemonic force in the struggle for socialism.

Gramsci was interpreted by some in the communist movement and other parts of the Left as suggesting a more reformist go-slow approach to change.[vii] This would be a misreading of Gramsci.  Gramsci recognized that a Left strategy would collapse into reformism without a clear sense of conducting a total/all-round struggle against capitalist hegemony.  Contrary to many of the European Communist Parties that claimed to adhere to Gramsci’s framework, this struggle went beyond electoral politics but it placed a premium on the building of alliances and ultimately a bloc that would be capable of seizing power, representing the oppressed and dispossessed.

The actual practice of some of the newer Left forces in Latin America, by way of example, help one understand the complexity of such a course of action.  It begins with the recognition that the ideal opportunity for gaining power never arises.  There are, however, moments when the Left is better positioned to gain power, either as part of a coalition or leading a coalition, but where the mandate of such a coalition may not be for the complete elimination of the democratic capitalist state, at least not all at once.

A contrasting example may help to make the point.  In 1979 on the island of Grenada in the Caribbean, an uprising brought to power a revolutionary force known as the New Jewel Movement.  Led by Maurice Bishop, these were Left forces who took on a corrupt tyranny.  The uprising had widespread popular support.  Over the next four years the regime — referred to on the island as the “Revo” — encountered serious challenges.  They organized themselves along traditional Marxist-Leninist lines, despite the fact that this was not a socialist revolution and the NJM was not a Marxist-Leninist party.  But the NJM functioned more and more like one and created NJM-controlled mass organizations.  By 1983 the “Revo” was in trouble and the leadership knew this.  The coup against Bishop, which ultimately led to his murder, was carried out by pro-Soviet Marxists led by Bernard Coard.[viii] What Coard and his followers failed to acknowledge was the nature of the popular mandate that the NJM had won.  They were supported as an anti-imperialist/anti-corruption/anti-tyranny effort, but they did not have popular support for a transition to socialism.  Coard fell into a Stalinist framework and believed that a removal of the current leadership could force the Revo forward.  He was tragically wrong on so many levels.

Any Left movement that has the possibility of gaining power, whether at a national level or sub-national level, must assess the nature of the popular mandate.  In the cases of Venezuela and Bolivia, in particular, despite contradictions and challenges within the governing coalitions, they seem to have focused on just that question.  In other words, whether the Left is elected to office or gains office through an insurrection is not enough to ascertain the nature of the process that is to unfold.  The question that must be addressed is how do the masses understand the nature of the process and what mandate have they offered such a project.

For these reasons the Left coming to power in a democratic capitalist state brings with it a whole series of challenges.  To what extent is the radical Left (and we are making a distinction between a legitimate, radical Left and a reformist Left) placed in the position that is familiar to social democrats, i.e., of managing a democratic capitalist state? In the alternative, can the Left begin, even under the conditions of democratic capitalism, the process of a movement for social transformation?

A movement for social transformation cannot wait until the seizure of state power and the beginning of the construction of socialism.  It becomes the task of the Left to advance a project for social transformation even under democratic capitalism.  The framework for such an approach can be found in both Gramsci and, indeed, Lenin.  Lenin’s advocacy of the position of the Left as being the chief advocates for consistent democracy should mean that it is the radical Left that is advancing a program and practice for the democratization of society.  This includes, but is not limited to significant structural reforms that improve the basic lives of the people but also involves opening up the means and opportunities for the oppressed to educate and free themselves.  As has been seen in parts of Latin America, this necessitates a struggle over the very constitution of the state and a fight to democratize that constitution in such a way to begin to break the back of ruling elite.  To borrow from Harnecker, the rules of the “game” must be changed in favor of democracy and in favor of the oppressed.

This struggle, however, also necessitates the sorts of alliances that Gramsci suggested and a distancing of the Left from organizational or class sectarianism and instead favoring an approach toward strategic alliances or strategic blocs whose aim it is to build a power sharing relationship among the oppressed.

Dictatorship of the proletariat: Marx and Engels barely defined the notion of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and as a result it was largely Lenin and later Stalin who placed an imprint on the concept. In looking at the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat there are really two questions that emerge.  The first is whether the concept is basically correct.  The second is whether, largely for historical reasons, the term is compromised.The notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat, when examined from the standpoint of Marx’s all too brief writings on the subject, has nothing to do with a “dictatorship” in the manner in which the term is commonly used.  The closest reference point would probably be “hegemony” as articulated by Gramsci. Even in Lenin’s State and Revolution the dictatorship of the proletariat comes across as something other than a traditionally defined dictatorship.  Instead it refers to the leadership of a class and suggests that at all points the state is used as an instrument of one class against another (or against several others).  The dictatorship of the proletariat, then, is supposed to be a state of the working class, organized in such a way as to ensure the widest democracy and the suppression not only of the bourgeoisie but of the reactionary practices that had been inherited from earlier eras.  It is also supposed to be a state during a period of transition, that is, a state structure for socialism which itself is a period of transition between capitalism and a classless society (and, as a result, the state will wither away).

