In a message dated 4/20/00 4:59:44 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< 3. A Strategy for the World Left
What is wrong with the strategy the world left evolved in the course of
the nineteenth century? There must be many things, since
the strategy has not been successful. The centerpiece of the overall
strategy was the concept of "two steps": first obtain state
power, then transform the world. This sequence made sense insofar as
control of the state machinery seemed the only way to
overcome the accumulated economic and cultural power of the privileged
strata and the only way to ensure that new kinds of
institutions could be constructed - and maintained against
counterattack. Any other route to social transformation seemed
utopian (in the pejorative sense of being a pipedream), and this view
seemed to be confirmed by the fact that various other
routes to transformation, whenever tried, met with aggressive
counterattack and ultimately suppression.
So the two-step strategy seemed to be the only one that would work. And
yet it failed. We know in retrospect what happened.
The two-step strategy failed because, once the first step was achieved -
and it was indeed achieved in a very large number of
countries - the new regimes did not seem to be able to achieve the
second step. This is precisely the source of disillusionment
with the Old Left. But why did the movements falter at the second step?
For a long time it was argued that, if a given regime did
not transform the world as it had promised, it was because the
leadership had in some sense "betrayed" the cause and had "sold
out." The idea that leaders sell out, just like the idea that the masses
are falsely conscious, seems to me analytically sterile and
politically disabling. To be sure, some leaders do place personal
ambition above their proclaimed principles, just as some
ordinary people do seem not to believe in the same principles that many
(even most) of their fellows do. The question however
is why do such people prevail.
The basic problem is not ethical or psychological but structural. The
states within a capitalist world-system have a lot of power,
but they simply are not all-powerful. Those in power cannot do just
anything they wish to do and still remain in power. Those in
power are in fact rather severely constrained by all kinds of
institutions, and in particular by the interstate system. This is a
structural reality which one after the other of these movements that
have come to power have confronted. Like trees in a storm,
such regimes have either bent or been broken. None has ever stayed
straight, or could have stayed straight. And in many ways,
it was dangerously naive to have expected them to do so.
It is not that no one on the left had ever warned about the dangers of
the two-step strategy. It is that those who argued its
dangers could never convince the majority that there was any efficacious
alternative route. The fact that the powerful of the
world controlled the weapons (via state armies and state police forces)
seemed to make it impossible that any truly fundamental
changes could be made before the movements obtained state power. And the
majority on the left was probably right about this.
There was indeed no alternative way, as long as they were operating
within the ambit of the capitalist world-system that was still
basically stable.
But there is more to it than this. The left analysis involved multiple
biases which pushed it towards this state-orientation. The first
bias was that homogeneity was somehow better than heterogeneity, and
that therefore centralization was somehow better than
decentralization. This derived from the false assumption that equality
means identity. To be sure, many thinkers had pointed out
the fallacy of this equation, including Marx, who distinguished equity
from equality. But for revolutionaries in a hurry, the
centralizing, homogenizing path seemed easiest and fastest. It required
no difficult calculation of how to balance complex sets of
choices. They were arguing in effect that one cannot add apples and
oranges. The only problem is that the real world is
precisely made up of apples and oranges. If you can't do such fuzzy
arithmetic, you can't make real political choices.
The second bias was virtually the opposite. Whereas the preference for
unification of effort and result should have pushed
logically towards the creation of a single world movement and the
advocacy of a world state, the de facto reality of a multi-state
system, in which some states were visibly more powerful and privileged
than other states, pushed the movements towards
seeing the state as a mechanism of defense of collective interests
within the world-system, an instrument more relevant for the
large majority within each state than for the privileged few. Once
again, many thinkers had pointed to the fallacy of believing that
any state within the modern world-system would or could serve collective
interests rather than those of the privileged few, but
weak majorities in weak states could see no other weapon at hand in
their struggles against marginalization and oppression than
a state structure they thought (or rather they hoped) they might be able
to control themselves.
The third bias was the most curious of all. The French Revolution had
proclaimed as its slogan the trinity: "Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity." What has in practice happened ever since is that most
people have tacitly dropped the "fraternity" part of the slogan,
on the grounds that it was mere sentimentality. And the liberal center
has insisted that "liberty" had to take priority over
"equality." In fact, what the liberals really meant is that "liberty"
(defined in purely political terms) was the only thing that mattered
and that "equality" represented a danger for "liberty" and had to be
downplayed or dropped altogether.
