Socialism in the 21st Century

Anil Rajimwale, M. Vijaya Kumar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000217940
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The present collection contains papers of the first national workshop organised by the All India Progressive Forum (AIPF) on '21st Century Socialism' in Hyderabad. Socialism is a controversial issue, rendered more controversial by the great collapse of the Soviet Union and the East European socialist regimes. The collapse has reignited the controversies on the nature, path and viability of socialism in its many interpretations. In the meantime the scientific and technological revolution has added new features to the theory of social transformation, and has reopened many issues settled by history of individual revolution. The papers discuss many old and new aspects of socialism, social revolution and transformation. They also seek to add many new features. They particularly emphasize the notion that socialism of '21st century' will be different, in many crucial ways, than that of the 20th century.
Please note: This title is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka.

1
Socialism in the 21^st Century

The Basic Questions

Anil Rajimwale

We live in an era of the greatest and most rapid changes and transformations, as never before in the history of mankind. The transformations are caused by the Scientific and Technological Revolution (STR) and its consequence, the Information and Communication Revolution (ICR). They are changing the context, dimensions and meanings of socialism, which need to be worked out.

It is an era of internationalisation and integration, in which these changes are distorted and misinterpreted by certain imperialist circles as globalisation, which is sought to be tagged along with privatisation and liberalisation. While older types of socialist regimes have collapsed in the erstwhile USSR and Eastern Europe, events in Latin America and elsewhere express an endeavour to reformulate the democratic process. It may help us to trace the future paths to socialist transformations.

In this era, the working people of the whole world can together fight neo-imperialism, and can solve many crucial problems of humanity. STR and ICR provide new ways, means and weapons to fight for the solution of the problems. At the same time many new problems have arisen, which concern the whole of humanity, and just this or that class, such as environmental pollution and the ecological crisis. They can only be dealt with through joint efforts on a world scale. Hence too the significance of integration and internationalisation. We should not fall a prey to the false consciousness being created under the garb of globalisation.

There are several potentials for the future in the present.

All the structures and constituent parts of world society: state, civil society, classes, relations of socio-economic and political-ideological nature are being redefined. Importance of democracy has enhanced as never before. New strata are coming into being; classes and their boundaries are being redefined; the social composition of the society at the world level and in our country is changing, setting new tasks and methods of approach for the transformative and revolutionary forces. Class struggles are assuming new forms, new areas and sections of struggle besides class struggle are coming up, e.g. castes, strata, holistic human values, culture, environment, etc. A rapidly integrating world market is emerging. Unprecedented changes are in the offing.

Scientific and Technological Revolution (STR)

STR is the single most important and decisive factor of the present-day world changes. The Industrial Revolution of the past began an industrial age, which continues till today. It brought in its wake qualitative changes in the nature of production, created industrial and capitalist societies. It was also an era of emergence of Marxism and other transformative theories. Huge socialist experiments, both partially successful and unsuccessful, were carried on in this age. It was and is a practically and theoretically rich era. Much is to be learnt from socialism and revolutions: both failed and successful.

STR is basically a radical change in the means of production, as also in communication and information, based on the use of microchips, electronics, computers, satellites, and now mobile technology. It needs to be studied in depth for its implications and potentials-both technological and social. Beginning in the 1950s (transistors), the STR gathered speed through the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s to the present century.

Today, STR has created a cover of consciousness around the earth in form of internet and e-mail based upon computer networks, satellite transmission, websites, etc. The STR is now proceeding into the next stage with nano technologies and the impending superconductivity revolution.

The STR and ICR have drastically changed the concepts of time and space in daily life practice, in addition to their theoretical workout. Information and knowledge travel, today, instantly, crossing the various traditional barriers. This is a novel way to form global and local consciousness.

Changing Social Composition

The STR and ICR are causing widespread and deep changes in the social composition, presenting new problems before the sociopolitical movements and their strategies. New sections of working people, engineers, programmers, middle class employees, call-centre young workers, information/knowledge workers, and so on are crystallising. Many older sections of the society are going into the background or are disappearing.

Major changes in the working class composition are taking place. It is no more the working class of Marx’s time: proletariat and “nothing to lose but its chains”. Vast sections have much to lose. The periphery and boundaries of this class are expanding rapidly, so much so that it has caused a debate as to the nature of today’s working class. Some people would like to call it ‘working people’ rather than working class.