While the theory is good, and was re-articulated in a very comprehensive manner in the 1970s by Etienne Balibar in his rigorous book On the dictatorship of the proletariat, the term is associated with authoritarianism.  While one can argue whether the Stalinist system was actually socialist vs. a perverse form of state capitalism, the fact remains that in the popular mind the dictatorship of the proletariat means one-party rule, secret police, Gulags, etc.  It seems, to the average person, to fly in the face of the Left’s historic practice of fighting in favor of democracy, civil liberties, equality and the rights of minorities.  It is with this in mind that one can say that in much of the global North there is a popular hatred of capitalism but there is a fear of socialism.

As a result the crisis of socialism compels the Left to examine the question of the process of socialism, but the terminology as well.  The Left cannot favor dictatorships.  It must favor popular, revolutionary democracies that expand the rights and activities of the oppressed and narrow the field for the oppressors.  It must be in favor of a system that takes on all forms of oppression but gives the means and opportunities for different views to contend without the fear that someone will end up dead or incarcerated for expressions of alleged heresy.  And, the reality is that it must do all of this under conditions that are less than favorable, conditions that include external capitalist forces/powers seeking to undermine socialism and internal reactionary forces that wish to turn back the clock.

Socialist organization: There have been a variety of organizational experiences within socialist movements.  One cannot come to sweeping conclusions about each and every form.  That said, one conclusion that can be arrived at is that structure follows function.  To put it another way, the actual form of an organization should flow from its purpose and from the actual conditions under which it is operating.  In that sense, the efforts carried out by the Communist (Third) International at what was called “Bolshevization” (an effort to transform all communist parties into a form dictated by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) were problematic in that they assumed that there was only one form of revolutionary organization.  It was additionally problematic in that this process was based on a mythical notion of what the Bolsheviks had looked like in their pre-revolutionary days.The form of organization must begin by an understanding of the state structure in the territory in which an organization or party is operating.  In that sense it is quite interesting that Marx and Engels did not focus their attention on one and only one form of organization, seemingly recognizing that organizations could exist in multiple forms.  Specifically, the form does not make an organization radical, revolutionary, or for that matter reformist.  The content of its theory and practice, however, do.

In a situation of high levels of state repression, Left forces cannot operate as openly as they would within less authoritarian variants of capitalism.  But even in situations of alleged democratic capitalism, such as the United States, the history of the repression of the Left and the repression of freedom movements of oppressed nationalities (e.g., African Americans, Chicanos/Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, Asian Americans), has meant that not all Left formations can operate openly.

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Relationship to anarchists: Anarchists have reemerged as a potent force on the Left particularly in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet bloc.  Their critique of actually existing socialism (what many of us would define as either a contradictory socialism or in some cases state capitalism) is frequently persuasive, viscerally if not analytically.  And they have become very active forces in the global justice movement, environmental movements, and certainly in the Occupy movement.It would be a mistake to dismiss anarchists (ideological or non-ideological anarchists) and/or to make reference to 19th century polemics between Marx and Bakunin.  The non-anarchist revolutionary Left must see in modern anarchism the results of our failures.  Modern anarchism is a product of the crisis of socialism.

The non-anarchist revolutionary Left needs to embrace anarchists as distant cousins rather than enemies.  This does not mean that we embrace anarchism.  We can and should continue to hold to a strong analysis of the problems with anarchism but we should look at most anarchists as comrades in a common struggle against capitalism.  To some extent they are our conscience in the struggle against bureaucracy and any and all forms of restoration of oppressive regimes.

None of this should suggest that the relationship is or will be easy.  There are significant strategic and tactical differences with anarchists, as there frequently are with other Left trends.  But to treat them as enemies runs many risks, not the least of which is sectarianism.  To the extent to which anarchists appeal to younger radicals, the non-anarchist revolutionary Left runs the risk of being perceived as oblivious to the criticisms of actually existing socialism shared by many younger activists.  It is our job to listen and respond to such concerns and criticisms.  Frequently there is a firm basis upon which to unite, while at the same time the non-anarchist revolutionary Left is compelled to struggle with the philosophical idealism inherent in anarchism, particularly its failure to recognize what is involved in the course of making a transition away from capitalism.

There are a host of other areas for deeper exploration, self-criticism and new theory, including but not limited to gender, race/nationality and the environment.  Time and space do not permit such an examination here.  Suffice it to say that a renewal of the radical Left must necessitate not a regurgitation of 19th and 20th century platitudes on these areas, as if that will reinforce our ideological lineage, but rather an examination of the structures and movements in these areas.  A renewed Left must establish that it can and will learn from the forces on the ground involved in such movements while at the same time utilizing the Marxist method in order to link these struggles and movements into an overall narrative that favors the oppressed.  Carrying out such work involves more than the circulation of ideas and even rigorous analyses; it necessitates well-grounded and clearheaded Left organization that can link the practioners and the theorists, making each both.

