Socialism today — challenges

Sitaram Yechury
At The World Social Forum 2004

Sitaram Yechury is a Polit Bureau member of the Communist Party 
of India (Marxist). The following is the contribution he made at 
the panel discussion organised by the Social Scientist and Social 
Science Probings at the World Social Forum, 2004, Mumbai on 
January 17.

At the outset, we are extremely heartened and grateful that more 
than 20 important Communist parties of the world — from the 
socialist, developed and developing countries — are 
participating in this programme.

I consider it both an honour and privilege to initiate this 
discussion. I would, however, choose to provoke a discussion! On 
the basis of our modest efforts in India and based on our 
experience, I wish to place before you seven points in the nature 
of a healthy provocation!

Socialism as a human conception

1. No matter what we may think about the actual experience of 
socialism in the past, one thing is undeniable. It was the first 
time in human history that a society had come into being not 
spontaneously, not on the basis of the spontaneous movement of 
history independent of human will, but on the basis of human 
conception.

Karl Marx had remarked in Capital that the difference 
between the best bee and the worst architect is that the 
architect, unlike the bee, erects a structure in the mind before 
erecting it in reality. Socialism is the first structure of 
society that was first erected in the mind before it was erected 
in reality.

True, what came into being might not have fully corresponded to 
what was in the mind; nonetheless socialism, even as it existed, 
was the first non-spontaneously evolved mode of production in 
human history.

Quite apart from its historical significance in establishing the 
rule of the hitherto exploited classes, in defeating fascism, in 
enabling the oppressed nations to liberate themselves from 
imperialism and in forcing capitalism, however transiently, to 
adopt welfare state measures, this aspect of socialism, of 
representing the first grand effort of mankind to transform a 
vision into reality, must never be lost sight of.

In fact, socialism defined, to a significant extent, the contours 
of human civilisational advance in the 20th century and left an 
inerasable imprint on all its aspects.

Since mankind would never again rest content leaving its fate to 
the blind forces of history, the victory of socialism, not 
necessarily in the form it originally appeared in but maybe in 
some other form, representing a vision going beyond capitalism 
towards social ownership, is assured and inevitable.

Through all our present travails this is a truth we must never 
lose sight of.

In the context of imperialism

2. Nonetheless we must face the question: why did socialism 
collapse over large parts of the world? The usual answer to this 
question focuses on the defects of the system that was erected, 
notably the extreme centralisation of power in the socialist 
societies, which were characterised by a dictatorship of the 
Party and which ultimately ended up de-politicising the working 
class to a significant extent.

The CPI(M) had, in its 14th Congress, identified four areas viz: 
the character of the socialist State; the content of socialist 
democracy; the construction of the socialist economy; and 
inadequate development of ideological consciousness amongst the 
people, where distortions and deviations took place undermining 
the socialist State.

There is of course much truth in this. But this answer itself has 
to be located within a historical context, and that context was 
provided by imperialism.

Imperialism leading to uneven development kept socialism confined 
only to countries in the periphery while countries in the 
metropolis, belying the hopeful anticipation of Marx and Engels 
and the expectations of Lenin and his comrades, came close to, 
but never succeeded in, achieving the breakthrough to a socialist 
revolution.

As a result, socialism, wherever it had come into being, remained 
encircled throughout its entire brief history, resulting in an 
ossification of the centralised bureaucratic structure from which 
there was no escape other than through a collapse of the system 
itself.

Estimating changes

3. There is an additional point to note. Not only did revolutions 
not happen in the advanced centres of capitalism but the very 
revolutionary conjuncture itself passed.

The Programme of the Comintern was based on the notion of a 
general crisis of capitalism from which the only way out could be 
provided by a transition to socialism.

All of us recollect the meetings of 1957 and 1960. Eighty-one 
communist parties in a 1960 declaration asserted that the 
international correlation of forces shifted decisively in 
socialism's favour; that capitalism is incapable of developing 
any further; that socialism is irreversible in the existing 
socialist countries etc.

In retrospect, it is clear that there was both an underestimation 
of capitalism and an over-estimation of socialism. An incorrect 
estimation that had grave consequences for the advance of the 
socialist cause.

Capitalism restructured itself in the aftermath of the Second 
World War, through Keynesian demand management ushering in an 
unprecedented boom, through political de-colonisation removing 
the moral stigma of being an oppressor of other nations from it, 
and through the diffusion of a degree of development to certain 
pockets in the third world, such as East Asia, which appeared to 
belie the Sixth Congress thesis that development of the third 
world could occur only through socialism.