Knowledge workers constitute a growingly important segment of the working class. The composition of the class is changing from this point of view too: in favour of information/knowledge and away from production workers. It is a change/shift in terms of nature and relative proportions (knowledge, production), and not necessarily in terms of numbers.

These changes call for a change in approach to the new workers.

A new middle ‘class’ comprising a vast strata of intermediate sections is emerging. They constitute a growing section of society, with contradictory tendencies. They play an important role in society, and this role is growing. They are conveyors of information, ideas, policies, cultural/social attitudes and values, and set examples, both positive and negative, for the rest of the society.

With the growth and concentration of urban centres, and an intensification of the process of urbanisation, the middle strata play a greater role. Mass work and radicalisation of these sections assume growing importance.

Vast new sections of small-scale and medium-scale entrepreneurs, businessmen, and people attached to them are coming up. The STR is rendering the means of production and information smaller in scale. This, along with many other factors, has made possible the emergence of individual and small-scale proprietors. This point is usually ignored. The tendency of production (enterprises, factories, units, etc.) to grow larger has largely (not entirely) been reversed (large units can still be found, and continue to be built, though). Now the tendency of production is towards smaller scales.

This is why, we find larger numbers of small entrepreneurs, as new modern and more assertive sections, pressing for a proper place in the market and productive competition. Workshop owners, lathe operator-cum-owners, computer owners-operators, etc. participate in a big way in socio-economic activities. Information and image operators/creators are increasingly acquiring greater importance.

The modern entrepreneurial and capitalist class is being revamped, particularly the vast sections of petty, small and medium producers and businessmen, who, for their own interest, try to come out of various shackles. This class today is becoming more multilayered and complex.

The STR/ICR and the emergence of the globalised market has, at the same time, enabled big and finance capital to grow rapidly in operations, and become more independent of production. Relatively independent finance capital is making the rounds of the earth, seeking super-profits, trying to strangle smaller capitals, entrepreneurs and common people, and trying to establish its sway over the world.

While independent small businesses emerge fast, finance capital tries to throw them out of the stage altogether. From time to time, finance capital touches the productive sphere, but generally it need not.

Modern finance capital is the most ominous development of the present times.

MNCs have reached unprecedented new levels, assuming new forms and structures. Farmers, small business and mass of people have to confront them and other giant businesses. At the same time, modern big business and MNCs are also depositories of much of the new technology.

At the same time, giant monopolies and finance capital are not able to have their way all the time. Medium and small scale production and business, and local capital is also becoming stronger because of many factors, one being the STR and the consequent tendency towards smaller scales of the means of production. These sections of entrepreneurs and capitalist class are challenging the big business on a world scale. They are giving them a tough fight in the world market. Export of the Indian, Chinese and other goods on larger scales, and the panic they create among the giant monopolies and imperialists, are examples. Within the WTO, the developing countries are increasingly grouping and regrouping themselves to present a joint front to the imperialist countries, in particular the US.

The role and activities of small and medium-scale capital are also increasing. Possibilities of shifting the capitalist direction in the non-monopoly, democratic capitalist direction has increased.

Changing Nature of Work and Production

On a much deeper and theoretical level, the STR and the ICR are causing a change in the nature of work and production process. Marx, in his famous work Grundrisse, has analysed the separation of the work process from the production process as a result of large-scale automation. It was his genius to have seen that in full or near-full automation, the worker and work are separated out of the production process, and the worker becomes an observer of the production process. He has to do no more than switch on the system and allow it to operate on its own.

This observation becomes more relevant in the context of today’s technological revolution, whereby the means of production and communication are being automated owing to the application of electronics. This question needs greater analyses and treatment.

These changes also bring to the fore the question of changes in the nature of ownership under socialism/communism.

Marxism: The Frontier Thinking

Marxism is the most influential and advanced thought-system today. No other theory has left such a deep and long-lasting impact on history, as Marxism has.

Marx effected a qualitative leap in theory and practice by his great discoveries and seminal works. He studied and synthesised all the great philosophies, schools of thought and discoveries of natural and social sciences into a new, higher system. His achievements are yet to be surpassed. He synthesised philosophies into higher levels of dialectical materialism, materialist conception of history and integrated relationships of matter and consciousness. He made great and lasting discoveries into modes of production, particularly the capitalist mode of production, e.g. that of surplus value. He, along with Engels, studied everything new and latest in his times, both in natural sciences (see, Dialectics of Nature), and social and economic sciences (e.g. Capital, etc.). Lenin made his own contributions, carrying forward their work. His Materialism and Empirio-criticism in philosophy, and Two Tactics stand out in the wide field of theoretical investigations. Lenin continued the work of Marx further, and was a thinker of the same calibre and incisiveness as the latter. He was also the leader of the first successful revolution.

