BORIS KAGARLITSKY, the internationally known writer on Russia and socialist activist, visited Australia at Easter, speaking at the Campaigning for Democratic Socialism conferences. He then visited South Africa before returning to Moscow. The interview here by EDDIE WEBSTER is abridged from South Africa Labour Bulletin.
Many people associate Russia with the heartland of socialism. How do you understand the nature of that tradition today?
Kagarlitsky. We have an authentic socialist tradition which was compromised by Stalin and the Soviet regime. This tradition is still alive and visible.
According to opinion polls, people want some kind of democratic socialism. For example, when you ask people about the economy, the majority support small private businesses, like shops, services, small workshops and so on. The very same majority disapproves of private ownership of big factories, infrastructure and transportation. They want a publicly organised economy in terms of industrial production, social provision and so on.
You're most probably best known in South Africa for your book The Dialectic of Change. It was written in the mid-'80s, at the height of perestroika, and you were criticised by the "orthodox left" for being a defender of "reformism". How do you see that book now; what would you want to add to it?
I argue in the book that there is a tremendous middle ground between total surrender to opportunism, on one hand, and the "big bang" revolutionary approach, on the other. I also wanted to say that between the revolutionary and reformist approach there is no clearly marked division line.
Revolution and reform should be seen as technical approaches rather than two absolutely opposing strategies. You can have a complex strategy which includes certain revolutionary and reformist elements.
The problem with the term "radical reform" is that it can mean very different things. It can mean an acceptance of the "free market", a more liberal agenda by the left. But this is absolutely wrong. Radical structural reforms should not be seen as a substitute for revolution but as a more general transformational project.
What are the most important characteristics of radical reform?
Firstly, these reforms must be class and social movement based. Secondly, they must challenge the structure of the state. Thirdly, sooner or later you have to consolidate the new balance of forces through changes in the property structure. In that sense I think that the rejection of state property proclaimed by certain post-modern leftists is simply the wrong position.
The point is not simply whether you have more state or less state — the point is to have a different state. The transformation of the state and the expansion or consolidation of public sector enterprise are two interconnected things that must come together.
So you see nationalisation as a key part of your vision of radical reform?
You can expand the public sector through nationalisation or through public investment. But the balance of forces in the economy must change. I see a real need for public sector enterprise to be expanded not only in terms of building factories or nationalising big structures, but also in terms of decentralising public sector enterprise; instead of privatising them, making them accountable to the community and increasing workers' participation in decision making.
You can also improve the commercial performance of the public enterprises without forgetting that they should serve some non commercial purposes as well.
Is that why, in your "Letter to South Africa, (Links, Number 4, January-March 1995), you see it as a sign of weakness that the ANC is "not encroaching upon South Africa's own large corporations"?
Yes. For example, the Freedom Charter which calls for the nationalisation of the mining industry. Either you have to reconsider the original program, or you have to carry it out. Anything else is just making people confused. As far I as I know, the National Union of Mineworkers calls for the nationalisation of the mines. This is not something which will really drive multinationals crazy because their main power is not in the mining industry, their power is elsewhere.
In terms of your notion of structural reform, do you feel that the government of national unity is pursuing the structural side of that project?
We have to wait for at least another year to make more definite conclusions. But there have been opportunities lost. This is one of the problems of the left in South Africa; it is not trying to come up with its own agenda and increasingly interprets the democratic agenda in neo-liberal terms.
I understand the concerns of the people in the government who do not want to destabilise their own country, especially while in power. But at the same time this concern is preventing them from delivering any real reforms, any real benefits to the majority of the population. In the long-term perspective this will lead to more destabilisation.
Already people complain that the private sector is not moving enough in the directions indicated by the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP). But that's what you have to expect. If you have public money to build houses and have private subcontractors, the result will be cost inflation because the private companies would be interested in inflating costs. So the only way to make them cut their costs is to have public companies which are not oriented towards profits. They're first of all delivery-oriented.
So a crucial part of your vision of structural reform is an expansion of the public sector?
Yes, but unless closely connected to the democratic transformation of the state, it will fail. I mean expansion through decentralisation, through different forms of democratic accountability, workers' participation, trade union control of certain issues and so on.
In South Africa, the left has got some power but doesn't know how to use it. When you get a little power, you become compromised without achieving anything unless you have specific strategies to do that.
On the one hand, people must use institutional possibilities they have in order to put forward certain proposals and carry on some kind of left-wing agenda.
On the other hand, the left can also represent the discontent of the masses — put pressure on its own people from the outside. And it can channel the message to the government — this means that the left should be autonomous from the mainstream.
The problem for us in South Africa is that we have developed our resistance in opposition to the apartheid state and haven't fully adapted to the terrain where we need a different strategic approach toward the state.
Yes, but that's exactly what you have to do. The whole struggle around the state is exactly to change the balance of forces within the state. But you cannot do that just from inside, just through lobbying or writing certain papers or restructuring particular departments.
Why should socialism matter at all in the modern — or post-modern — world ?
For the very simple reason that the system doesn't work. The situation of the west is more like the situation of the Roman Empire, because after its last triumphs the decay of the empire became stronger.
Capitalism now is in the situation where it cannot survive its own triumphs. Probably for the first time in world history, capitalism is a real global system. It means that the capitalist contradictions now are not less but more sharpened and more dangerous for the system than they were 20 years ago.
What are the challenges to capitalism in practice? These are either nationalism and "identity politics" or different sorts of fundamentalism. The weaker socialism is, the stronger will be these fundamentalist challenges.
But why should the alternative be socialism?
Because socialism is based on the principle of unification and coordination, rather than splitting and separating people. Socialism perfectly fits the modern world, as a global world, which needs coordination and solidarity and some kind of common effort. And secondly, socialism is based on the principle of overcoming the limitations of the market economy.
Do you think that there's a kind of socialist renewal on a global scale?
Yes, definitely. The problem is, how intense is the renewal? If it doesn't develop fast enough, the ideological vacuum generated by the crisis of neo-liberalism will be filled by some other ideological tendencies.