Notes:

[i] There are important qualifications to make here.  Internal struggle is inevitable and took place within Stalinist-influenced parties.  How the struggle unfolded and was resolved, however, was the critical question.  The parameters for internal struggle were increasingly narrowed as Stalinist Marxism gained hegemony.  Within the Trotskyist tradition, there was the theoretical justification for internal factions but this did not necessarily mean that the internal life was any more democratic.

[ii] “Maoism” must be understood as a term referencing both (1) a theoretical and ideological orientation of the ruling Communist Party of China from the middle 1950s through 1978 regarding the construction of socialism, and, separately, (2) a movement, set of theories, inspirations, etc., that people elsewhere drew from the Chinese experience regarding the questions of the struggle for and construction of socialism.

[iii] It is important to not analyze backwards and look at the rise of Islamist formations in the aftermath of these Arab democratic uprisings as somehow meaning that the uprisings themselves were religious.  The Islamists, often due to on-again/off-again complicity with the tyrannical regimes and the USA, were among the best organized of the forces on the ground.  Thus, even though the uprisings drew upon various political, religious and ideological tendencies, many of these tendencies had been severely repressed over the years and did not have the organizational strength to win mass leadership.  It should also be added that there was an ideological tendency in some of these movements that downplayed the actual need for coherent organization and believed that the mass uprisings would lead themselves.

[iv] To be clear, we are not suggesting that Occupy is a revolutionary movement on the scale of the Paris Commune.  Among other things, it is a movement inspired by radicalism.  Additionally, we are suggesting that there is a certain approach to the entire “power” question contained within much of the Occupy movement that is not dissimilar from interpretations of Zapatismo in much of the global North.

[v] We use the term “ideological anarchists” and “ideological anarchism” to differentiate those whose worldview is or has been shaped by a conscious embrace of the theory and practice of anarchism vs. those who emerge in various mass movements utterly disenchanted with mainstream politics, government and political forces and may spontaneously react against the errors of 20th century socialism.  The former group would be those we would define as “ideological anarchists”.

[vi] We are using the term generically.  The specific term “21st century socialism” became popularized in Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez.  For some it has come to mean a specific road as followed in Latin America by movements such as those in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.  We are using the term far more generically as referencing a socialism for this century, including but not limited to the experiments underway in Latin America.

[vii] Beginning with the post-World War II Italian Communist Party led by Palmiro Togliatti.

[viii] “Pro-Soviet” in their ideological orientation.  This is not to suggest that they were operating under orders from the USSR. Dubois1

The writer is a racial justice, labor and international activist. He is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies (Washington, D.C.), serves on the editorial board of BlackCommentator.com, is the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum, and is the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of Solidarity Divided (a book which analyzes the crisis of the US trade union movement). He can be reached at billfletcherjr@gmail.com.

Tearing Away the Veils: The Communist Manifesto

The following essay is the introduction to the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of the Communist Manifesto, published this March.

TODAY, IN the early-twenty-first century, the Communist Manifesto is far less read than it once was. It is hard for people who are just growing up to grasp the way in which, for most of the twentieth century, Communist governments dominated much of the world. Communist educational systems were powerful and successful in many ways. But they were twisted in the way they canonized Marx and Engels as official patron saints. It is hard for people who have grown up without patron saints—Americans should not be too hasty to include themselves—to grasp this idea. But for decades, all over the world, any candidate for advancement in a Communist organization was expected to know certain passages and themes from Marx’s writings by heart, and to quote them fluently. (And expected notto know many other Marxian ideas: ideas of alienated labor, ideas of domination by the state, ideas of freedom.)

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the communist political system came apart remarkably fast. All over Central and Eastern Europe, Marx and Engels monuments were torn down. Pictures of people doing this were page-one material for a while. Some people noted skeptically that tearing down public monuments requires lots of organization, and wondered who was doing this organizing. Whatever the answers, it seems certain that, at the end of the twentieth century, there were plenty of ex-citizens of Communist police states who felt that life without Marx was liberation.

Ironically, this thrill was shared by people who were most devoted to Marx. Readers who love writers do not want to see them erected as Sunday-school sages. They can—I should say we can—only be thrilled by this loss of sanctity. Marx’s canonization after 1917 by Communist governments was a disaster. A thinker needs beatification like a hole in the head!

