A socialism for our time
After 1968, it was almost fashionable to be a revolutionary, and share the illusion that the revolution would be easy (a tea party). People were quick to demand "everything, right away" This happy consciousness could partly be explained as a result of the thirty (*glorious") years of almost uninterrupted growth after the war. Today, after the disasters in Eastern Europe, many people are wondering if the revolution and socialism are still good ideas. Others are convinced that the world still has be changed, but doubt whether it still can be changed. Daniel Bensaid 1. The right way to see the problem EMPLOYMENT
Our model of a better society is not dead, particularly because we never thought that BUREAU the regimes that fell when when the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR disintegrated were models of anything. The fight for human emancipation does not consist in counterposing one model to another. It begins with resisting injustices, humiliations, and generalized contempt in a world where the richest 20% get 85% of the wealth while the poorest 20% share less than 2% This marketbased planetary order, which sows inequality and violence, is simply not acceptable.
Unemployment and massive social marginalization are glaring illustrations of the system's absurdity. The impressive growth of productivity, which makes it possible to produce five times as much wealth or more in less time than fifty years ago, could make it possible to devote the time saved to other things:
advantages of a long tradition of combat against capitalism and Stalinism.
rice: £5/S10/60FF plus 10% postage charge for orders of 1-4 copies. Order trom vour local agent, or directly from International Viewpoint, BP 85, I5522 Paris a Youth supplement • to a drastic reduction of the work-week, to the transformation of work itself, which is the precondition for active participation by everyone in the life of the community; and • to the satisfaction of social needs (housing, education, health care, culture. Who has the right to decide, and on what basis, that people are being taught too much and taken care of too well? Why is selling automobiles good for the economy and spending on health care bad?
This growing irrationality of the logic of capital in which 700,000 new jobs make the New York stock exchange fall), which measures everything and organizes society on the basis of exchange of labour time, bears witness to the limits of this wretched measurement as soon as labour incorporates more and more knowledge which is more and more complex, so that labour becomes irreducible to abstract labour.
The ravaging of the environment and heedless pillage of non-renewable energy sources is another manifestation of this irrationality resulting from the inadequate measurement of social relationships. The frenetic hunt for short-term profits leads to neglect of the middle and long term (various kinds of pollution, deforestation, recycling of waste). The spirit of "live for today, tomorrow can take care of itself" destroys the accompanied by tragedies (Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechenya) which, far from being wars "out of the Middle Ages", are a logical part of this planetary reorganization.
Wars, unemployment, marginalization and ecological threats are the heralds of a future without a future. Already the illusions of progress, according to which future generations would necessarily live better than earlier ones, are beginning to crumble away. It is more necessary than ever to change the world. The role of revolutionaries is to act so that this necessity becomes possible.
II. A different idea of progress
It is true that the impressive development of technical knowledge and possibilities does not automatically lead to corresponding social and cultural progress. Under the reign of capital, progress and regression remain indissolubly linked. We must therefore define criteria of progress that are not reducible to the achievements of big industry or the "conquest of space". At the risk of oversimplifying, we should hold on to three essential points: • Drastic reduction of the work-week (made possible by the enormous increase in productivity, which implies a radical change in our relationship to work and even in the content of work. This reduction in the proportion of our lives given over to constraining, alienated labour is the first precondition for the democratic development of society, so that all people will be able to exercise fully their responsibilities and control over the power centres. It is also the precondition for the free development of each individual. The admirable diversity of individual members of our species constitutes in truth an opportunity that we have to seize, not in order to celebrate the illusory, mutilated individuality of marketbased conformism, but in order really to
Transformation and regroupment solidarity between generations that is so necessary to reproduction of the species.
Only an economy brought under political
The collapse of Stalinism and the continuing capitalist control and guidance, integrating long-term crisis has contradictory effects. Myths and illusions imperatives, would be capable of satisfying connected to the restoration of capitalism in the postpeople's main social
Stalinist societies have dissipated, faced with the needs without actually existing market economy. But reactions to the devastating nature.
socio-economic crisis all too often take the form of reactionary tendencies of an ethnic, nationalist, racial
The current crisis has lasted since the or religious character. Hence the urgent need to
1970s; brief, episodic recoveries have not rebuild a world-wide movement of anti-capitalist resulted in lower unemployment even in the struggle, taking account of the recomposition of the rich countries. This is not a simple problem workers' movement which is underway as a result of the double failure of social democracy and of corporate profitability. Profits have been restored, but without leading to productive investment and job creation. IN FACT, THIS
Regroupments of forces determined to learn the lessons of the historical abomination that was
CRISIS IS A GLOBAL CRISIS OF
Stalinism and to continue, against the winds and
CAPITAL ACCUMULATION AND OF the tides, to fight against capitalism are being realised in a
REPRODUCTION
OF
SOCIAL
RELATIONS. The bourgeoisie can
The organisations of the Fourth International are ready to be part of the reovercome this crisis, but only at a high price groupment process. We consider this as an important step towards the for the exploited and oppressed. Already, recomposition of the anti-capitalist left on a world scale. At the international leve under the pretext of globalization, a new the Fourth International is an active participant in re-groupment, bringing with it the division of territories and (economic, juridical and communicative) spaces is being carried out. This major transformation cannot take place peacefully. It is already being
Stalinism.
