The Death of Socialism...or a New Beginning?
Solidarity (Syracuse Solidarity- Sam Barry, Bryan Bates, Rob Cymbala, Kevin Mahoney, Bob Nowlan, Ben Tupper, & Mark Wood)
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| • October 10, 1991 | Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students. | |
| The Alternative Orange: Vol. 1, No. 1 (pp. 8,10-11) | ||
| • August 19, 2000 | Webpage:  . | |
| DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.3) from original. | ||
Everyone, it seems, is celebrating the August events in the Soviet Union, and there's plenty to celebrate: the collapse of the coup, the people of Moscow and Leningrad mobilizing for democracy, the rapid dismantling of the tyranny of the KGB and Communist party bureaucracy, and the fulfillment of the Baltic peoples' legitimate and democratic desire for national independence.
Much has been made of this "triumph of democracy." No one has more reason to celebrate these stunning victories than socialists. Inside the Soviet Union those who believe, as we do, in basic socialist principles, including workers' rights to genuine trade unions, the right to strike, a free press, freedom to organize political parties and exercise effective control over economic and political decision making, were certainly not in power. Until the reforms of the past few years they were more likely to be deprived of work or in psychiatric dissident "hospitals."
With the destruction of this totalitarian bureaucracy, a new democratic revolution is possible. But this will require strong independent trade unions and social movements--feminist, ecological, etc.--as well as political parties, organizing around programs to address the economic and social crisis.
The logic of such movements, particularly in the working class, would not point to creating capitalism. Working people, instead of turning the factories that they built over to foreign investors or bureaucrats-turned owners, will want to "own" and control their work places themselves and to negotiate contracts with other enterprises. This would be a first step toward workers' self-management, which can only succeed if worker-controlled democratic planning replaces the old bureaucratic "command" system.
This is not exactly what the western capitalist "market" system would mean. In fact, all the plans for a "true market economy" in the Soviet Union would close thousands of factories and create millions of unemployed. One need only look as far as recent developments in Eastern Europe to get a picture of what the vast majority of the Soviet Union may face.
Are the "democrats" an alternative?
The leaders who have emerged following the botched Stalinist coup have a very dubious relationship to any such social movements. The politics of Boris Yeltsin, a former Communist party boss who left the party to embrace "radical market reform" and was elected president of the Russian republic in the USSR, offer a good example.
Yeltsin deserves credit for resisting the coup, certainly--and the hundreds of thousands who responded to his appeal for resistance were correct to do so, whether or not they were supporters of Yeltsin himself. But is Yeltsin the "democratic" leader our media advertised as the coup collapsed? Yeltsin began issuing orders, for example, banning the Communist party "in the territory of the Russian republic" and banning numerous newspapers.
Such decrees are highly dangerous--not because the Communist Party's politics should be defended, but because it appears that Yeltsin is the kind of leader who likes to run things without any parties or opposition organizations at all. This has more in common with the old "Communist" censorship, or authoritarian capitalist rule than with an authentic democracy.
Beyond the Communist Party
It is true that the revolution led by Lenin and the Bolshevik party of 1917 ultimately failed. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, from the 1930s on, was the machine of Stalin and his bureaucratic successors. The bureaucratic system succeeded in creating heavy industry though at horrifying human cost. The Soviet bureaucratic system became stagnant and unproductive due to its lack of democracy and inability to innovate. Gorbachev's attempts at reform of the system came too late; instead of reviving the system's viability they created a split within the bureaucracy itself, leading to the crises of the past few years and the current upheaval.
The destruction of the power of the Communist Party is all to the good. Now what will replace it? What we are saying is that we see not one, but two processes underway in the USSR, both dramatically accelerated by the attempted Stalinist coup and its failure. One is the process of democracy, initiated "from above" by Gorbachev and now open to the masses to expand from below. The other is the attempt to "marketize" the economy from above and from outside. This would inevitably create a capitalism with enormous inequalities, prosperity along-side incredible misery and huge indebtedness to western banks. In other words, it would be the kind of capitalism that exists in Brazil, not western Europe.