Marxism is a frontier science, philosophy and thought system because Marx grasped everything that was new, novel and emerging in the material world, society and thought of his times. It was his great theoretical work and discoveries that put the social movement for emancipation, particularly the working class movement, on a new basis with a clear-cut world view. The world was to change forever after that.

Marxism inspired many revolutions and socialist experiments the world over. They are useful both in their successes, failures and inadequacies. Various interpretations of Marxist theories in this or that field have been put forward by their rulers of the socialist countries and by other interpreters. There has been much debate and polemics over ‘state bureaucratic socialism’, particularly between ‘Western Marxism’ and official and orthodox Marxism. It has been opined by Louis Althusser and others that the ruling parties of the Socialist countries were driven more by their ideological and other interests than by people’s interests. Consequently, the state became a distorted ‘ideological’ one, violating the spirit and letter of Marxism.

Many outstanding Marxists had been warning and criticising the existing socialism and its theory and practice. Among them Maxim Gorky, Rosa Luxemburg, Bukharin, Lukacs, Gramsci, Italian, Spanish, French and many other communists and Marxists.

Rosa Luxemburg criticised (Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism) the style of functioning of the Russian Communist Party and the Soviets, and warned of usurpation of power by a clique in the name of the working class. She criticised Lenin himself.

In her opinion and in the opinion of many others, power passed from the Soviets to the Party, from the Party to the central committee, then to the politburo, and to the coterie of a handful, thus preparing the way for one-party, even one person rule.

So, the question of real exercise of power by the working class under socialism still remains an unresolved practical and theoretical problem.

The question of existing socialism (including the ones that collapsed) needs to be examined in depth. The problem of the relationship between democracy and socialism remains unresolved till today. No satisfactory socialist model of democracy exists. The existing regimes, despite their great achievements in many fields, remain one-party rule, with no freedom for dissent.

Antonio Gramsci tried to come to terms with many questions of democracy and cultural freedom.

On the question of democracy and socialism, the phenomenon of Stalinism and Maoism within the Communist parties and in the socialist countries, has been studied and criticised. Stalinism arose much before the war and continued long afterwards and continues to exist. War conditions have sometimes been presented as justification for Stalinist repressions, whose main victims were the communists themselves. But it arose much earlier and in quite different contexts. Both Lenin and Luxemburg had warned against it. Stalinism and Maoism arose as a system, and not as just individual aberrations; they sought to justify violation of democracy in the party and the society on the pretext of certain economic and political difficulties. They evolved into a system, with high concentration of all kinds of power in the hands of one or few. This question needs deeper and more serious examination.

The centralised bureaucratic socialist system was incongruous for its times both before and after the Second World War. In today’s context of worldwide democratic transformations and STR/ICR, it is totally out of place.

Today, Marxism faces fresh challenges and tasks. These challenges become highlighted in the context of imperialist offensive, which seeks to deny the importance of Marxism since Marx himself, on the pretext of failure of the centralised bureaucratic socialist regimes.

The challenges go far beyond this framework. The post-Second World War development caused many amendments and changes in Marxist concepts. Some were given up, e.g. dictatorship of the proletariat. Others are being debated, even questioned, such as the classical Leninist theory of imperialism, general crisis of world capitalism, nature of the working class, multi-party system in socialism, role of culture and ideas in the socialist system, which was underestimated, role and place of religion, freedom for press and organisation and parties in socialism, etc.

By the way, it was CPI, which recognised through its Constitution adopted in 1958, the existence of the multi-party system with provision even for opposition parties in the future socialism.

Changes in La tin America and Other Places

Installation of Left-leaning and democratic pre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Socialism in the 21st Century: The Basic Questions
• 2. Socialism in the 21st Century
• 3. Research in Human Health and Relevance of Dialectics
• 4. October Revolution: Facts and Fiction
• 5. India’s Path to Socialism
• 6. Socialism in the 20th Century: A Reassessment
• 7. Socialism in the 21st Century
• 8. Gender Question in Marxist Paradigm
• 9. Democracy and the Renewal of Socialism
• 10. 21st Century Socialism
• 11. Globalisation and Prospect of Socialism in the 21st Century
• 12. Socialism in the 21st Century
• 13. Impact of Neoliberal Globalisation on the Working Class
• Discussion and Conclusion
• Contributors