number of countries.
cedex 11, France
*
Youth supplement
• PECI, PO Box 85, 75522 Paris, cedex 11 France e-mail 100666.1443@compuserve.com fax 331/43792961 develop a creative individual with steadily richer and more diversified personal and collective needs. In this way human beings could find their way back to the sense of play and bodily pleasures, which are subjected today to the principle of cost-benefit analysis and the dazed observation of mass spectator sports. • The quality of the relationships between men and women (and vice versa) is another criteria of progress, inasmuch as it constitutes the first simultaneous experience of otherness (and of difference between the sexes) and of the universality of the species. [The translator has his doubts about this: isn't a female baby's first experience of otherness with her own mother?] More generally, wherever a relationship of domination and oppression of women by men continues to exist, the stranger, the alien, the person from somewhere else, in short the other will also be threatened. • The point is in the last analysis TO WORK TOWARDS ACHIEVING A TRULY UNIVERSAL HUMAN SOLIDARITY, through a truly planetary flourishing of production and communication, by means of the enrichment of all through the appreciation of difference. Market universalization, dictated by the imperatives of capital, remains an abstract, contradictory, mutilated universalization. Under the dictatorship of the IMF, World Bank and WTO (particularly using debt as a their weapon), it fuels at the receiving end panics over identity, communalist withdrawals, religious fears, xenophobia and racism in general. Generous, Internationalist solidarity remains by contrast a fresh new idea.
III. What socialism do we want?
The point is not to turn one model in for another or draw up blueprints for a celestial city. The future must be invented as we go along, beginning from the real contradictions of the existing order. But every revolutionary project is in part a dream. We must dream in order to explore what lies hidden within the possible.
Imagine a world where we only work half-days. This means working differently: having the time to develop and educate oneself throughout one's life; escaping from fixed specializations; being able at one and the same time to be a worker as well as a poet, painter and musician. Today, in the professionalized "arts", "professionals" constitute a minority who do not always have anything to say, while the great majority of people who have so much to say never have
La chance or the means to express it. Reducing the work-week IS the precondition for a metamorphosis and withering-away of the social division of labour, in production as well as between the sexes. • The socialism that we want means producing primarily to meet the needs of the greatest number of people, not as part of a blind rush after profits and privileges. It means working, dwelling and living differently. This prospect is inconceivable without infringing on sacrosanct private property in the major means of production and communication. How could we in fact adapt production to needs, be stewards of the natural environment for the long term, co-ordinate
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- Youth supplement the efforts and free basic research from the criteria of short-term profit, if we continued to let competition and the market (let alone the notorious financial markets) make the short-term decisions behind citizens' backs? How could we pretend to guarantee the right to shelter without challenging private real estate interests? How could we ensure that gains in productivity would be used for development of health care and education (socialized rather than state-run) without attacking corporate despotism? Despite all the speeches lately about citizenship and despite trade-union rights (which are continually threatened), the reality of workplaces under the law of profit is management autocracy, not democracy.
The controversies around privatization and public services highlight the issue: is the goal to make services profitable at any price in order to swell the earnings of private firms that can do whatever comes into their heads, beyond any collective control; or is it to guarantee everyone equal access to certain basic goods (rights to food, housing, culture, etc.)? In short, we must recognize that the right to live has to prevail over the right to own. This does not imply a total state takeover of all major means of production and exchange; it means giving society the means to decide and control its own future.
We want to foster the broadest possible democracy. Who in fact should make decisions: citizens together, or financial markets? According to what criteria and priorities? The future of the human race cannot be pulled out of a hat! The broadest possible democracy requires time — time to learn about major problems, to take a direct part in discussions — and the means needed to form an opinion without relying totally on experts. The issue is thus to rehabitate the very idea of politics, and extend democracy from the institutional sphere to the spheres of production and culture, by generalizing self-management and control of representatives by the represented. This presupposes free, pluralist choice among different projects and programmes; full sovereignty and independence of trade unions and movements from parties; and the extension of democracy, which must not be merely political but also social and self-managing.
Finally we need to develop international solidarity in order to fight against all narrow 20 International Viewpoint and exclusionary particularisms. We need to think and act as citizens of the world, in keeping with the initial ambition of the UNIVERSAL Declaration of Human Rights. This implies in particular everyday solidarity with the peoples of dependent and dominated countries who have suffered centuries of pillage and domination. Today this pillage is taking the form of debt, which allows the creditors to impose their conditions and dictates and to push so-called "developing" countries back down into underdevelopment. • Within this general perspective, what kind of Europe do we want? The Europe of the Maastricht Treaty - the Europe of markets and currency, judges and bankers — in reality undermines the very idea of an open Europe, a Europe of sister- and brotherhood, a social and democratic Europe.
These are only paths that head us in the direction of a different, livable future. Tomorrow's struggles really begin today. You know Bertolt Brecht's famous saying: Those who fight for a day are good, those who fight for many years are very good, but those who fight their whole lives are indispensable. This is also the socialism that we want: the socialism that makes the greatest possible number of human beings "indispensable".*
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