What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next?

The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 2003

The July 2003 special issue of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era revisited the history of the Socialist Party of America during the Progressive Era. This second issue on “New Perspectives on Socialism” examines socialism largely outside the party context, thereby challenging the tendency of scholars and non-scholars alike to identify socialism with a party-based political movement. To the degree that the essays collected here examine party-based socialism, they focus on the gradualist or revisionist wing of the party, whose socializing and democratic reforms, programs, and ideas helped establish a context for the Progressive Era and thereafter, when a “social democratic” type of politics became intrinsic to the mainstream American politics.

This paper argues that the events in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union force us to conduct a deep re-examination of the fundamental categories of Marxian theory to see whether in fact they stand the test of reality. It attempts to itemize preconditions for any such socialism or communism and isolate the conditions which, in the author's opinion, cannot be fulfilled. Based on that reexamination it argues that the classical Marxian vision of socialism or communism is no longer viable. Having made that critique, it considers alternatives to capitalism and argues that for the foreseeable future there is no viable alternative to the global market economy, although there are some very important and meaningful choices to be made for any society as it integrates into the global economy.

2016

Socialism and Democracy, 2010

200 years of socialism, revisiting the old dilemmas, 2023

GRIP ANNUAL LECTURE 2023 200 Years of Socialism: Revisiting the Old Dilemmas Marcel van der Linden reviews strategic dilemmas and choices of socialist and labour movements from the 1820s to the 2020s. ================================= Comments on 200 years of socialism, revisiting the old dilemmas* by John Barzman =============== Marcel van der Linden reviews strategic dilemmas and choices of socialist and labour movements from the 1820s to the 2020s. ================================= Comments on 200 years of socialism, revisiting the old dilemmas* by John Barzman My initial intention was to focus on a few instances in the history of social movements during which activists discussed the broad organizational form that could bring together the « three pillars » of the socialist and labor movement :

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017

Marxists have viewed the task of socialism as the elimination of exploitation, defined in the Marxian manner in terms the excess of labor expended over of labor commanded. I argue that the concept of Marxian exploitation commits both type-one (false positives) and type-two (false negatives) errors as a diagnosis of distributive injustice: it misses instances of distributive injustice because they do not involve exploitation, and it calls some economic relations characterized by exploitation unjust when they are not. The most important reformulators of Marx's concept of socialism, which implicitly or explicitly attempt to correct the Marxian errors, are Oscar Lange,

Critical Review, 2005

In his recent article, "Is Socialism Really 'Impossible'?," Bryan Caplan questions the long-standing Austrian claim that socialism is impossible. Although Caplan is to be commended for engaging the arguments of Austrians such as Mises and Boettke, we contend that his arguments miss the mark. Caplan fundamentally misunderstands the Austrian proposition concerning socialism's impracticability and fails to appreciate the traditional argument made by socialists that Mises was addressing. For reasons we reveal below, Caplan's argument constitutes the triumph of cleverness over correctness, rather than the damning critique of the Austrian position he believes he has provided. What Socialism Means To put these issues into perspective we need to make a brief excursion into the state of the debate over socialism at the time Mises offered his impossibility claim. We agree with Caplan that socialism is characterized by state ownership of the means of production. This is necessary but not sufficient, however, to describe the economic system advocated by Marx and others, and opposed by Mises. In addition to describing a particular set of means (collective ownership), socialism is also defined by a particular set of ends. The ultimate end of socialism was the "end of history," in which perfect social harmony would permanently be established. Social harmony was to be achieved by the

Monthly Review, 2020

Any serious treatment of the renewal of socialism today must begin with capitalism's creative destruction of the bases of all social existence. Since the late 1980s, the world has been engulfed in an epoch of catastrophe capitalism, manifested today in the convergence of (1) the planetary ecological crisis, (2) the global epidemiological crisis, and (3) the unending world economic crisis. Added to this are the main features of today's "empire of chaos," including the extreme system of imperialist exploitation unleashed by global commodity chains; the demise of the relatively stable liberal-democratic state with the rise of neoliberalism and neofascism; and the emergence of a new age of global hegemonic instability accompanied by increased dangers of unlimited war.

2021

Andrei Znamenski argues that socialism arose out of activities of secularized apocalyptic sects, the Enlightenment tradition, and dislocations produced by the Industrial Revolution. He examines how, by the 1850s, Marx and Engels made the socialist creed “scientific” by linking it to “history laws” and inventing the proletariat—the “chosen people” that were to redeem the world from oppression. Focusing on the fractions between social democracy and communism, Znamenski explores why, historically, socialism became associated with social engineering and centralized planning. He explains the rise of the New Left in the 1960s and its role in fostering the cultural left that came to privilege race and identity over class. Exploring the global retreat of the left in the 1980s–1990s and the “great neoliberalism scare,” Znamenski also analyzes the subsequent renaissance of socialism in wake of the 2007–2008 crisis

Economic and Political Weekly, 2019

Review of Socialism and Commodity Production: Essay in Marx Revival by Paresh Chattopadhyay, Leiden, and Boston: Brill, 2018; pp xiii + 300, `8,175 (hardcover).

Monthly Review, 1989

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is. Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the socalled civilized period of human history has-as is well known-been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class Albert Einstein, the world-famous physicist, contributed this article to the first issue of Monthly Review, which appeared in May 1949.

Axel Honneth’s (2017) The Idea of Socialism is a timely reflection on a puzzling state of affairs: Perhaps at no time in the past several decades have so many sensed that there is something terribly wrong with global capitalism—from mounting inequalities to runaway climate change—and yet rarely has the resolve to think through workable alternatives to the global capitalist order been weaker. But the “sudden decline in utopian energy” (p. 2), or withering away of the millenarian impulse, is perhaps not so difficult to explain. As Honneth recognizes, it is incredibly hard to re-engineer vastly complex, mutually interdependent systems of political governance, economic production, and sociocultural reproduction—perhaps so difficult that the very idea of fashioning ideological blueprints for the refabricating of the world has itself grown outmoded.

© Dayan Jayatilleka  Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-39546-7

2000

Introduction Modern civilization and its progress under capitalism are now measured largely but not exclusively by stock market indicators and the wealth index of corporations and millionaires that mainstream media celebrates. All other issues are peripheral and only significant if they enhance or diminish corporate wealth. This includes the political, social, environmental issues that may either entail greater profit opportunities or instability and lower profits.