Seventy-seven years ago this week, the workers and peasants of Russia "stormed heaven", renewing the revolutionary process which capitalism thought it had crushed in the Paris Commune of 1871. Two years ago, the attempted Stalinist coup in Moscow gave the coup de grace to the Soviet Union, and capital gleefully proclaimed "the death of socialism".
But the debacle of Stalinism has cleared the way for a new and reinvigorated socialism, argues FRANK NOAKES. As an overseas correspondent for Green Left Weekly, Noakes has had the opportunity to meet and discuss with many of the groups around the world that are seeking to renew the socialist project. This article is abridged from the first Jim Percy Memorial Lecture, delivered in Brisbane and Sydney last month in memory of the founding national secretary of the Democratic Socialist Party, who died in October 1992.
In the economically devastated north-east of England is a wall behind which thousands once worked. The graffiti proclaims: "Only Jesus saves", to which someone has added: "He's the only one who can afford to around here".
Here, the birthplace of modern capitalism is now the victim of its decline. Yet capitalism's grave-diggers are not busily at their excavations. With unemployment in excess of 40% in some towns, they're not busy at anything, except surviving. To say that capitalism has failed these people is a massive understatement, and yet the prospect of its replacement seems as distant as their next job.
As the dust settles from the last fallen marble Karl Marx, it reveals not a wonderful scene of prosperity, but a world confronting its deepest economic crisis since the 1930s, a world of deepening misery and hardship.
The most powerful economy the world has known, the United States, is also the world's largest debtor. To alleviate its huge budget deficit, successive governments have cut back on welfare, health and education, with the result that more than half the adult population has inadequate literacy skills and maths so poor that they can't read a bus timetable.
Alienation in US cities has produced an escalating violence which is all the more terrible for its randomness: 13-year-olds committing "fun" murders, Pittsburgh youth drug gangs firing automatic weapons at commuters. 100,000 US children take guns to school every day. This is the triumph of capitalism.
Everywhere unemployment is growing. Massive international economic restructuring is destroying jobs at a far greater rate than new, often part-time, jobs can be created. And the crisis in the first world is multiplied in the Third World. With millions dying of starvation, life was never cheaper.
In Europe a wall of racism has been constructed to keep out the growing numbers of refugees, victims of imperialism's designs in central and eastern Europe, and starvelings of international capitalism's super-exploitation in Africa.
The economies of eastern Europe are collapsing in a frenzy of profiteering. Factories and mines are being privatised only to be closed as west European companies buy out industries to eliminate competitors and obtain their markets. Hungary, only two years ago an agricultural exporter, now imports food, its agriculture destroyed because Europe already has a surplus of agricultural products.
As capitalist competition intensifies, so have the calls to limit or abolish environmental safeguards promised or put in place in the '80s. The environmental crisis is escalating rather than easing. In Britain, dismantling of the public transport system has increased hugely the number of private cars and trucks on the already congested roads; their numbers are set to double in the next 20 years.
Capitalism needs another 100 years like the last, but the environment cannot sustain such activity — and in the meantime human health will deteriorate further. The Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine in New York has found that one in eight women now get breast cancer; three decades ago it was one in 20. As elsewhere, in the face of such epidemics, spending on health care is being cut.
In Europe, all the major political parties are experiencing a massive credibility crisis, a crisis of legitimacy.
Commenting on the recent Hamburg elections, the European's headline captured the establishment's problem: "Greens triumph as leading parties flop". The Christian Democrats' vote plummeted 30%, and their coalition partners in federal parliament, the Free Democrats, failed to regain representation in Hamburg. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) also lost support.
The two extreme right German parties polled 8% between them. Across the murky North Sea in London, the extreme-right British National Party beat Labour by seven votes in a council election. Last year in the same seat the BNP polled 657 votes, this year it won with 1480.
Citibank recently ran a full-page ad in the Financial Review to air the views of one Lester C. Thurow, who had this to say: "... the real growth rates for the capitalist world have fallen from 4.9% per year in the 1960s, to 3.8% in the 1970s, to 2.7% in the 1980s, and to about 1% in the first four years of the 1990s".
He goes on: "The ... world [is] awash with excess production capacity ... Most private business firms must prepare for a world where demand is going to be growing slower than their productivity. To maximise profitability will require permanent year after year employment down-sizing."
He finishes: "How does a firm lay off workers year after year and still remain a dynamic firm with a high quality work force? How do societies that distribute income based upon work cope with ever higher levels of unemployment?
"Easy questions to pose. Hard questions to answer."
The image of Karl Marx was petrified in stone, but his ideas, it seems, continue to have vitality.
Despite all its problems, capitalism appears on stage everywhere as the only actor. "There is no alternative", crowed Margaret Thatcher in the '80s. The company balance sheet continues to be the gauge of human progress; everything and everybody is reduced to a commodity.