There was flimflam in this analysis, and the world left fell for it. The
world left, and in particular its Leninist variant, responded to
this centrist liberal discourse by inverting it, and insisting that
(economic) equality had to take precedence over (political) liberty.
This was entirely the wrong answer. The correct answer is that there is
no way whatsoever to separate liberty from equality. No
one can be "free" to choose, if his/her choices are constrained by an
unequal position. And no one can be "equal" if he/she does
not have the degree of freedom that others have, that is, does not enjoy
the same political rights and the same degree of
participation in real decisions.
Still this is all water under the bridge. The left made its case, and it
has had to live with it. Today, as a result and as we are very
well aware, the world left is in great difficulty. I am arguing however
that this should not be seen in isolation. The errors of the
left, the failed strategy, were an almost inevitable outcome of the
operations of the capitalist system against which the left was
struggling. And the widespread recognition of this historic failure of
the left is part and parcel of the disarray caused by the
general crisis of the capitalist world-system.
The failure of the left yesterday and its recognition today is precisely
what will make it possible for the world left tomorrow to
achieve its objectives. Possible, but not at all certain! A new kind of
historical system will be constructed in the next half
century. The worldwide battle has already begun over what it will look
like. So what is it that we can do?
I think the first thing we can do is analyze. I say this not because I
am addressing a group of social scientists, that is, persons
who presumably engage in social analysis as their life work, but because
one of the problems of the world, and in particular of
the world left, is that our previous analyses have not been all that
good and seem to have been part of the cause of why we are
in the dilemmas we are in today. Here I can only repeat a number of
themes I have been plugging for a while now. The first is
the importance of the choice of the unit of analysis. I think the
relevant unit of analysis is the modern world-system, which is a
capitalist world-economy. The second is to analyze this system in the
longue durée, which is however distinctly not eternal.
What this does mean is that for any given historical system, such as for
example the capitalist world-economy, we need to
distinguish cyclical rhythms and secular trends, and use that to
distinguish the periods of genesis, of quasi-normal operation, and
of structural crisis of the system as a whole.
The third is to understand systemic processes in terms of their
complexity, that is, their long-run tendency to move far from
equilibrium, arriving at moments of bifurcation with indeterminate
outcome. The fourth is to place particular emphasis on the
institutional role within the capitalist world-economy of (a) the
antisystemic movements and (b) the structures of knowledge.
And the fifth is to place all this analysis within the context of
unthinking (which is different from rethinking) the categories
bequeathed to us largely in the nineteenth century to meet the needs and
reflect the geoculture of the present world-system.
Analysis is of course always a necessary component of praxis. But it is
particularly urgent and central when we are confronting a
structural crisis because it is just then that accepted categories of
thought provide the greatest hindrance to useful action.
However analysis by itself is never action. Action requires
organization. The world left has believed for the last 200 years that
this meant highly coordinated action, preferably within a single
hierarchical structure, believing it to be the most, perhaps the
only, efficacious form of action.
I think that this assumption has been proven wrong. The social
components that potentially make up the world left are too
diverse, face too many different immediate problems, originate in too
many diverse cultural loci for a system of democratic
centralism, even one that were genuinely democratic, to work. This has
been recognized in recent years by the emergence of
two slogans that point in another direction. One is the U.S. slogan of
the "rainbow coalition," a phrase that has been copied in
other parts of the world. It was generated by the sense that, for very
many people, their politics are rooted in, or deeply
affected by, their social position and their identities. The other
phrase is the one launched in the last few years in France, that of
the "plural left." This phrase too is being copied. It refers less to
the reality of different identities than to that of the multiplicity of
political traditions and priorities.
However we appreciate the actual attempts heretofore to create a new
style of left coalition, the core of the idea seems to me to
be absolutely correct, and indeed essential if we are to make any
significant political progress. We are strengthened collectively,
not weakened, insofar as people organize in forms and structures
meaningful to them, provided only the groups they form are
ready to talk to each other, and to operate meaningful coalitions. This
is far more than a matter of parliamentary politics. It can
and should operate at all levels from the global to the local. But most
of all, it cannot be merely a matter of political logrolling but
one rather of constant debate and collegial analysis by these movements
in concert one with the other. It is a question of creating
and reinforcing a particular culture of collegial as opposed to
hierarchical political action. It will not be easy.