Intellectuals all over the world have welcomed this end-of-the-century crash as a fortunate fall. One of my old bosses at City College, who had grown up under Communist governments in Eastern Europe, said now that the Wall was down, I shouldn’t be allowed to teach Marx anymore, because “1989 proves that courses in Marxism are obsolete.” I told him today’s Marx, without police states, was a lot more exciting than yesterday’s patron saint. Now we could have direct access to a thinker who could lead us through the dynamics and contradictions of capitalist life. He laughed then. But by the end of the century, it seemed that the thrill had caught on. John Cassidy, the New Yorker magazine’s financial correspondent, told us in 1997 that Wall Street itself was full of study groups going through Marx’s writings, trying to grasp and synthesize many of the ideas that are central to his work: “globalization, inequality, political corruption, modernization, impoverishment, technological progress…the enervating nature of modern existence….” He was “the next great thinker” on the Street.

We can learn more about these things from the Communist Manifesto than from any book ever written. Much of its excitement derives from the idea that an enormous range of modern phenomena are connected. Sometimes Marx tries to explain the connections; other times, he just puts some things close to others, and leaves it for us to work it out.

What are Marx’s connections like? First—and startling when you’re not prepared for it—is praise for capitalism so extravagant, it skirts the edge of awe. Very early on, in “Part One: Bourgeois and Proletarians,” Marx describes the processes of material construction that it perpetrates, and the emotions that go with them. He is distinctive in the way he connects historical processes and emotions. He highlights the sense of being caught up in something magical, uncanny:

The bourgeoisie has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways…clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of he ground—what earlier century had any idea that such productive powers slumbered in the womb of social labor?

Or, a page before, on an innate dynamism that is spiritual as well as material:

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society….Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air; all that is holy is profaned; and man is forced to face his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

This first section of the Manifesto contains many passages like these, asserted in major chords. Marx’s contemporaries didn’t miss them, and some of his fellow radicals, like Proudhon and Bakunin, saw his appreciation of capitalism as a betrayal of its victims. This charge is still heard today, and deserves serious response. Marx hates capitalism, but he also thinks it has brought immense real benefits, spiritual as well as material, and he wants the benefits to be spread around and enjoyed by everybody, rather than monopolized by a small ruling class. This is very different from the totalitarian rage that typifies radicals who want to blow it all away. Sometimes, as with Proudhon, it is just modern times they hate: they dream of golden-age peasant villages where everyone was happily in his place (or in her place just behind him). For other radicals, from the author of the Book of Revelation to Thomas Müntzer to Joseph Conrad’s Verloc to the Unabomber, it goes over the edge into something like rage against reality, against human life itself. Apocalyptic rage offers immediate, sensational cheap thrills. Marx’s perspective is more complex and nuanced, and hard to sustain if you’re not grown up. On the other hand, if you are grown up, and attuned to a world full of complexity and ambiguity, Marx may fit you better than you thought.

Marx is not the first communist to admire capitalism for its creativity. This attitude can be found in some of the great “utopian socialists” of the generation before him, like Robert Owen and Saint-Simon and their brilliant followers. But Marx is the first writer to invent a style that brings this creativity to light before the early-twentieth century. (In French, with Baudelaire and Rimbaud, poetic language was a few decades ahead.) For readers who have grown up on T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and their successors, it shouldn’t be a problem to see how the Manifesto is a great piece of poetry. It throws together an enormous range of things and ideas that no one ever thought to throw together before. If you can get a feeling for Marx’s horizon, it will help to make the modern world make sense.

We could call the Manifesto’s style a kind of expressionist lyricism. Paragraphs break over us like waves that leave us shaking from the impact and wet with thought. This prose evokes breathless momentum, plunging ahead without guides or maps, breaking boundaries, piling up and layering things, ideas, experiences. Catalogues play a big role for Marx—as they do for his contemporaries Dickens and Whitman. Part of the enchantment of this style is the feeling that the lists are never exhausted, the catalogue is open to the present and the future, we are invited to pile on things, ideas, and experiences of our own, to pile ourselves on if we can find a way. But the items in the pile often seem to clash, and sometimes it feels like the whole aggregation could crash. From paragraph to paragraph, Marx makes readers feel like we are riding the fastest and grandest nineteenth-century train through the roughest and most perilous nineteenth-century terrain, and though we have splendid light, we are pushing through to where there is no track.
ONE FEATURE of modern capitalism that Marx most admires is its global horizon and cosmopolitan texture. Many people today talk about the global economy as if it had only just come into being. Marx helps us see the ways in which it has been operating all along.

The need for a constantly expanding market chases the bourgeois over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.The bourgeoisie, through its exploitation of the world market, has given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption everywhere….All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are being daily destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every corner of the globe…

This global spread, Marx believed, offered a spectacular display of history’s ironies. The modern bourgeois were generally banal in their desires, yet their unremitting quest for profit forced on them the same insatiable drive-structure and infinite horizon as any of the great romantic heroes—as Don Giovanni, as Childe Harold, as Goethe’s Faust. They may think of only one thing, but their narrow focus opens up the broadest integrations; their shallow outlook wreaks the most profound transformations; their peaceful economic activity devastates every human society like a bomb, from the most primitive tribes to the mighty USSR. Marx was appalled at the human costs of capitalist development, but he always believed the world horizon it created was a great human achievement, on which socialist and communist movements must build. Remember, the grand appeal to unite, with which the Manifesto ends, is addressed to the “workers of all countries.”