At a time when a humane alternative is most needed, none is conspicuous. For the moment, socialism has lost connection with the very people who stand most to gain from it.
Despite its early vigour, nowhere has the Green political movement yet developed into a truly emancipatory movement, nor has it been able to recruit a mass membership. Ecology, on its own, is an insufficient basis for an alternative vision: a more holistic and radical perspective is needed.
And yet, millions of people are fighting against their oppression, against the destruction of their jobs and their environment. The problem is not a lack of resistance, but the lack of coordination, of any common practice, any coherent vision which can help today's struggles go beyond the defensive.
Tony Benn, the left-wing British Labour Party MP, says he's optimistic for socialism because you cannot obliterate from the human spirit two things: "the flame of anger at injustice, and the flame of hope for a better world".
Stalinism and social democracy appropriated, distorted and deprived the vision of socialism of its revolutionary and democratic content. Even those who rejected these distortions were inevitably found guilty by association with the name socialism. More tragically, their theory and practice often became distorted by their numerical weakness and years of swimming against the current.
The new radical movements, although influenced by the ideas of socialism, often withdrew from the framework of the socialist movement. And many of the new left intellectuals, cast adrift from political activity, chose to encamp in academia; often their writings became lost to comprehension and therefore relevance.
The late British Marxist Raymond Williams was one who kept his lucidity in academia. He expressed socialism's problem: "The moral decline of socialism is in exact relation to its series of compromises with older images of society and to its failure to sustain and clarify the sense of an alternative human order".
Today, with the decline of the social democratic and Stalinist models, we have been given another chance to build a new socialist vision.
The lesson today is not to underestimate democracy as a weapon against this system. Back in January 1987, Jim Percy had this to say on the subject:
"In renewing and restating our socialist vision, we must emphasise that socialism is the ultimate democracy. We fight for the most complete democracy, and in doing so we should point out that we mean not just majority rule, but an accounting with the questions of class inequality and oppression, and with questions of special oppression — particularly race and sex oppression. These factors will make our democracy far superior to anything of which bourgeois democracy is capable."
Perhaps the first task in rebuilding a strong, dynamic movement is rejecting sectarianism — which shouldn't be confused with political differentiation. Sectarianism is a product of the distortion of socialism. Likewise the practice of distorting reality to suit theory has to be confronted. Socialism must be a real science, a process of understanding the development of capitalism and of society.
There are those on the left who are confronting the challenge of renewal, in both theory and practice.
The Italian Communist Party (PCI) by 1989, despite a membership of 1.5 million and a strong influence in the trade union movement, had failed in its attempts to participate in government through its proposed "historic compromise". In addition, the collapse of Eastern Europe deeply demoralised the party.
By 1990 the plan to dissolve the PCI and form a new party was in full swing. But a large minority within the PCI advocated building "links with the Communist tradition of ideas and of political and social struggles". The differences became irreconcilable, and two parties developed out of the old PCI — the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) and the Party of Democratic Socialism. The PDS took 400,000 members and the PRC 100,000; the million PCI members lost in the process reflect the level of demoralisation.
Other left groups impressed with the direction of the PRC and its openness to socialist renewal threw in their lot. Since then the PRC has formed a close working relationship with the Network (a radical anti-corruption movement), a left current in the Green Party and a left current in the PDS. This alliance campaigned against the referendum in April designed to end proportional representation; it campaigned also in defence of the sliding scale of wages and the pension system.
In February, through the militant rank and file workers councils, the PRC initiated the first national mobilisation of workers against the government's austerity proposals. This coalition helped initiate and build a march through Rome of 300,000 workers. An International Women's Day march two weeks later mobilised 60,000 around the slogan, "We are not corrupt. We want to govern."
On September 25 a demonstration of 150,000 in Rome protested against government cutbacks. This rally was politically dominated by the PRC; it demanded a shorter working week with no loss in pay.
Through their openness and preparedness to regroup, a large section of the Italian left are rising to the challenge.
In Germany, the Party of Democratic Socialism has a layer of members who were functionaries in the East German government and who today are not politically active, but this layer is not reflective of the party as a whole. The German PDS is trying to learn from its past and is looking to link up with other left groups and activists, especially in the west, where it remains weak.
Electorally, it has experimented with joint tickets with other left parties and a radical offshoot from the Greens; it has also worked with the Greens on an anti-Maastricht campaign.
In east Berlin, the PDS is the strongest party, a fact that concerns the social democratic SPD and the CDU alike.
Nowhere in eastern Europe were the hopes higher than in East Germany that capitalism would usher in prosperity for all. Four years later, many people in eastern Germany feel like second-class citizens — marginalised politically, economically, socially and culturally. To relate to this growing discontent, the PDS last year initiated the Committees for Justice, a broad coalition involving well-known intellectuals, artists and even a few members of the Christian Democrats.
