/* Written 9:35 AM May 5, 1998 by pen-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu in igc:bitl.pen */
/* ---------- "Is Socialism Dead?" ---------- */
Socialism's Dead by Roger Burbach
(Reprinted from the November/December 1997 issue of NACLA Report on the
Americas. For subscription information, email NACLA at nacla@nacla.org)
Twentieth century socialism is moribund. In the Americas, socialist-
oriented movements were dealt severe blows by the electoral defeat of the
Sandinistas in 1990, the general impasse of Central American revolutionary
movements, and the crisis of Cuban Communism with the collapse of the
Soviet Union. Radical grassroots movements, as Judith Hellman noted in a
previous anniversary essay, have by no means disappeared in the Americas,
but those that enunciate socialist goals are few and far between.1
Can socialism be reborn? And if so, what might it look like? Over the
years NACLA has played a critical role in reporting and analyzing the four
major socialist or neo-socialist experiences in the Americas-Cuba, Chile,
Grenada and Nicaragua. The latter two were not self-proclaimed socialist
experiments, but the processes were anti-imperialist and the governments
enacted policies designed to alleviate or eliminate economic and social
inequalities. Moreover, the dominant political parties of these two
revolutions-the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and the New
Jewel Party-were powerfully imbued with socialist concepts and ideals.
The reasons for the failure or demise of each of these experiences are
varied, although if there is one overriding cause it is that U.S.
imperialism proved to be very flexible and adaptive, developing a variety
of interventionary strategies in the economic, social and political
spheres. Interestingly, it was not direct U.S. military intervention that
defeated them. The 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs was an abysmal
failure and led to the consolidation of Cuban socialism, while the U.S.
invasion of Grenada in 1983 came only after the revolutionary movement had
self-destructed and executed its own leaders.
My general thesis is that twentieth century socialism has been defeated
for two contradictory reasons. In those socialist experiments that were
the most democratic, like Chile from 1970 to 1973, the United States was
able to exploit relatively open political and economic processes to
destroy them from within. On the other hand, in those centralized and
verticalist socialist projects such as Cuba, the lack of authentic
democratic processes weakened their popular support and led to the
implementation of inefficient state-dominated economies. This provided
grist for the ongoing U.S. ideological campaign against Communism and
socialism.
Yet before a new socialism can be postulated, we need to understand the
nature of late capitalism and imperialism as we approach the new
millennium. Here, I maintain the starting point is that capitalism in
recent years has undergone an epochal shift with globalization.2 Briefly
stated, those who view globalization as a new stage of capitalism argue
that the economies of the world are now integrated under the aegis of
transnational capital and that the nation state is losing much of its
autonomy to international institutions like the World Trade Organization
(WTO), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The state
is still a very powerful entity, but now it responds to the needs of
transnational capital rather than national interests.
In a sense this newness is a matter of degree. A century and a half ago,
Marx argued in the Communist Manifesto that capital was an inherently
universalizing system that continually internationalized itself, breaking
down regional and national barriers as it advanced. Certainly this process
has deepened since Marx's time, but for over a century, the Manifesto's
corollary-the growth of an international struggle for socialism generated
by the expansion of capital and its contradictions- has been undermined by
the nation state and its ability to coopt the working class into national
and chauvinist conflicts among nations. Yet with globalization, the
conditions that facilitated the cooptation of national working classes are
changing, and we are seeing the emergence of an array of social movements,
many of which have internationalist perspectives.
For socialists, the epochal shift to globalization also means that the
historical argument of Lenin and other Marxists that imperialism nurtured
a labor aristocracy is losing its validity. In the era of globalization,
transnational capital is now free to roam the world, tapping the cheapest
labor markets, thereby undermining wages and the standards of living in
the core countries. The two wealthiest countries in the Western
Hemisphere-the United States and Canada-have experienced a growing
economic polarization and a decline of the influence of their working
classes and trade unions. These processes have also had adverse effects on
the middle classes of these nations. Both the United States and Canada
have become "third worldized" due to the pauperization of certain sectors
and the expansion of immigration from the Third World-a phenomenon also
related to the process of globalization.
Simultaneously as capital becomes increasingly internationalized, it
incorporates Third World elites into its fold. NACLA's recent Report on
Latin American billionaires documented the extent of this process.3 These
elites now view their interests in an international context and are
increasingly opposed to national, protectionist policies-policies once
favored by important sectors of the bourgeoisies in countries like Mexico,
Brazil, Chile and Argentina.
