The Future of Socialism

Introduction The theoretical crisis facing Marxism, and the political crisis gripping the socialist movement internationally, is clearly grave. In marked contrast to the past few decades, where to be progressive was to be socialist and to be intellectual was to be left, we are entering a decade where socialism is in retreat and leftists are on the defensive. Indeed, some have concluded that to even speak of its future is to engage in absurdities and have embarked on a headlong flight into new intellectual fashions of self-centred relativism. For those who find this route ethically distasteful and analytically unsatisfactory two options remain: retreat into dogma or begin the difficult process of theoretically and politically reconceptualising the socialist project. In the spirit of the latter task it seemed to me socially responsible to present this selected summary of a recent international conference on the future of socialism for the benefit of those comrades, especially inside South Africa, who were not present so that a wider audience of socialists can participate in this crucial debate. Clearly many of us have been forced to re-evaluate much of what we regarded as the conceptual touchstones of socialism. For those this document is meant to be a further stimulus to reformulate what we mean by democratic socialism. On the other hand, those who have remained oblivious of the need to reconstruct, in theory and practice, tired and dogmatic conceptions of socialism, hopefully it will force a conceptual and practical springcleaning. The conference was co-sponsored by the Monthly Review Foundation and the New York Marxist School. It was held at Hunter College, New York (October 12-14,1990), with about 450 people attending. There were no written papers presented at the conference and 4-5 speakers per session. The structure of the conference consisted of plenaries on Socialist realities, socialist alternatives; New social forces in Eastern Europe and the USSR; What kind of socialism is possible in a capitalist world; Socialism in the 1990 's: where do we go from here? In between these there were two parallel panel sessions. The first consisted of parallel sessions on What was it that collapsed in Eastern Europe; Changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and their implications far Third World countries; Building mass movements. The second consisted of Parallel sessions on Nationalism, populism, and xenophobia; Markets and socialism; Strategies for a democratic socialism; Social movements and the working class.