The committees were an attempt by the PDS to build grassroots activity around the growing mass unemployment, de-industrialisation, destruction of agriculture and the "humiliation" of east Germans. Their 170,000 members are predominantly workers.
The Brazilian Workers Party (PT) is another example of the left learning to live and work with one another. The PT arose out of a metal union after a long strike. It includes left and church and community groups as well as workers. In the last national elections it failed to win the presidency by only 9% and has a good chance of winning government in October 1994.
In New Zealand the NewLabour Party emerged from a left split from the Labour Party. It regrouped the left and outgrew the Labour Party. It has put together an electoral coalition, the Alliance, with the Greens, Mana Motuhake and a few liberals. This alliance has had a big impact on the politics of New Zealand, forcing the debate back towards the left.
There is increasing talk of a pan-nationalist alliance in the north of Ireland between the republican Sinn Fein and the nationalist Social Democratic Labour Party. Such an alliance there has the potential to radically shape the future of the British-occupied province.
In the US a split from the Stalinist Communist Party has formed a broad, 2000-strong group called the Committees of Correspondence. It includes people from both the Stalinist and Trotskyist traditions, and although it is having its problems, it is a genuine attempt to regroup the left. It also includes a group called Solidarity, which is itself a regroupment that includes people from an International Socialist Organisation and Fourth International background.
It will be argued by some that all these projects are reformist. But that is lazy thinking. We have to start from where we are today, and the reality is that the left is weak, divided and often confused. Any of these projects may fail, but in the attempt to build something broader, the left will learn valuable lessons and something stronger will emerge.
And what was a reformist demand two decades ago can have a very different character today. Take the 35-hour week with no loss in pay, which some workers won in the 70s: it is inconceivable that capitalists and their governments could concede such a reform today.
Often those who haven't thrown out Marxism with Stalinism, within parties coming from the Stalinist tradition, have been more innovative in their thinking than some broadly described as Trotskyist. There is a tendency among some from the Trotskyist tradition to deny that much has changed in world politics and to continue to see themselves as having the program for fundamental social change. Ultimately the "nothing's changed" argument betrays a fear of change.
It's appropriate in this context to raise Jim Percy's special contribution to revolutionary politics. Jim constantly surprised with the speed at which he could grasp new realities and adjust to them. Jim would subject everything to rigorous inquiry.
From the early '80s the Democratic Socialist Party participated in a number of regroupment processes. Ultimately none of these were organisationally successful, but the attempts showed a willingness to search for a path to greater left unity. This reach-out process also taught some valuable lessons.
These initiatives set an example. This non-sectarian approach led to the birth of the most successful left publishing project to date in Australia, Green Left Weekly. Green Left was Jim's idea; it is his legacy to the progressive movement in this country. In fact, Green Left is increasingly popular overseas, appreciated for its internationalism and red-green approach.
Jim, earlier than most, recognised the revolutionary potential of the environmental question, recognised its potential to win young people to revolutionary politics, a course he had chosen in his youth.
Tony Benn brings history to bear on this question: "... the labour movement has always had a very strong green element in it. In the English Revolution they came out with the saying, 'The earth is a common treasury. It is a crime to buy and sell the earth for private gain.' I think that's an argument for socialism."
Jim did more than green socialist politics in this country. His conscious approach to recruiting young people, of training them and integrating them into the DSP and its leadership bodies, has given the socialist movement here a future.
The training and integrating of women has also been a feature that Jim insisted we pay continuous attention to. Jim's emphasis on these questions has given us a socialism that is democratic, green and feminist — a socialism with a future.
There are calls being made for a new international, a network rather than one based on ideology. Tony Benn is thinking of such a formation: "I'm trying to work on the idea of a Fifth International. We need to build a popular movement that can express itself without ideological narrowness, that develops and builds on the common interests we have."
That notion, if not the name, is gaining a hearing from people from very different traditions. Developments such as the Sao Paulo Forum, involving not only the Latin American left and progressive movements but also organisations from outside the region, also point the way to a new international solidarity and learning process.
This rethinking is taking place in action, and it is worth considering a concrete struggle and the creative rethinking that is occurring around it. In South Africa, reality is once again confounding many on the left. Many used to hold that only a revolution could end apartheid; yet we are faced with the likelihood of an election next year which will herald the progressive dismantling of its structures. The legacy of apartheid will take many decades to overcome, but the struggle ahead will based on class rather than on race.
A leading member of the South African Communist Party, Jeremy Cronin, told Green Left Weekly that the business attitude to the ANC has become one of, "'If we're not going to defeat the barbarians, let's Romanise them'. A lot of that engagement is to say: 'You guys need us or there's going to be a flight of capital'."
