Prospects for socialism
There is no disputing the fact that there is virtually no
support for socialism at the moment. We don't even have the remnants of a
socialist movement and the ideas that would be needed by such a movement are
either long forgotten or heavily corrupted. This 'forgetting' and corrupting is
the handy work of what is laughingly called the 'Left'. A better term is 'fake
left'.
These people really are quite reactionary. Their worst feature
is the defence of economic nationalism and Third World backwardness and
barbarism, all in the name of 'anti-imperialism'. Most of them also share many
views with the greens whose opposition to capitalism is feudal rather than
socialist. Unlike socialists who want to build on the basis of the possibilities
created by modern capitalist society, greens want us to go backwards. They are
hostile to modern science, overstate environmental risks and deny the
possibility of global prosperity based on scientific and technological progress.
In other words they deny the very conditions for world socialism.
Also the fake left discredits socialism by its rabid defence
of statism against neo-liberalism. Apparently state capitalism, corporatism and
government patronage are embryonic forms of socialism! Virtually the only time
socialism gets a mention is when they are capitulating to its detractors. This
capitulation is called 'market socialism', an oxymoron if there ever was one. It
makes about as much sense as 'capitalist socialism'.
For most fake leftists even 'market socialism' would be a bit
radical. For them, being 'socialist' simply means breast beating about the ills
of capitalism. And even this isn't done right, because the "ills" are seen from
a semi-feudal or petty bourgeois perspective. "Oh, those nasty multinationals!
Give me back my corner store! Oh, for the good old days!"
So, that's the bad news. What about the good news?
Although the journey is bound to be protracted and tortuous,
in the long run it is ultimately all good news because we have history on our
side. In other words there are developments within capitalism that make that
system less viable and socialism more so.
Economic and social development is creating the conditions
that socialism needs. While these conditions are far from developed in Third
World countries, they are increasingly present in the advanced capitalist
countries of North America, Western Europe, East Asia and Australasia.
Firstly, equality no longer means shared poverty, ignorance
and toil. The economy has developed to such a stage where everybody can have a
high material and cultural standard of living, be free from toil and have plenty
of free time. You don't need more than an average share of these things to be
able to partake in most of what life has to offer.
This is very important because if a significant number of
people aspire to being members of a privileged elite, socialist revolution is
made more difficult. This includes difficulty in initially establishing a
socialist government and in the subsequence process of change.
Of course, there will always still be some benefits from
having more than the average of these things, but these benefits are diminishing
as the average improves. Anything extra tends to be more in the realm of
prestige goods and extravagance rather than in meeting real needs. Also the
benefits of having more than your share have to be weighed against the benefits
of living in a socialist society.
Secondly, the rank and file are acquiring the abilities they
need to do without an elite. This is due to an number of factors:
- Better general levels of education and training. Fifty
years ago only a small minority finished high school while a tiny handful
went to university. Now it is the norm to finish high school (over 70%) and
between one fifth and a quarter get a degree.
- People are engaging in labor that has greater mental and
conceptual content. About half of jobs are now of the less routine type,
usually requiring some level of post school training. This includes
teachers, paramedical professions, computer workers, accountants and so on.
Even the crappy jobs are a bit more demanding than the old fetch and carry
jobs. Literacy and numeracy is more important and the jobs tend to require
more human interaction whereas in the past it was not uncommon for talk to
be forbidden during working hours.
- Virtually everybody now has extensive access to cultural
and intellectual resources (even if they don't always use them) and the
diverse experiences of living in a modern society.
As workers acquire greater abilities and take on jobs that
require them to think and to take on responsibilities, they are going to find
the constraints of capitalist oppression increasing intolerable.
Another important factor that is bound to ultimately undermine
people's acceptance of capitalism is the fact that this system is an increasing
obstacle to economic progress. (This is discussed in more detail in
FAQ's.)
In summary. the net benefits of being privileged are declining
while the ability of the exploited to run things without exploiters is
increasing and their tolerance of oppression diminishing.
Of course, these conditions don’t make revolution happen by
itself. There is nothing automatic about it. People have to decide to make the
change. Although in a sense there is still something close to inevitable about
the process. People cannot stare blindly at the increasingly obvious for ever.
And a socialist transformation of society only has to fully succeed once
irrespective of previous periods of dormancy or utter defeat. Capitalism on the
other hand can have many periods of success but only needs to be resoundingly
defeated once for it to be swept from the field permanently.
Another thing in our favor is that a future socialist movement
should have less trouble with reformism than the old movement had. In times of
political crisis, it is the enemy within that diverts people from revolution.
Reformism has already undergone a considerable decline and
hopefully this will continue. This weakness stems from the fact that it is hard
to get excited about marginal changes to welfare programs or to how the
government goes about its business. In the past this was very different. There
were many reforms to get exited about - universal suffrage, the introduction of
old age pensions, workers compensation, union rights, fighting to raise wages
above starvation levels, the basic welfare safety net, ending racial and gender
discrimination, and so on. It was also possible to paint socialism as a reform
that could develop under capitalism - state ownership, economic progress and
more equal distribution - rather than as a fundamental rupture with the existing
order. The line between revolution and reform became very blurred, and reform
offered an immediately more promising basis to build a movement than radical
rhetoric.
That statist vision has lost so much of its shine that even
the militant opponents of economic liberalism don't have the gumption to call
for wholesale nationalisation, they just whine about attacks on existing statist
arrangements. Their vision splendid is a return to the 1950s. This fake left
also resents the way that the major labor and social democratic parties 'betray'
reformism and think they are being very radical in militantly upholding it.
The fake left and the greens should pose little problem for a
new movement once it has found its feet. While the fake left is a lingering
sickness that discredits socialism and revolution, it is tiny, shrinking and
ineffectual. And the greens have seen their best days. While they have
successfully spread their pall of doom and made it part of the popular
consciousness, they have no credible alternative and are mainly sustained by
electoral niche politics and the lifestyle needs of a section of the middle
class.
So what about the chances of a modest socialist movement
emerging from the dust? A big problem is achieving critical mass and this is
where the Net can be important. If you only have a handful of people expressing
certain interesting ideas it does not get very far. However, if the handful is
just a tad bigger, it triggers an explosion. The key thing, of course, is having
the interesting ideas that strike a chord. You may not take the world by storm
but you should attract a small minority who, for various reason, are amenable to
such ideas.
A slight resurgence could also be helped by the business cycle
going nasty. At the moment, the good times keep rolling on. A dramatic change in
that department would provide more fertile soil.
From The Socialism Web Site -
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~dmcm
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