What is it however that such coalitions should push? I think there are
three major lines of theory and praxis to emphasize. The
first is what I call "forcing liberals to be liberals." The Achilles
heel of centrist liberals is that they don't want to implement their
own rhetoric. One centerpiece of their rhetoric is individual choice.
Yet at many elementary levels, liberals oppose individual
choice. One of the most obvious and the most important is the right to
choose where to live. Immigration controls are
anti-liberal. Making choice - say choice of doctor or school - dependent
on wealth is anti-liberal. Patents are anti-liberal. One
could go on. The fact is that the capitalist world-economy survives on
the basis of the non-fulfillment of liberal rhetoric. The
world left should be systematically, regularly, and continuously calling
the bluff.
But of course, calling the rhetorical bluff is only the beginning of
reconstruction. We need to have a positive program of our
own. There has been a veritable sea-change in the programs of left
parties and movements around the world between 1960 and
1999. In 1960, their programs emphasized economic structures. They
advocated one form or another, one degree or another,
of the socialization, usually the nationalization, of the means of
production. They said little, if anything, about inequalities that
were not defined as class-based. Today, almost all of these same parties
and movements, or their successors, put forward
proposals to deal with inequalities of gender, race, and ethnicity. Many
of the programs are terribly inadequate, but at least they
feel it necessary to say something. On the other hand, there is
virtually no party or movement today that considers itself on the
left which advocates further socialization or nationalization of the
means of production, and a number which are actually
proposing moving in the other direction. It is a breathtaking turnabout.
Some hail it, some denounce it. Most just accept it.
There is one enormous plus in this cataclysmic shift of emphasis. The
world left had never addressed with sufficient seriousness
the biggest problem of all for almost everyone, which is the day-by-day
reality of worldwide multiple inequalities. Equality
means very little if it is equality only amongst the wealthy. The
capitalist world-system has resulted in the greatest geographic
polarization of wealth and privilege the planet has ever known. And the
top priority of the world left must be to decrease the
gap radically and as rapidly as possible. But this is not the only gap
that needs to be addressed. There are all the ones we have
talked about for a long, long time: class, race, ethnicity, gender,
generation. In short, we have to take the issue of equality as one
about which something can indeed be done.
But what? Decreeing equality as an objective is not achieving it. For,
even with good will all around - and this of course cannot
be assumed; indeed quite the contrary - it is not easy to find equitable
solutions. Here is where I think we need to reintroduce,
indeed revive, Weber's concept of substantive rationality. We should
note here incidentally a problem of translation. The term
Weber used in German was "Rationalität materiel" - "material" as opposed
to "formal." The accepted English translation,
"substantive," only conveys "materiel" if we associate it with
"substance" and not with "substantial" in our minds. What Weber
was talking about was that which is rational in terms of collective
widely-applicable value systems as opposed to that which is
rational in terms of particular, narrowly described sets of objectives
an individual or an organization might set itself. Weber
himself was ambivalent about the attitude to take vis-a-vis "substantive
rationality." He sometimes described it in ways that made
it seem his priority and sometimes in ways that underlined his fears
that ideological organizations (read, the German
Social-Democratic Party) might impose their views on everyone else.4
Most of Weber's post-1945 acolytes have only noticed
the latter sentiments and ignored the former. But we can make our own
use of this important concept and the insights it gives us.
What it seems to me that Weber was pointing to is that, in a world of
multiple actors and multiple sets of values, there can be
resolutions of the debates that are more than the result of simple
arithmetic (counting the votes) and more than a free-for-all in
which everyone pursues his own fancy. There can exist substantively
rational ways of making social decisions. To know what
they are requires a long period of clear, active, and open debate and a
collective effort to balance priorities over the short run
and the long run.
