What are the questions facings socialists as we mark another May Day — one less celebrated by masses of people than any for decades? JIM PERCY gives his view.
Why is there a crisis of socialism? It's not because of the success of capitalism at solving its problems and meeting human needs. Those who give up on socialism and put their faith in the evolution of capitalism must face the fact that things are going to get worse. Looking to the next century as a capitalist one is a chilling prospect.
Socialism has been set back by capitalism's economic power, which was never successfully challenged in its heartlands. Capitalism survives because humans — oppressed and exploited, controlled and manipulated — have not yet been able to overcome it, to take control of their own societies and economies.
Flowing from this are the limitations of the socialist movement to date: Stalinism in backward societies trying to build socialism on inadequate economic bases, and Social Democracy in the advanced countries, which sought to reform capitalism but ended merely being absorbed by it. The simultaneous bankruptcy of these two currents produces the sharpness of the present crisis.
No 'end of history'
But there is no end to history — neither a bang nor a series of whimpers. Capitalism could certainly deliver us either variant if we don't get rid of it, but we are not there yet. This conjuncture will pass, perhaps rather quickly.
The social conditions emerging in the world are more like the situation that Marx saw as a precondition for socialism than those that existed a century ago. Then there were a capitalist Europe and North America. Today it's an interrelated, global system.
Today capitalism must create a global market, including a labour market. As it does, social contradictions will intensify even in the advanced countries. Those who rush to embrace the market in Eastern Europe and the USSR forget that in this game there are winners and losers. Losers tend to lose faith in capitalism and seek to replace it. We should continue to think socially and historically, not merely subjectively.
The left will get a lot of things right as a result of hindsight. Defeated armies learn well, said Lenin. They had better, because there is much that is different and that must be central in the positions of socialists.
Ecological crisis
Above all, the ecological crisis affects our vision of the future and expectations of any economic system. The left can get this right and is beginning to. The ecological crisis means that capitalism is in a real dead end. The unrestrained market is going to kill us all. A lot of people are becoming aware of this but, due to the distortion and failure of Stalinism, are detouring through various utopian schemes. But this is temporary. It will change once there is more motion of the major social forces, of the working class in the advanced countries and in the underdeveloped world.
That's not to say that this discussion is sterile. A big part of any revival of socialism will be a discussion of models of community and of economic structures. But calls to abandon all the social and political gains of the past 150 years of the working-class movement in favour of a "new" vision that puts species in general where humans once stood can't reach the majority of humans, and miss the point that it is human society that must be changed to save the planet.
Democracy
What will the new revolutionary movement look like? Our organisations can't be in conflict with the very nature of the new society we seek to build. There is a relationship between ends and means. A new society, a new socialism, will have at its centre the democratic rights of its citizens.
We'll only get there as a movement of people who are conscious and active around our own interests, enfranchised and able to direct our own struggles. The question of democracy — its erosion and limitations under late capitalism — will itself be a cutting edge of our critique of existing society and already forms a thread through all the issues and movements today.
The main democratic institutions, parliaments, are more and more discredited, with quite low electoral participation in many advanced countries. Even many of those who do vote know that the real decisions are being made elsewhere.
This decay of bourgeois society and institutions, disguised for the moment by the crisis in the East, tells us how powerful the left can and will become again, if it gets its politics right.
'Burning patience'
In the meantime, let's build our concept around the phrase "with burning patience", used in relation to Chile's recent long night.
It's not a passive patience that is required, but one that salvages from the wreckage and the achievements of the past to build a bridge to the future. This means building organisations and institutions which, by an active engagement in the political processes of the day, create the new program, movements and organisations that will define socialist and left politics in the next century.
There will be some who give it away in despair or cynicism. But the youth will not be affected by this. Their hopes and expectations will flow from today's possibilities and struggles, not yesterday's dreams.
It's the worst of times, with triumphal capitalism crowing in our ears and with the possibility of environmental catastrophe and human extinction. But it's the best of times as we seek the road to a truly human existence, where we live in harmony with nature and in control of our society and destiny.
It's the best of times because time is shorter. There can't be another century like the present one without many "final conflicts". The socialist movement will know how to storm heaven if it keeps its eyes firmly on the human needs of the citizens of the planet. There is still no other vision, no alternative strategy, no other liberating ideology based on real social possibilities that can inspire the necessary conviction and determination.
Jim Percy is national secretary of the Democratic Socialist Party.