At 04:25 PM 3/21/97 -0500, Peter Dorman wrote:
>At the present time, in my opinion, left political practice is in crisis
>primarily because the majority of leftists no longer have confidence in
>a reasonably well-understood alternative vision of the economy. I think
>this crisis is unnecessary: there are valid, realistic, yet inspiring
>alternatives out there, but they are underdeveloped and poorly
>communicated. If left academic economists succeed, during the course of
>the next few years, in creating a widespread public awareness of an
>alternative vision of socialism -- one that can motivate people at least
>as effectively as the now discredited model of state ownership -- we
>will have made an enormous contribution, one that will justify every
>perk we ever got as academics and then some.
I think that the Left succeeded at the beginning of the 20th century not
because it offered an alternative vision of the economy (Marx wrote little
about how socialism should look like), but because they offered a reasonable
and-well understood explantion of people's plight and the well-understood
way how to end -- something that today's Left is unwilling or unable to offer.
To my understanding, Marxism offered only three things, but those three
things were sufficient to attract the masses:
1. A rational explantion of the experience of misery shared by many people;
2. A direct action to stop that misery; and
3. A rather vague promise of a better future.
The vague, non-descript character of the "better future" had an important
mobilising function, it was an empty vessel to which every participant could
put what he/she wanted. But even more importantly, that non-descript
character stemmed from the most important aspect of MArxism -- that the new
order will emerge from the action of working masses, rather than being
designed a priori by experts and handed down to the masses. The Left
started loosing its appeal as soon as item #3 was replaced by the vanguard
party ideology and experts trying to define from above what socialism is.
However, the Left's appeal altogether collapsed when it abandoned its appeal
for a direct action and started to work "within the system."
So today's weakness of the Left is not the lack of vision or communication
-- but betraying two most promises of any succesful social movement: direct
action to end the current plight and a promise of a better future.
wojtek sokolowski
institute for policy studies
johns hopkins university
baltimore, md 21218
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
voice: (410) 516-4056
fax: (410) 516-8233
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