The shift to globalization has also altered the political paradigm that the
core countries are advocating for the Third World. As William Robinson
shows in "Promoting Polyarchy," the United States has turned against many
of the dictators it once nurtured, and has adopted a policy of supporting,
and even imposing, controlled democracies in order to integrate the third
world into a global neoliberal economy.4 The effort to oust Pinochet in
Chile was the first manifestation of this new policy approach in the
hemisphere. More recently, the invasion of Haiti to reinstall
Jean-Bertrand Aristide served as a dramatic illustration of this policy
shift. In general, the United States and the other imperial powers now
recognize that dictators can be politically unstable and may not provide
the best terrain for the advance of free trade and transnational capital.
Of course this approach does not prevent the United States from endorsing
pseudo-democracies such as the Fujimori regime, which shut down Peru's
Congress in 1992, ruled by emergency decree and then adopted a new
constitution that granted President Fujimori virtual dictatorial powers.
But it is important to note that even in these instances, the regimes do
hold referendums and elections that give them a certain sense of
legitimacy, both domestically and internationally.
The implications of this epochal shift for the future of socialism and
socialist struggles are many. For one, it means that it will never again be
effective for socialists to build their movements around a verticalist
Marxist-Leninist state or political party. Imperialism, especially U.S.
imperialism, is now extremely adept at using the language, and even the
basic forms of democracy to advance the interests of the transnational
elites. Radical movements for change can only be successful to the extent
that they are able to demonstrate that they are more democratic in their
struggles and goals than the neoliberal democratic paradigm. In
particular, they need to continually demonstrate that capitalist democracy
is insufficient; that true democracy extends to the economic arena; and
that the unregulated market advocated by neoliberals is incompatible with
authentic democracy.5
Despite the limitations of capitalist democracy, the growing awareness
among socialists of the importance of transparent elections and basic
political freedoms explains why Cuba in recent years has ceased to serve
as a model for socialist struggles in the Americas. It is not the economic
difficulties Cuba is experiencing nor the U.S. blockade that has weakened
the appeal of Cuba. In fact, Cuba's economic plight was much more severe
in the late 1960s than it is today. But in the 1960s the revolution
enjoyed extensive popular support because Cubans then had a sense of
participation in the political and economic life of their country. It was
during the 1970s that the Cuban Communist party and the state consolidated
control over virtually all facets of the economy and exercised centralized
control of the trade unions, the educational system and "mass organizations."
In recent years in Cuba there has been a devolution of many state
enterprises to worker and peasant run cooperatives, particularly in the
agricultural sphere. Few steps, however, have been taken to democratize
the country as a whole, as Fidel Castro and the party insist on retaining
total political power. The Cuban variant of socialism may survive into the
foreseeable future, but until the political system opens up, the
revolution will remain in a largely defensive position, unable to provide
inspiration for a renewal of socialism in the Americas.
The Sandinista revolutionary leadership understood to a certain extent
that the old socialist paradigm of single-party states was no longer
viable and that democratic elections were necessary. Thus the Sandinistas,
instead of monopolizing political power, brought other parties into the
process in a coalition government and began holding open elections in
1984. But the Sandinista revolution was caught between the new and the
old. While allowing pluralist elections, the FSLN was a vanguard party
with a "national directorate" that exercised tight control not only over
the party but also over the affiliated "mass" or social movements.
On the economic front, the Sandinistas advocated a "mixed economy,"
wherein some enterprises were controlled by the state while others
remained in the hands of private interests. Those economic and political
spheres that remained autonomous were thus in a position to undermine or
sabotage Sandinista initiatives. In the end, the United States and its
allies inside and outside of Nicaragua proved to be adept at tarring the
Sandinistas with the "totalitarian" brush while manipulating public
opinion and civil society. They forged a counterrevolutionary bloc
comprised of a number of political parties, civic and business
organizations, the Catholic hierarchy, and even trade unions and sectors
of the peasantry. This bloc brought Violeta Chamorro to power in 1990.
Can the most democratic socialist experience in the Americas, Chile of the
early 1970s, serve as a model for the future? Here it was not verticalism
or the lack of democracy that debilitated the Popular Unity coalition, but
the "invisible blockade" of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.6 The
blockade undermined the economy, destabilized the political system, and
laid the basis for the U.S.-backed coup by General Pinochet.
The government of Salvador Allende made one fatal mistake-it's failure in
mid-1973 to retain General Prats as head of the military and to purge the
officers who were conspiring against him. Such a move would also probably
have required the arming of working-class civilians and the overnight
creation of popular militias to fight with the loyalist sectors of the
military. However, as Allende realized, a decision to back Prats with
these measures would have provoked a civil war and required the suspension
of the Chilean parliament and constitution. These measures were abhorrent
to Allende and to most of the parties of the Popular Unity coalition,
given their deep commitment to maintaining Chile's democratic
institutions. It was this paradoxical choice between maintaining the
Popular Unity's commitment to democratic institutions and procedures and
the need to take military steps to destroy the opposition that makes Chile
the most tragic socialist experience in the Americas and perhaps in the
history of twentieth century socialism.