We see these two processes as being on a collision course--not immediately, but perhaps in the not too distant future. Certainly the emergence of a mass-based socialist democratic movement will not occur immediately or magically. But then too, neither will the creation of capitalism! The vast territory and population of the Soviet Union dwarfs that of the Eastern Europe former bureaucratic states; yet capitalist investment even in countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia is extremely slow. German capitalism, the most powerful in Europe, is stretched to the limit absorbing the former East Germany. Where will the resources come for capital investment in Russia, let alone the Soviet Union as a whole? Who will take the risk? Where are the profits?
What lies ahead are years of complex struggles. As socialists our loyalties are clear: with the people and the democratic movement in the streets against the bureaucracy, and also with the workers as they begin to organize their defense against the costs that a new capitalist order will impose. The end of bureaucratic "Communism" is only the beginning of the struggle for a democratic- -and ultimately, we believe, genuinely socialist--revolution. This would mean that workers and ordinary people would finally take control of their society's resources and organize the economy for their own benefit, not the enrichment of a ruling minority.
There are small but activist forces in the Soviet Union (the Socialist Party, for example) who share similar views, and we will organize in solidarity with them. And as we've said, socialism requires an international movement--so for their sake and our own we must build our own struggle here.
For a New Socialist Left at Home
If you think these principles make sense, then they need to be applied at home first and foremost. All establishment commentators (conservative to liberal) speak of the glowing promise of "true market economy" for the USSR. Yet there has never been a time in the history of capitalism when it has produced as much human misery throughout the world as today. All over Latin America and Africa, thanks to "open market" and "free trade" policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund, wages and health care standards have collapsed, child malnutrition and homelessness are rampant and national resources are exhausted to pay foreign debts.
At home, U.S. cities are disintegrating at the core; basic medical care is unavailable to nearly 40 million people without health insurance, while billions are poured into bailing out bankrupt banks and S&Ls; industrial and manufacturing jobs are replaced by dead-end burger-flipping or menial "service" work; African- American college enrollment (and working class access to higher education generally) is declining; women's right of reproductive choice is directly under fire and Supreme Court decisions and Administration regulations gut one constitutional protection after another.
The very continuation of human life is threatened by mass poisoning of the water, the air and the food chain. All the savings from reduced military spending (and more) will be needed simply to clean up the ecological catastrophe caused by decades of unregulated military dumping of toxic and radioactive poisons! (We can readily imagine that an equally grave crisis exists in the USSR.) If capitalism is "winning," the same cannot be said for most of us who live under it.
We need a movement for democratic control of resources, production and economic decision-making in our own society, just as badly as it is needed in the East. The socialist movement in the United States needs to be rebuilt on the basis of working class loyalties and democratic values. Many groups and individuals in the Left are undoubtedly confused, in some cases upset, by the events in the Soviet Union (and Eastern Europe since 1989). If you fall into that category, or if you are becoming interested in socialist ideas and politics for the first time, we want to talk to you!
We don't claim to have a perfect analysis or the answers to all the questions, but we want to discuss our ideas and learn from others' as well. Solidarity was organized as a contribution to a "recomposition" of the socialist movement in this country, and to struggle against U.S. intervention around the world. In the age of the New World Order, these tasks have become even more urgent. We believe that open discussion in the Left, and the widest possible socialist unity that can be achieved on the basis of revolutionary democratic politics, is the order of the day.
If you agree, join us. We need each other!
Solidarity is an independent socialist organization engaged in struggle against racism, sexism, imperialism, and heterosexism. We are committed to a creative rethinking of socialism and the building of a revolutionary, multiracial, feminist, and radically democratic working class movement here and abroad. If you would like to learn more about us please write: Syracuse Solidarity, 104 Roney Ln. #35, Syracuse, NY 13210, or phone: (315) 423-9736.