One of the crucial events of modern times has been the unfolding of the first-ever world culture. Marx was writing at an historical moment when mass media were just developing. Marx worked in the vein of Goethe, who in his last year, speaking to Eckermann, described it as “world literature.” Writing more than a hundred and fifty years later, I think it is legitimate to call the new thing “world culture.” Marx shows how this culture evolves spontaneously from the world market:

In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants requiring for their satisfaction products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations. And as in material, so in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property…and from the numerous national and local literatures, there rises a world literature.

Marx believed that Shakespeare, writing at the very start of modernity, was the world’s first thoroughly modern writer. As a student, he learned many Shakespearean plays by heart. He didn’t realize, in the 1840s, how deeply involved with the English language he would become. After the failed 1848 Revolution in Germany, he spent about half his life in exile in London. He wrote hundreds of articles through the years, at first translated by Engels but increasingly in English, especially for the New York Daily Tribune, as “Our European Correspondent.” And he never stopped working on Capital, a book with footnotes from different languages and cultures on every page. In London his wife Jenny became a drama critic, writing for German papers about the London stage. His daughter Eleanor, the first English translator of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, and one of the inventors of “community organizing,” remembered growing up with the whole family on Hampstead Heath on Sundays, acting Shakespeare out. Meanwhile they were broke, desperate, evicted from apartments, unable to go out in the winter because so many of their clothes were in the pawnshop. But they kept on inventing the world.

Marx’s vision of world culture brings together several complex ideas. First, the expansion of human needs: the increasingly complex world market at once shapes and expands everybody’s desires. Marx wants us to imagine what it might mean in food, clothes, religion, love, and in our most intimate fantasies as well as our public presentations. Next, the idea of culture as “common property”: anything created by anyone anywhere is open and available to everyone everywhere. Entrepreneurs publish books (and e-books), produce plays and concerts, display visual art, and, in post-Marx centuries, create hardware and software for movies, radio, TV, and computers, in order to make money. Still, in this as in other ways, history slips through their fingers, so that people can possess culture—an idea, a poetic image, musical sound, Plato, Shakespeare, a Negro spiritual (his whole family learned them in the 1860s)—even if they can’t own it. If we can think about modern culture as “common property,” and the ways in which popular music, movies, literature, and TV can all make us feel more at home in the world, it can help us imagine how people all over the world could share the world’s resources someday.

This is a vision of culture rarely discussed, but it is one of the most expansive and hopeful things Marx ever wrote. In the last century or so, the development of movies, television, video, and computers have created a global visual language that brings the idea of world culture closer to home than ever, and the world beat comes through in the best of our music and books. That’s the good news. The bad news is how sour and bitter most left writing on culture has become. Sometimes it sounds as if culture were just one more Department of Exploitation and Oppression, containing nothing luminous or valuable in itself. At other times, it sounds as if people’s minds were empty vessels with nothing inside except what Capital put there. Read, or try to read, a few articles on “hegemonic/counterhegemonic discourse.”
BUT IF capitalism is a triumph in so many ways, what’s wrong with it? What makes it worth spending your life as Marx did, trying to fight it? In the twentieth century, Marxist movements have concentrated on the argument, made most elaborately in Capital, that workers in bourgeois society had been or were being pauperized. There were times and places (the Great Depression, for instance) where it was absurd to deny that claim. In other times and places (North America and Western Europe when I was young), it was pretty tenuous. Many Marxist economists went through dialectical gyrations to make the numbers come out. But the problem with that whole discussion was that it converted questions of human experience into questions of numbers; it led Marxism to think and talk exactly like capitalism.

The Manifesto occasionally makes some version of this claim. But it offers what strikes me as a much more trenchant indictment, one that holds up even at the top of the business cycle, when the bourgeoisie and its apologists are drowning in complacency. That indictment is Marx’s vision of what modern bourgeois society forces people to be: they have to freeze their feelings for each other to find a place in a cold world. Bourgeois society “has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash payment.” It has “drowned every form of sentimental value in the icy waters of egotistical calculation.” It has “resolved personal worth into exchange-value.” It has collapsed every idea of freedom “into that single, unconscionable freedom—free trade.” It has “torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.” It has “converted the doctor, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-laborers.” “In one word, for exploitation veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.” It forces people to degrade themselves in order to survive.