Many of the socialist leaders who survived the Pinochet years now argue
that the economic policies of Allende's Popular Unity government may never
have been viable. For some of them, especially those who have been
incorporated into the center-left government led by the Christian
Democrats, policies that would nationalize sectors of the economy are even
more problematic in the era of globalization because any efforts to
restrict or control the flow of international capital by a given
government are immediately met by capital flight and economic crisis. This
argument of leftists against any effort to revive such state socialist
policies is perhaps best encapsulated in Jorge Castaneda's book, Utopia
Unarmed, which argues that the left has to accept "the logic of the
market" and limit itself to choosing what type of capitalist system it
buys into-neoliberalism or the "social market" of Western Europe or Japan.7
While any economic alternative will have to deal with the realities of the
global market, we cannot limit ourselves to choosing one variant of
capitalism over another. The development of a new economic model is key to
the resurrection of the left. Any new approach, of course, cannot be
simply willed into existence; it will have to emerge out of concrete,
ongoing economic and political struggles.
At this point in history, the left, instead of lamenting the lack of "grand
narratives" and an explicit economic alternative, can draw inspiration
from the fact that there are so many local, unconnected movements
occurring throughout the Americas. As James Petras points out in a recent
essay, for example, there is a renewed insurgency among the peasantry of
Latin America, as demonstrated by the landless movement in Brazil, the
struggles of the coca farmers in Bolivia, and the Zapatista movement of
Chiapas.8
These struggles are more than defensive. The landless movement in Brazil
is developing alternative economic projects and securing limited
international funding, often from non-governmental organizations. As for
the Zapatistas of Mexico, a central plank of their struggle is that the
indigenous communities of Chiapas are entitled to the resources necessary
to carry out their own autonomous economic development. These are
important self-help approaches, calculated to develop alternative, viable
economies at the local and regional level.9
In fact these local and regional initiatives can be viewed as part of a
deeper long-term process of creating alternatives to modern capitalism.
Here it is important to recognize that the globalization process of
transnational capital is both centripetal and centrifugal. It concentrates
and integrates capital and trade, while at the same time casting off
industries, peoples and even countries that it has no use for.
In the parts of the world that capitalism discards, a new mode of
production is taking hold, which is comprised of what can be called
"popular economies," or what we have elsewhere referred to as "postmodern
economies."10 These economies do not and cannot compete head to head with
transnational capital in the globalization process. Rather they lurk on
the sidelines, seizing those activities that the transnational world
decides to dispose of. This historic process resembles the transition from
feudalism to capitalism. Then capitalism first took hold in feudalism's
nooks and crannies, slowly gathering momentum until it became the dominant
form of production.
The new popular or postmodern economies are still incipient in Latin
America and other parts of the world, comprised of highly differentiated
activities and economic islands that rise out of what capitalism discards.
The most extensive of the economies, particularly in Latin America,
consists of the informal sector-the ever more numerous street vendors, the
flea markets, petty family businesses, and even garbage scavengers who
recycle aluminum cans, cardboard and bottles while using what they can of
the refuse. On a larger scale, the struggles of peasants and workers in
post-Sandinista Nicaragua are reflective of another kind of popular
economy: the selling off of large but weak enterprises to worker and
peasant cooperatives. Over 350 enterprises of all sizes and types are now
owned and run by the workers, many of which were controlled by the state
under the Sandinista government. When the Chamorro government began to
sell them off as part of the privatization process demanded by the IMF and
World Bank, the workers on many of these enterprises simply occupied them,
and/or began to negotiate for taking control of them. Today there is a
national association of worker-run enterprises that facilitates their
development and access to technical assistance and capital while lobbying
with the government and the banks for their growth and expansion into new
areas of the economy.11
All these areas of postmodern economic activity are growing in importance
in Latin America and the Caribbean, not because they can compete in any
significant way with transnational capital, but because they are the only
option available to ever-increasing numbers of people. A subcontractor for
a large corporation, a refuse scavenger, a worker- run cooperative, a
micro-entrepreneur in the informal economy, a peasant or a street
vendor-none of them abandon their activities because there is little else
they can do to survive. While none of this constitutes socialism, these
are all proto-socialist activities because they represent efforts by
people to take control of their lives at the most fundamental, grassroots
level.