These changes, together with the experience of the very horrors 
of the Second World War, contributed to the passing of the 
revolutionary conjuncture of the period 1913-1950.

While we have a renascent imperialism today and the moral stigma 
associated with oppression and stagnation is once again beginning 
to adhere to capitalism, portending the beginning of yet another 
possible revolutionary conjuncture, the fact remains that this 
would not be a return to the earlier conjuncture.

Lenin always teaches us that concrete analysis of concrete 
conditions is the living essence of dialectics. Just as he 
authored Leninism as Marxism in the era of imperialism, it falls 
on our collective shoulders to define the contours of the 
socialist revolution in the present conjecture.

Therefore, there is no going back. We can stand on Lenin's 
shoulders to see the future but we can not see it through Lenin's 
eyes.

Anti-imperialist struggle

4. Given the fact of uneven development under imperialism it is 
clear that the transition to socialism would be a protracted 
affair. Likewise given the reassertion of hegemony of imperialism 
in the epoch of the emergence of a new form of international 
finance capital, it is clear that the socialist movement must be 
engaged above all in an anti-imperialist struggle.

Indeed the chief hallmark of the socialist movement today is that 
it constitutes the most consistent fighter against imperialism, 
since it alone can visualise a transcendence of capitalism, which 
is a necessary condition for the transcendence of imperialism.

For Marx has irrefutably proved that capitalism can never survive 
without its raison-d'etre, i.e., exploitation of man by man and 
nation by nation. To those who spread illusions of reforming 
capitalism (since Bernstien) and to those who parrot the TINA 
(there is no alternative to globalisation) factor, the Communist 
answer can only be that the alternative to TINA is SITA — 
socialism is the alternative.

We can therefore carry the struggle for socialism forward today 
only through the adoption of an uncompromising stand against 
imperialism. This is our historic task in an era when the 
vileness of imperialist predatoriness, notwithstanding all high 
phrases about freedom and democracy, is becoming apparent to 
everyone in the aftermath of the war on Iraq.

Ascendency international finance capital

5. There is an additional point to consider. The reassertion of 
imperialist hegemony is occurring in a situation of the 
ascendancy of international finance capital in a new form, which 
has the effect of causing deflation, recession, and unemployment 
everywhere.

In other words, the contemporary imperialist aggressiveness is 
the other side of the same coin, which imposes enormous burdens 
on the working classes in the advanced capitalist countries in 
the form of unemployment and cuts in social wage.

Imperialism of course tries to pit the workers in the advanced 
countries against those in the third world by arguing that the 
latter are snatching jobs away from the former. Nothing could be 
further from the truth. It is the world-wide deflation imposed by 
finance capital that is the cause of unemployment everywhere, not 
the re-distribution of employment from one section of workers to 
another.

An anti-imperialist struggle, provided it can make this point 
clear and present a vision for improving the lot of mankind as a 
whole, embracing the working class and other exploited classes in 
all countries — developed, developing and underdeveloped — can 
acquire world-wide support and contribute to a change in the 
conjuncture.

A future socialist society

6. Of course the precise contours of what a future socialist 
society would look like still need to be drawn, based on the past 
experience of socialism. The road map of this would naturally 
vary from country to country depending on the concrete realities.

Each one of us has this historic responsibility to discharge in 
our respective countries. However, the task of advancing the 
anti-imperialist struggle world wide cannot afford to wait.

Neither can it wait until that intellectual task of evolving a 
coherent and comprehensive revolutionary theory for the socialist 
revolution in the present conjecture, important though it is, is 
completed.

Unsustainable capitalist globalisation

7. Finally, let us confront a reality squarely. The present phase 
of capitalist globalisation is simply unsustainable. This is 
precisely because, by sharply accentuating economic inequalities 
— between countries and between the rich and poor in individual 
countries — the vast majority of world's population are 
increasingly placed beyond market operations as they simply lack 
the requisite purchasing power.

Imperialist hegemonic drive, therefore, will increasingly be 
determined by military aggressiveness. Under these conditions, as 
Rosa Luxembourg said earlier and as Fidel Castro says today, the 
choice before humanity's future is between socialism or 
barbarism.

Each one of us, working in tandem with our domestic revolutionary 
goals, will have to work for integrating the worldwide anti-
globalisation protests with the global anti-war upsurge into a 
mighty anti-imperialist movement.

This requires, simultaneously, the intensification of the 
ideological combat within these movements that seek to obfuscate 
socialism as the only alternative available to humanity.

Come, let us, together rise to the occasion.