But as Cronin says: "On the other hand we also need to engage them. They're powerful; the day after the elections, they're still going to run the economy. It's a long haul transformation process, and we've got to lock them into the reconstruction process."
He points out that they have to deal realistically with the balance of forces in a way that doesn't foreclose on the project. That's difficult because they haven't defeated the regime, though it's in crisis and in retreat.
When you engage in struggle, what you win is often small piecemeal gains. But "each one of those has the potential to be a platform for further advances, and that's what much of struggle is about. There are qualitative moments, but by and large the revolution isn't 'Ten days that shook the world'."
Cronin is aware of the dangers. He notes that there has been a tendency for the ANC to transform itself into an effective negotiator, an effective election apparatus. The battle is not to throw away what was learned over the last 15 years about mass mobilisation and involvement.
The elections in South Africa only register what has been won in mass struggle. Also, they don't represent the end of the struggle.
Fellow SACP and ANC leader Raymond Suttner takes up this question too. He says: "I believe that the success of the South African revolution ... is dependent on strengthening the ANC as a broad democratic organisation, and strengthening all the democratic forces beyond it, because you're not going to have a successful transition beyond democracy, unless you have these other forces of civil society playing a full role".
The main question confronting the socialist movement worldwide is, according to Suttner, "the question of empowerment": "We've got to stop thinking of people's power as being located in political organisations only and work out how we can have permanent people's power through a number of different modes of organisation".
The collapse of Eastern Europe has caused the SACP to rethink many of its frameworks. This, says Suttner, has implications for all Marxists. "I think we are moving towards a conception that the socialist project is not the property of the Communist Party alone; that its success in South Africa is dependent on the broadest range of left forces unifying and using their strength to advance democracy in such a way that the conditions for socialism are created."
This has an applicability beyond South Africa. One party leading the process of revolutionary change on its own in the first world is unlikely — although not entirely ruled out, as nothing can be in politics.
If we accept the notion of a plurality of political organisations competing and cooperating in a new society, it is quite likely, in my opinion, that such a dynamic relationship will be built in the struggle to achieve fundamental social change.
Telma De Souza, a leading member of the Brazilian Workers Party, in London recently also talked about their experience of uniting the various progressives:
"The PT has developed a pluralism which incorporates various groupings and ... talks about moving towards solutions and policies rather than having them carved in stone ...
"You have to hear everyone; everyone has a voice. I don't believe in God, but I work with many Catholics. We have to be tolerant. In the Workers Party we are not changing the purpose but the way."
One of the signposts of an invigorated socialism is the understanding that unity is strength. But we don't need to read that as meaning that we all have to belong to the same party; if we can unite around temporary specific projects, then that offers a way forward for the left. Of course, the development of greater cooperation will be uneven from country to country, and such projects can't be wished into existence; there have to be the real forces on the ground to make it happen.
At the same time, we can reaffirm that there is still a need for a party, or parties, of committed, conscious activists, adding clarity, helping to build and strengthen and extend the alliance.
Joe Slovo, chair of the SACP in his pamphlet Has Socialism Failed?, suggests that a democratic socialism remains the most rational, just and democratic way for human beings to relate to one another. He suggests a few fundamental principles:
Firstly: Humankind can never attain real freedom until no person has the freedom to exploit another person.
Secondly: The bulk of humanity's resources will never be used for the good of humanity until they are in public ownership and under democratic control.
And thirdly: The all-round development of the individual and the creation of opportunities for every person to express his or her talents to the full can only find ultimate expression in a society which dedicates itself to people rather than profit.
We can add, that the planet on which we live will survive and be restored to health only if responsibility for it is invested in the collective, so that it becomes a true "common treasury for all".
If we were to sketch in the essentials for a renewed socialism, we might describe it as above all democratic; genuinely internationalist in outlook and practice; embracing environmental sustainability; non-sexist and non-racist; and pluralistic, non-sectarian, in its approach.
Marxist economist Ernest Mandel, invoking the image of Che Guevara, suggests that we bring our political and personal practice into strict conformity with our principles. Further, he quotes approvingly Napoleon's dictum: Engage in struggle and then see. Don't start by ruling things in or out, but let the struggle suggest the tactics.
In the early part of this century socialism inspired millions. It offered hope, a vision for a better, more human life; it inspired many to make great sacrifices.
The task before the left today is to reconnect the democratic socialist project with the people who have most to gain from it: the working class, who make up the great majority of the population.
Some of the rethinking and regroupment projects that I've mentioned, and there are others, are positive about the prospects for socialist renewal. But there's no room for complacency, and it's not a timeless project either, because an opportunity for the left in the present economic and political situation, is also an opportunity to the extreme right.
The objective conditions exist; the need has never been greater. The prospects for socialism will be as good as we and others who want a better world are able to make them.