Paper presented at the panel entitled "Imaginings of Socialism" at the Left Forum sponsored by Global Left Dialogue, New York City, April 17, 2005.
The moderator of the panel was Manning Marable; the other panelists were Robin Kelley, Amiri Baraka, and Michael Albert.
Thank you Manning. I appreciate the opportunity to participate on this panel with you, Robin, Amiri, and Michael. I have admired scholarship, poetry, and activism of each of you from afar. I enjoyed Robin and Michael’s presentations. My remarks are along a different line and more near term.
For a movement to gain power and create a new society – and that’s what we are all about in the end – political imagination as well as historical memory are vital at every turn. For many progressives and left minded people, however, given our nation’s present political conjuncture, this may not seem like a propitious moment for dreaming and imagining.
After all, for the past twenty-five years, we have been on our heels with barely a moment to clear our heads before the next body blow by our powerful class foes.
In such circumstances, the natural reaction is to duck, to assume a defensive posture, to shutdown our imaginations. But this is a mistake and I will tell you why.
In the course of consolidating its economic and political positions, a hyper aggressive U.S. imperialism brings in its train new and powerful oppositional forces, many of which – and not only the young anti-globalists – are beginning to think on a system level of analysis.
Admittedly, they don’t yet embrace socialism, but they do imagine a society without the hardships, oppressions, worries, pressures, instabilities, and unseemly profiteering that are emblematic of and structured into present day capitalism. They envision a future that would bring material security and a sense of community. They yearn for a new birth of freedom. They hunger for a joyous life. They want a little heaven on this earth.
This structure of feeling doesn’t, all at once, translate into a mass constituency for socialism. In fact, it can just as easily morph into its a mass base for political reaction as we have seen, but the way to respond to it is not to declaim "the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will," nor to endlessly bemoan the weaknesses of the left, nor to squirrel ourselves away in left forms and affinity groups that are detached from the main organizations of the working class and people and tone deaf to the actual dynamics of class and democratic struggles.
But rather our task is to join with millions to defend and expand democracy and in the course of these struggles to weave together and share a vision of a different world that qualitatively enlarges the boundaries and transforms the meaning of freedom.
Socialism and Values
Our vision has to be informed by a set of normative values. Some of the most important are social solidarity, equality, non-violence, democracy, respect for difference, individual freedom and liberty, sustainability, and internationalism.
These values should shape the culture, discourse, and decision-making processes of a socialist society. While they can only be realized over time, they must remain in the foreground in every phase of the socialist project. They must condition the means as well as the ends of socialist development.
There was a tendency in the communist movement, however, to see these values instrumentally. In the name of fighting the class enemy and building socialism, socialist norms, morality, legality, and values became too easily expendable.
I like to think we have learned some lessons in this regard. One of which is that we can’t be cavalier about the values that should guide our project. If our values don’t animate the revolutionary process, if the means and methods of socialist construction aren’t reflective of socialism’s values, then socialism’s spirit and structures will be deformed. Socialism will concede its most attractive feature – its humanism and moral authority, which once lost, is difficult to regain.
Who are the Actors in the Transition to Socialism?
Essential to our political imagination is a vision of the class and social forces that have to be assembled to win political power and begin the process of socialist construction.
In my view, at the center of this assemblage is the multi-racial, multi-national, male-female, multi-generational working class. And to this I couple the communities of the nationally and racially oppressed, women, and youth.
Together these social forces are – what I call – the "core constituencies" of a broader people’s coalition insofar as their participation in this coalition is a strategic requirement at every stage of struggle, including the socialist stage. Remove any one of them from the mix and the prospects for winning are not simply greatly dimmed but doomed.
Around this core are gathered other diverse social movements whose interests and issues of struggle ally them with these core constituencies.
While I resist the idea that the working class on its own can bring its class opponents to its knees, I don’t minimize the strategic social power of the working class nor occlude the Marxist insight that the working class because of its economic location, political capacities and historical experience is best positioned, though not preordained, to emerge as the general leader of the broader democratic movement.
Implicit in all this is the notion that there is no direct or smooth path to socialism or a "Great Revolutionary Day" on which the economy breaks down, the workers revolt and seize power, the state, economy and civil society are smashed and remade from top to bottom in one fell swoop, and socialism springs up full grown, like Minerva from the head of Zeus.
You may be thinking that this is a caricature, but such ideas have always had some currency in the communist and left movement.
The other vision of the revolutionary process, which I embrace, is that the struggle for socialism goes through different phases during which the configuration of contending class and social forces changes, requiring, in turn, new strategic policies and forms of transition to match the new alignment of forces and new level of mass political consciousness.
Periods of advance will yield to periods of retreat and vice versa. Shifting alliances will form and reform with each side struggling to turn provisional allies into stable ones. Electoral and legislative forms of struggles will interact with various forms of extra-parliamentary mass action. For a while no class is hegemonic and control of the branches of government is contested and indeterminate with each power bloc trying to capture the initiative. Much depends on a meltdown in the structures of coercion and paralysis, if not divisions, within ruling circles.
Even when political ruptures occur, they will be neither complete nor irreversible. In fact, on the day after the transfer of power, socio-economic life will probably look much the like it did the day before.
Thus, revolutions are not single events or a single act, but rather a series of events and processes stretching over time and involving the exploited and oppressed both before, during, and long after the revolutionary transition.
Nor are revolutions imitative. They offer some regularities, but only in the most general sense. Yes, political power has to migrate from the hands of one class into the hands of another – that’s the fundamental law of revolutions. Of course economic transformations have to occur. And a revolution in the meaning of freedom, culture and values is absolutely necessary.
But all of this can happen in variety of ways. For instance, the pace and scale of socio-economic and cultural transformations will vary greatly depending on mass consciousness, the leadership skill of the revolutionary forces, and objective circumstances.
At one time I held the view that the movement would narrow as socialism came into view. But I am of the opposite opinion now. Socialism has to be a mass social upheaval of all the discontented and all the various social movements. Some will bring with them backward notions. Many will be newcomers to politics.
Thus, the struggle for socialism is not just a project of the left; it has to be a project whose mass character deepens, deepens again and deepens still again at every stage in the process. Without such a character, socialism will remain in our imagination.
In seeking forms of transition to socialism and in considering its main tasks in our country, we should be unabashed proponents of our own nationally specific path.
Of course, we should study the experiences of other countries, but there are no universal models of socialism.
In fact, if I were to write a book on our path to socialism, I would not make the particular features of our country an addendum, but rather a main thread. For example, given our tradition of democracy or given the way that race has structured the politics, economics, culture, consciousness, and historical trajectory of our nation, our vision of socialism must include an unyielding commitment to expanding democracy as well as completing the unfinished democratic tasks that we will inherit, beginning with the eradication of racism in all of its forms. Any, even the slightest, devaluing of democracy or the fight against racism, will keep the socialist movement on the political periphery.
We also have to anticipate that multiple parties and movements will lead the millions who are no longer "willing to live in the old way." In such a front, parties and movements will cooperate as well as compete over a range of issues and for mass influence, but hopefully the accent will be on cooperation and unity.
Obviously, a movement for socialism should seek a peaceful path, especially in this era. In the end we only demand that the American people in their millions be allowed the be the final arbiter of the socio-economic character of our country.
Of course, our ruling class is far from generous in spirit. Thus, the best guarantee of a peaceful transition is an aroused, mobilized, united, and determined people.
By the same token, the left has to heed the wishes of the electorate as well, including the possibility of being removed from office by a majority of voters.