Twentieth-century works in Marxist traditions tend to imagine a bourgeoisie with super-controlling powers: everything that happens is so the bourgeoisie can “accumulate more capital.” It is worth noticing that Marx’s vision of them is far more volatile. He compares them to a “sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world that he has called up by his spells.” Marx is reminding us of Goethe’s Faust, of course, but also of venerable traditions of magic that were supposed to make the bearers spectacularly rich. The magic never worked, of course. What happened instead, Marx said, only “pav[ed] the way for more expensive and more destructive crises, and diminish[ed] the means whereby crises are prevented.” Survivors of the fiscal crises of 2008 will remember the sense of magical power that seduced millions of people into giving up more than they had. It will be fascinating to see whether people learn anything from all the weird practices that names like Madoff came to signify. Marx feared they wouldn’t learn: in modern capitalism, the most sophisticated minds could be primitivized overnight; people who have the power to reconstruct the world still seem bound to deconstruct themselves. Marx was animated by great hopes, but driven by serious worries.

For more than 150 years, we have seen a huge literature that attacks the brutality of a class where those who are most comfortable with brutality are most likely to succeed. But those same social forces are also pressing on the members of that immense group that Marx calls “the modern working class.” This class has always been afflicted with a case of mistaken identity. Many of Marx’s readers have always thought that “working class” meant only men in boots—in factories, in industry, with blue collars, with calloused hands, lean and hungry. These readers then note the changing nature of the workforce: increasingly educated, white-collar, working in human services (rather than in growing food or making things), in or near the middle class—and they infer the Death of the Subject, and conclude that the working class is disappearing and all hopes for it are doomed. Marx did not think the working class was shrinking: in all industrial countries it was already, or in the process of becoming, “the immense majority.” Its swelling numbers, Marx thought, would enable it to “win the battle of democracy.” The basis for his political arithmetic was a concept that was both simple and highly inclusive:

The modern working class developed…a class of laborers who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These workers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are commodities, like every other article of commerce, and are constantly exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition and the fluctuations of the market.

The crucial factor for Marx is not working in a factory, or working with your hands, or being poor. All these things can change with fluctuating supplies and demands in technology and politics. The crucial reality is the need to sell your labor in order to live, to carve up your personality for sale, to look at yourself in the mirror and think, “Now what have I got that I can sell?” and an unending dread and anxiety that even if you are OK today, you won’t find anybody willing to buy what you have or what you are tomorrow; that the changing market will declare you (as it has already declared so many) worthless; that you will find yourself physically as well as metaphysically out in the cold. Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman (1949), one of the great pieces of American writing, brings to life the consuming dread that may be the condition of most members of the working class in modern times. Existentialist writing, which I grew up on half a century ago, dramatizes this tradition with great depth and beauty; yet its visions tend to be weirdly unembodied. Its visionaries could learn from the Manifesto, which gives modern anguish an address.

Marx understands that many people in this class don’t know their address. They wear elegant clothes and return to nice houses, because there is great demand for their labor right now, and they are doing well. They may identify happily with the owners of capital, and have no idea how contingent and fleeting their benefits are. They may not discover who they are, and where they belong, until they are laid-off or fired—or outsourced, or deskilled, or downsized. And other workers, lacking credentials, not dressed so nicely, may not get the fact that many who push them around are really in their class, and, despite their pretentions, share their vulnerability. How can this reality be put across to people who don’t get it, or can’t bear it? The complexity of these ideas helped to create a new vocation, central to modern society: the organizer.

One group whose identity as workers was crucial for Marx was his own class: intellectuals.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to in reverent awe. It has converted the doctor, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-laborers.

This does not mean that these activities lose meaning or value. If anything, they become more urgently meaningful. But the only way people can get the freedom to do what they can do is by working for capital. Marx himself had to live this way. Over a forty-year span, he wrote brilliant journalism. Sometimes he was paid, often not. Marx was brilliant in figuring out how workers could organize, and how their capacity to organize could make nineteenth-century life a great deal more human than it had been in the 1840s, the days of the Manifesto, when he was just starting out. But nobody then had figured out how the creators of culture could organize. When Marx, and every other writer and artist of those days, went up against capital, he went alone.