Take a very obvious issue, the problem of generational priorities. There
is at any given time a given social surplus, which can be
divided among four generational groups: children, working-age adults,
the elderly, and the as yet unborn. What is the right
proportion to allocate in terms of collective expenditures? There surely
is no easy or self-evident answer. But it is a question that
needs some measured decisions, arrived at democratically (that is,
involving the real participation of everyone, at least everyone
living, in some meaningful way). At the present time, in the present
system, we have no real process by which this can be done,
not even within a single state, not to be speak of doing it globally.
Can we construct such a process? We must. If we cannot, we
renounce forever the traditional objective of the world left, a
relatively democratic, relatively egalitarian world. I am not ready to
renounce this objective. Thus, I am in principle optimistic that
humanity can construct such procedures. But remember, not only
is it difficult, but there are many, many powerful persons who do not
wish to see such procedures established.
What we can say about these issues of multiple inequalities and the ways
in which they might be overcome is that at least, and at
last, they are the subject of serious debate today. They are on the
agenda of the world left. And if we have not come up with
very good answers up to now, we do seem to be working at it, and with
far less internal backbiting than one might have feared
and seemed to be happening 20-30 years ago.
But the great plus on the issue of the multiple inequalities has gone
along with a great minus on the side of reconstructing our
basic economic institutions. If capitalism collapses, do we still have
an alternative that fulfils the traditional socialist objective - a
socially-rational system that maximizes collective utility and fair
distribution? If the world left is putting forth today such
proposals, I haven't heard of them. Between those at one end of the left
spectrum who are proclaiming "new" ideas that are
simply watered-down versions of centrist administration of the
capitalist system and those at the other end who are nostalgic for
the nostrums of yesterday, there seems a real poverty of serious ideas.
The world left needs to face up to the most systematic and effective
critique of historical socialist rhetoric, the suggestion that
non-private ownership of the means of production leads to waste,
disinterest in technological efficiency, and corruption. This
critique has not been untrue of what we today call "real-existing
socialism." This has been recognized by such of these regimes
as still survive (or at least most of them), but their response has been
to create a large place for private ownership within their
regimes and label this "market socialism." While this may seem to solve
some short-run economic difficulties, it fails utterly to
address the underlying issues which the world socialist movement sought
to address in the first place - gross inequality and gross
social waste.
I suggest there may be another route, one that has in fact been tried
partially and which is rather promising. I think one might be
able to get most of the advantages of private ownership yet eliminate
most of the negatives by ensconcing productive activities
within medium-size, decentralized, competitive non-profit structures.
The key is that they would be non-profit, that is, that no
one would receive "dividends" or "profit distributions" and that any
surplus either went back to the organization or was taxed by
the collectivity for reinvestment elsewhere.
How might such structures work? Well, actually we know how, in the sense
that there are parallels. Most major universities and
hospitals in the United States have worked on such principles for two
centuries now. Whatever we can say of their functioning,
it is not the case that they have been "inefficient" or "technologically
backward" by comparison with the few for-profit institutions
that have existed. Quite the contrary. I'm aware that there is currently
a move to try to transform such structures into for-profit
institutions, but insofar as this has occurred in hospital structures
the results have not been very good and the move to
profit-oriented institutions has not yet been seriously tried in
universities. Of course, in most countries, hospital and university
structures are state-financed but traditionally they have usually been
allowed enough autonomy for us to consider them examples
of decentralization. These state-financed non-profit structures have not
in any case been notably less efficient than the private
non-profit ones. <Charlie, note this paragraph, what do you think?>
So why wouldn't this work for steel firms, for computer technology
giants, for manufacturers of aircraft and biotechnology? No
doubt there would be a lot of details to argue about, especially the
degree to which such non-profit corporations should be
taxed, but per se it seems to me viable, and promising, and an
alternative road that would not be out of sync with the
commitment to a worldwide higher standard of living for everyone. At the
very least, it would seem to me to something we
should be seriously discussing and an idea we should be elaborating.
What I think we should keep in the forefront of our minds is that the
basic issue is not ownership or even control of economic
resources. The basic issue is the decommodification of the world's
economic processes. Decommodification, it should be
underlined, does not mean demonetization, but the elimination of the
category of profit. Capitalism has been a program for the
commodification of everything. The capitalists have not yet fulfilled it
entirely, but they have gone a long way in that direction,
with all the negative consequences we know. Socialism ought to be a
program for the decommodification of everything. Five
hundred years from now, if we start down that path, we may not have
fulfilled it entirely, but we can have gone a long way in
that direction.
