Opening Debate on the Long Transition to WorldSocialism
While recognizing Lenin’s mistaken view of the real challenges, and his misjudgement of the ripeness for revolution, we need to go beyond criticism and self-criticism of the history of twentieth-century Communism, by openly and inventively fostering debate on the positive alternative strategies for the twenty-first century.
Here I can do no more than briefly summarize the points I have made elsewhere.
• Strategies must be devised in response to the challenges of the long transition from world capitalism to world socialism.
• In the course of this long transition, social, economic and political systems produced by the struggles of the reproductive elements of capitalist society will combine, in contradictory fashion, with elements tending to initiate and develop socialist social relations.
Two conflicting logics will therefore be present, in permanent combination and permanent contradiction with each other.• Progress in this direction is necessary and possible in all regions of the world capitalist system, both the imperialist centres and the compradorized peripheries. Of course, by force of circumstance, there will have to be concrete and specific intermediate stages, especially with regard to the contrasts between centres and peripheries.
• Social, ideological and political forces expressing, however confusedly, the interests of popular classes are already working in the directions indicated. The so-called ‘alter-globalization’ movements are material proof of this. But these movements serve as vehicles for different alternatives, some progressive (in the above sense), some deluded or even clearly reactionary (para-fascist responses to the challenges). To politicize the debate—in the true and proper sense of the term—is the sine qua non for building what I call ‘convergence in diversity’ of the progressive forces.
• The victims of the deployment of neoliberal capitalism are the majority in all parts of the world, and socialism must be capable of mobilizing the new historical opportunity this creates.
But it will be able to do this only if it can take account of the changes resulting from the technological revolutions, which have completely altered the social architecture once and for all. Communism must no longer be the banner only of the ‘industrial working class’, in the old sense of the term; it can become the banner representing the future of the broad majority of working people, despite the diversity of their situations. To rebuild the unity of working people—both those who benefit from a certain stabilization of the system and those who are excluded from it—is today a major challenge for the inventive thinking that is needed for communist renewal. In the peripheries, this also means organizing huge movements to establish an equal right of access to the land for the whole peasantry. Renewal is all the more necessary because it has often been forgotten that the peasantry is still a half of humanity, and that capitalism in all its forms is incapable of solving this major problem.• An effective strategy for action within this perspective must be capable of producing simultaneous advances in three directions: social progress, democratization and the construction of a pluricentric world system. The political democracy usually proposed as an accompaniment to the economic options of liberal capitalism is destined to strip democracy of all credibility, in quite dramatic ways. At the same time, social progress from the top down is no longer acceptable as a substitute for inventive formulas involving the democratic power of popular classes. There will be no socialism without democracy, but also no democratic advances without social progress. Lastly, in view of the persistence of national diversity and the political cultures shaping it, as well as the inequality historically produced by the deployment of world capitalism, it is clear that a margin of opportunity for the necessary social and democratic advances will require the construction of a pluricentric world system. And the first condition for this, of course, is to defeat Washington’s project for military control of the planet.