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the scale of culture has immensely expanded. Intellectuals need to work for drug companies, movie studios, media conglomerates, HMOs, boards of education, politicians, and so on, always using their creative skills to help capital accumulate more capital. This makes intellectuals subject not only to the stresses that afflict all modern workers, but to a dread zone all their own. The more they care about their work and want it to mean something, the more they will find themselves in permanent conflict with the keepers of spreadsheets. In the twentieth century, the creators of culture started to get it, and to organize. But, as has happened repeatedly in capitalist history, technology learned to organize itself on a far vaster scale. In the twenty-first century, the Internet opened up a whole new dimension of conflict; publishers, newspapers and magazines began to collapse. Intellectuals today are forced to fight what we can see now is going to be a permanent “battle of democracy”: they are fighting to keep culture alive. We don’t know how this struggle is going to turn out. Many intellectuals have come to see the connections, and to recognize ourselves as workers—but plenty still don’t. Most of us can think of plenty of things we would much rather do. Marx argues that unless we learn to organize—and stay organized—and learn to fight this fight, there is a pretty good chance that neither we nor anybody else will be able to do these nice things anymore.
MARX HAD a wide horizon: he could imagine how life would unfold thousands of miles from anywhere he had ever been. Living in London, in what was then the most dynamic economy in the world, he was especially sensitive to the ambiguities of growth. Over the last twenty years, the word’s most dynamic economy has been China’s. A great deal of its power emanates from a working class with immense energy and yet, until very recently, total passivity. I spent a perplexing month in China in 2005. I attended a conference, at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. I walked through streets in many cities, met intellectuals of different ages. My conference included about thirty Chinese and three Americans; the Americans were the only ones willing to give the Chinese Revolution credit for accomplishing anything. Chinese talking about the country’s own history seemed to have dropped to an America-1950 level. They spoke as if “the Chinese Communists” were Martians, rather than their own parents and grandparents and sometimes themselves. I learned, too, that school and college courses in Western thought were forbidden to speak Marx’s name. I spoke about his life and work in late-nineteenth-century England, and I compared England to China today. I talked about the metamorphoses of the British working class, and argued that in a dynamic modern society, class passivity was not likely to last. I argued that a time like now in China was exactly the kind of moment when the explosive parts of the Manifestomight be prophetic. Most people I spoke with said China had no class system, no stratification, so Marx’s categories were meaningless there. A few suggested that no one believed this, but that today as in the past, Chinese people knew what they had to say.

Students told me, sadly, that my paper was being left out of the conference proceedings. Some said they would love to read Marx if they could. I told them the crucial idea was that they too were part of the working class, and the working class had the capacity to organize. I gave them some titles and websites, and wished them well. Now, in 2010, a collection has appeared in which not only am I included, but, more important, Marx is included. I saw this as a sign that Chinese workers had probably begun to organize and to act on a large scale. Who knows with what success? But it may be that another front in “the battle of democracy” has opened up.
MARX SEES the modern working class as an immense worldwide community waiting to happen. Such large possibilities give the history of organizing a permanent gravity and grandeur. The process of creating unions is not just an item in interest-group politics, but a vital part of what Lessing called “The Education of the Human Race.” As workers gradually come to learn who they are, Marx thinks they will see they need one another in order to be themselves. Workers will get it eventually, because bourgeois society forces them to get smart, in order to survive its constant upheavals. Learning to give yourself to other workers who may look and sound very different from you, but who turn out to be like you in depth, delivers the soul from dread and gives a man or a woman a permanent address in the world.

This is a vital part of the moral vision that underlies the Manifesto. But there is another moral dimension, asserted in a different key but humanly just as urgent. Many communist movements in history, starting with Plato, have aimed at social orders in which the individual self is crushed by some form of communal whole. The radical world of the 1840s, in which Marx grew up, was full of people who thought that way. His early writing is full of abuse toward what he called “crude, mindless communism.” He always insisted that communism meant liberation of the self. And this meant the Revolution of the future will end classes and class struggle, and will make it possible to enjoy a world where “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Marx is imagining communism as a way to make people happy. The first aspect of happiness, for him, is “development”—that is, an experience that doesn’t simply repeat itself endlessly, but that goes through endless phases of change and growth. This form of happiness is distinctively modern, informed by the incessantly developing bourgeois economy. But modern bourgeois society forces people to develop in accord with market demands: what can sell gets developed; what can’t sell gets repressed, or else never comes to life at all. Against the twisted development enforced by the market, he fights for “free development,” a mode of development that the self can control.

This insistence on free development, rather than development enforced by the market, is a theme that Marx shares with the smartest and noblest liberal of the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill. Like Marx, Mill came to see “free development” as a basic human value. But as he grew older, he became convinced that the capitalist form of modernization—featuring cutthroat competition, social conformity, and cruelty to the losers—blocked its best potentialities. The world’s greatest liberal proclaimed himself a socialist in his old age.