In any case, we need to be debating the possible structures of the
historical social system we want to construct as the present
system collapses. And we ought to be trying to construct the alternative
structures now, and in the next half-century, during the
period of transition. We need to pursue this issue forcefully, if not
dogmatically. We need to try out alternatives, as mental
experiments and as real experiments. What we cannot do is ignore this
issue. For if we do, the world right will come up itself
with new non-capitalist alternatives that will involve us in a new,
hierarchical, inegalitarian world order. And then it will be too
late, for a long while thereafter, to change things.
Allow me to say one last word that is obvious, but needs to be said.
Social scientists are specialists. Of course, we are not the
only brand of specialists. In a sense, the world is constituted by an
endless series of specialists, some of whom have had longer
periods of training than others. How do specialists relate to
non-specialists? How should they? The world left has tended to
define this as the issue of how middle-class left-oriented intellectuals
should relate to the working classes. And we have tended
to favor the theory that they must be "organic intellectuals," by which
we have meant that they must be involved in social
movements, working with them, for them, and ultimately under them. The
collapse of the movements has left a bad taste in the
minds of erstwhile and putative organic intellectuals about the whole
idea.
There is however another way to look at the issue. Consider how a client
relates to a lawyer or a physician. As we know, it is
basically a matter of class. The working-class client may feel ignorant
and helpless vis-a-vis the professional, and accept the
judgment of the professional, sometimes gratefully, sometimes with great
resentment, but usually accepting it nonetheless. A
wealthy or otherwise powerful person may treat the lawyer or the
physician as a subordinate, whose primary function it is to
give technical advice to a superior.
Is there some way in which the specialist can relate to the
non-specialist as an equal? Obviously, the specialist has some
specialized knowledge. That is the whole point of multiple, differential
training programs. And obviously again, the specialist
knows many things that are relevant to solving particular kinds of
problems of which the non-specialist is unaware. That is why
the non-specialist consults the specialist, to get the benefit of the
expertise the specialist has. But it is also obvious that the
non-specialist knows many other things - about his needs and
preferences, about other problems he/she is facing - of which the
specialist is unaware, or if aware, on which the specialist has no
specialized knowledge.
Somewhere along the line, a total judgment has to be made, as to whether
or not a particular line of action the specialist
recommends is substantively rational. I am of course assuming that it is
formally rational, that is, that it will achieve the
narrowly-defined objective the specialist has taken into consideration.
But who will make this decision? And how? If one
transposes this issue from the realm of an individual encountering a
specialist to resolve a personal problem to that of a
collectivity encountering a group of specialists to resolve a collective
problem, we see immediately that once again there is no
simple answer. But I think once again this is a conundrum not impossible
to overcome, merely difficult. Neither of two extremes
is acceptable: that the specialists impose their solution on the
collectivity; that the political decision-making bodies ignore the
knowledge and the recommendations of the specialists. We need somehow
systematically to intrude public debate on the issues,
and the balancing of multiple needs and interests. We are thus back to
the issue of substantive rationality.
This whole program for the left would be hard enough were we to face it
amongst only ourselves and in all tranquillity. But we
face these issues while under constant attack by those who wish to
prevent our basic objectives from being achieved, and who
have powerful resources at their command. Furthermore, we shall not be
doing it in times of tranquillity but in times of chaos. It
is the transitional chaos that offers us our opportunity, but at the
same time this chaotic ambiance confuses us and presses us to
turn away from the long-run reconstruction of a historical social system
to the short-turn solution of urgent problems.
Finally, those of us in the United States find ourselves before one
further obstacle, which C. Wright Mills saw clearly in 1959,
and which has not fundamentally changed since then:
"[I]ntellectuals of [our] sort, living in America and in Britain,
face some disheartening problems. As socialists of one sort or
another, we are a very small minority in an intellectual
community that is itself a minority. The most immediate
problem we face is the nationalist smugness and political
complacency among the dominant intellectual circles of our
own countries. We confront a truly deep apathy about
politics in general and about the larger problems of the world
today."5
In short, and I say this for the last time, it will not be easy. But the
game is surely worth the candle.
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