commissioner.org
| Source | Carrol Cox |
| Date | 09/01/21/07:59 |
| ON STEPS TOWARDS socialism. Leftists at the present time have little or
no common agreement on what it means to have an advance towards socialism, and that may be one barrier to moving towards a more unified and coherent program of resistance. Hence it's probably a very good area for lengthy debate and consideration. I do not think nationalization is or ever can be such a "step." Complete nationalization in the USSR ended in defeat: whatever on'es opinion on the Soviet Union or Stalin or Brezhnvev, there is no doubt that the _final_ result was the present dissolution of the USSR and the return to capitalism. There was extensive nationalization under Atlee in the UK -- little of it remains. Even in its ideological effect nationalization seems more a technique for consolidating capitalism than a step towards socialism. Consider the endless jokes about the Post Office (and not just during the last 25 years, during which time Post Office service has been deliberately sabotaged by the management just to aid propaganda for privatizatioh). I would suggest that the endless to-and-fro of nationalization-privatization-nationalization is probably part of the funamental rhythm of capitalist regimmes. When the capitalists nationalize it is for capitalist purposes, and it is a serious mistake to see that as a gain for us. The metaphor of "steps" towards in fact calls up one of the two or three central principles of bourgeois ideology, the Doctrine of Progress. That doctrine or idea implies that "history" is a march along a given path, upward and upward from apes to cavemen to Rome to Paris to the Glorious Future and all we have to do is to stick to the Path of History and keep advancing ever onwards. But history is not a Path. History is a jungle. There are no set stages as the Second (and actually the Third and Fourth) Internationales assumed, and hence there is no advancing along a path of Progress from feudalism to capitalism to socialism. Capitalism is a unique system not merely a "development" of earlier "stages' of history, and the overcoming of capitalism requires conscious struggle. I would say that in the history of capitalism perhaps one program and one program alone actually contained the 'seeds' of socialism, and that was the WPA. Apparently many in government recognized the danger of that program and even before the war were quickly eliminating that and replacing it with the safely capitalist PWA. |