The postmodern economies and their participants will continue to grow in
importance because global capitalism excludes more and more people, and
also because of inherent crises and contradictions within the system
itself. Clearly these new economies need to advance in tandem with
alternative political movements and with the struggles of workers and
peasants. Popular economies can survive and grow even in the midst of a
globalized world only if people become increasingly conscious of their
need to struggle for them-building a "new politics" along with new
economic activities.
Here the EZLN and the Zapatistas in Chiapas are particularly illustrative
of how this process can unfold. Their political and economic demands are
focused largely on the needs of Chiapas and its indigenous peoples. This
is probably the first national liberation movement that did not proclaim
as its objective a march on the capital city and the seizure of state
power. Rather the Zapatistas have centered on civil society as the agent
of change, calling for the mobilization of a wide array of civic
associations and organizations to demand authentic economic and political
democracy. The strength of the Zapatistas has not come from the "barrel of
a gun"-in fact at times they have had only wooden guns- but from their
ability to wage a political-ideological war against Mexico's ruling party
and the state.
In the introduction to the recent NACLA Report, "Voices on the Left,"
which contained interviews with activists from around the hemisphere, the
NACLA editors note the remarkable reality that "that in this age of doubt
and cynicism, the activists interviewed maintain a radical commitment and
enthusiasm." In the interviews with these activists, all of whom are
"engaged in the struggles of their times and places," the editors note an
emphasis "on democratic modes of development, mass participation in
politics and structural, 'achievable' reforms."12
In other articles, I have argued that this constitutes a new, postmodern
politics, a politics that is leading to the rise of postmodern
socialisms.13 It is a socialism of place, a socialism with a local agenda,
a socialism with a hundred faces and experiences, a socialism without a
name or a grand narrative at present. The genius of these struggles is
that every effort to raise consciousness or to develop self-help projects
at the local level is innately part of the long-term process of building
new socialisms. As Bishop Samuel Ruiz of Chiapas remarks, the Zapatista
rebels "emerged without faces because they represent many unseen faces
from elsewhere which are now emerging as new subjects."14 They exist here
and now, even if socialism is not mentioned and capitalism retains control
of the global economy and the formal political systems.
The concept of postmodern socialisms will not become a banner that people
fight and die for; rather the term is a conceptual framework for viewing
the diverse struggles that are growing throughout the hemisphere and the
rest of the world. These movements over a period of time will have to
frame and characterize their struggles from the ground up, creating local,
regional and international ties to other struggles and movements. Only
they have the capacity to create a grand new narrative capable of
challenging capitalist globalization and replacing the state socialism of
the twentieth century with a new emancipatory project.
Notes
1. Judith Adler Hellman, "Social Movements: Revolution, Reform and
Reaction," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. 30, No. 6, May/June, 1997,
pp. 13-18.
2. Roger Burbach, "Globalization as an Epochal Shift," paper presented to
the International Conference on Critical Geography, Vancouver, Canada,
August 10-14, 1997.
3. See "Latin America in the Age of the Billionaires," NACLA Report on the
Americas, Vol. 30, No. 6, May/June, 1997.
4. William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US
Intervention and Hegemony, (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
Press, 1996).
5. For an extensive discussion of democracy and its relationship to
neoliberalism and the struggles of the left, see Steve Volk's anniversary
essay "'Democracy' Versus 'Democracy,'" NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol.
30, No. 4, Jan/Feb, 1997, pp. 6-12.
6. See especially one of NACLA's most important groundbreaking reports,
Elizabeth Farnsworth, Richard Feinberg and Eric Leenson, "Facing the
Blockade," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. TK, No. TK, October 1972.
7. Jorge G. Castenada, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the
Cold War, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 432.
8. See James Petras, "The Peasantry Strikes Back," New Left Review, No.
223, May/June, 1997, pp. 17-47.
9. While Petras argues for a revived peasant movement in Latin America, it
is clear from his article that he does not believe the NGO's are useful in
this process, nor does he place hope in the building of alternative
economies among the peasantry as this essay does.
10. For an extended discussion of postmodern economies and postmodern
socialisms, see Roger Burbach, Orlando Nunez, and Boris Kagarlitsky,
Globalization And Its Discontents: The Rise of Postmodern Socialisms
(London: Pluto Press, 1997). Orlando Nunez develops the concept of the
popular economy in: La economia popular: asociativa y autogestionaria,
(Managua: CIPRES, 1995).
11. Orlando Nunez, La Economia Popular, pp. 289-312.
12. "Voices on the Left," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. 31, No. 1,
July/August, 1997, pp. 5-6.
13. Globalization And Its Discontents, See especially Chapter 9, "The Long
Transition To Postmodern Socialisms," pp. 153-169.
14. "Voices on the Left" NACLA Report on the Americas, p. 5.
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