Ironically, the ground that liberalism and socialism share might be a problem for both of them. What if Mister Kurtz isn’t dead after all? What if authentically “free development” brings out horrific depths in human nature? Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Freud all forced us to face the horrors. Marx and Mill might both say that until we have overcome social domination, there is no way to tell how deep our inner degradation goes. The process of reaching that point—where Raskolnikovs won’t rot on Avenue D, and where Svidrigailovs won’t possess thousands of bodies and souls—should be enough to give us all steady work. And even if we do reach that point, and come to see our inner bad guys will never go away, we will have learned how to cooperate for our mutual defense. Trotsky in the 1920s came to believe that psychotherapy was a revolutionary right, to protect us from ourselves.
I’VE SAVED my favorite Manifesto story for the end. It comes from Hans Morgenthau, the great theorist of international relations who came to America as a refugee from the Nazis. I heard him tell it in the early 1970s, at the City University of New York. He was reminiscing about his childhood in Bavaria before the First World War. Morgenthau’s father, a doctor in a working-class neighborhood of the town of Coburg (mostly miners, he said), had begun to take his son along on house calls. Many of his patients were dying of TB; a doctor in those years couldn’t do much to save their lives, but might help them die with dignity. Coburg was a place where many people who were dying asked to have the Bible buried with them. But when Morgenthau’s father asked his workers for last requests, many said they wanted to be buried with the Manifestoinstead. They implored the doctor to see that they got fresh copies of the book, and that priests didn’t sneak in and make last-minute switches. Morgenthau was too young to “get” the book, he said. But it became his first political task to make sure that the workers’ families should get it. He wanted to be sure we would get it, too.

The twentieth century ended with the mass destruction of Marx effigies. It was said to be the “post-modern age”: we weren’t supposed to need grand narratives or big ideas. Twenty years later, we find ourselves in the grip of very different narratives: stories of a dynamic global society ever more unified by downsizing and deskilling—real work disappearing so company stocks can rise, so the rich can get richer and congratulate themselves on what they have done to our world. Few of us today share Marx’s feeling that a clear alternative to capitalism is there, right there. But many of us can embrace, or at least imagine, his radical perspective, his indignation, his belief that modern men and women have the capacity to create a better world. All of a sudden, the iconic may look more convincing than the ironic; that classic bearded presence, that atheist as biblical prophet, still has plenty to say. At the dawn of the twentieth century, there were workers who were ready to die with the Communist Manifesto. At the dawn of the twenty-first, there may be even more who are ready to live with it.

Marshall Berman teaches political theory and urbanism at CCNY/CUNY. He is the author of, among other books, Adventures in Marxism.

By Marta Harnecker

The journal Science and Society devoted a special number in April 2012 [Volume 76, No. 2] to explore central topics in the current discussion about socialism. Marta Harnecker and five other Marxist authors from different countries were invited to participate in this reflection by the editors Al Campbell and David Laibman, who prepared a set of five questions. This paper written in July 2011 presents her contribution with some foot notes that does not appear in the journal. The following topics are explored: 1. Why speak of socialism today?; 2. Central features of socialist organization of production; 3. Incentives and the level of consciousness in the construction of socialism; 4. Socialism and the transition to socialism; and 5. The centrality of participatory planning in socialism.

1. WHY SPEAK OF SOCIALISM TODAY?

1. Why talk about socialism at all if that word has carried and continues to carry such a heavy burden of negative connotations, after the collapse of socialism in the USSR and other Eastern European countries?

2. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union, Latin American and world leftist intellectuals were shocked. We knew better what we did not want in socialism than what we wanted. We rejected the lack of democracy, totalitarianism, state capitalism, bureaucratic central planning, collectivism that sought to standardize without respect for differences, productivism that emphasized the expansion of productive forces without taking into account the need to preserve nature, dogmatism, the attempt to impose atheism and persecution of believers, the need for a single party to lead the transition process.

3. But at the same time Soviet socialism was collapsing, democratic and participatory processes in local governments began to emerge in Latin America there, and these foreshadowed the “kind of alternative to capitalism that people wanted to build.” These processes not only foreshadowed the new society; they also demonstrated in practice that people could govern in a transparent, non-corrupt, democratic and participatory manner. Political conditions in several Latin American countries were thus prepared, making it possible for the left to come to power through democratic elections.

4. Those lights that radiated throughout our continent were enhanced by the resounding failure of neoliberalism and, most recently, by the global crisis of capitalism. An alternative to capitalism thus started to become more necessary than ever. What should it be called?

5. It was President Chávez who had the courage to call socialism this alternative society to capitalism He called it “21st-century socialism,” reclaiming the values associated with the word socialism: “love, solidarity, equality between men and women and equity among all,” but adding the adjective “21st century” to differentiate the new socialism from the errors and deviations present in the model of socialism that was implemented during the 20th century in the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries.

6. However, it must be remembered that 35 years earlier, in the early 1970s in Chile, the victory of President Salvador Allende, supported by the leftist Popular Unity coalition, began the world’s first peaceful transition to socialism. Although the Popular Unity government was defeated by a military coup three years later, it left important lessons. If our generation learned anything from that defeat, it was that peaceful progress towards that goal required us to rethink the socialist project applied until then in the world; that it was therefore necessary to develop a project that was more adequate to Chilean reality and more appropriate for a peaceful path. Allende’s folkloric expression, “socialism with red wine and empanadas,” seemed to capture this, pointing towards building a democratic socialist society rooted in national popular traditions.  And so I believe that the Chilean experience should be considered the first practical experience that tried to get away from the Soviet model of socialism and move toward what we now call 21st-century socialism.

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