Socialism in the 21st Century
Created | Updated May 23, 2003
In case you had been wondering we are now living in the 21st century despite the conspicious absence of any flying cars and people in lycra suits. The last century was a heck of century - more wars than you can shake a stick at and idealogies whizzing about the world like there's no tommorow (for a few days in the 1960's it looked like there was no tommorow for real).
Will this century be any better/worse? Well my magic 8 ball is on the blink so I'm not going to predict either way. What I will predict is the changes that are going to need to happen to the left and the church in the 21st century.
Firstly we in the left have held the same idealogy since the 19th century and that's not a bad thing. Despite conflicts on how to implement this the overall goal has remained the same: to create a society with egalatarian principals, where economic forces don't decide the fate many.
The Russian revolution tried to do this and in the beginning it took massive strides in making Russian society a better place (the Soviet Union was in a period of growth during the great deppression for instance). However, one sneaky man called Joe took that dream and made it a nightmare. He twisted and deformed the revolution and turned it into a system that would mean people like Kruschev could get into power.
The sweep of communist revolutions never happened in the world that many had hoped for - owed partly to the fact Stalin led a total islolationist policy who's legacy lives on in Parties all over the world.
So what now for the left thats left? Well we need to adapt a little. Not change the aims but to follow the advice of Fidel Castro - realise that different situations need different methods. We in the west are basically shafted. We have no method of revolution and a lack of disfranchised people. We have no large oppressed agricultral mass nor do we have any large numbers of workers being exploited. We do have the exploited just not in the preportions we used to. This is down to two factors, the first being globalisation the second being social liberalism.
Globalisation means that the system that Marx described hasn't simply gone (as if you simply looked at the UK on it's own you would think) but merely gone into a stage people 80 years ago, let alone Marx or Engels could have predicted. The phenomona accosiated with capitalism haven't gone. They have merely shifted into an international scale. Wheras before it was relatively easy to identify the working classes within a country it is now harder because a good preportion of the workers for a country may be "outsourced" to another country. This is seen in the shift in manufacturing to the far east (the most notable example recently being Dyson). Thus, in a country they may recieve the goods they not have the organised mass of workers on their doorstep. Also, with this globalised labour market there are far more workers than jobs. So of course we end up in the familiar position of having competing areas working for less and less.
Social Liberalism is what we in the UK and Europe (as well as the US to a far less extent) live in today. It is a combination of liberal ideals of liberalism with a small social conscience. In such systems we have public health care, public services in general as well as a welfare state. This helps to not only pacify workers but serves to indoctrinate their offspring into social liberalism. For example a worker (say, in the service industry) who would otherwise be badly off and angry with the system now is pacified becuase they recieve well fare benefits. They of course adopt the idealogical system (conciouslly or not) of Social Liberalism and the system remains safe. However, in developing countries such a system is not in place which means we do have workers without welfare.
Where does this leave us? Well we should factor the above into this final point - that social liberalism is doomed as a system. This is simply because it is based on capitalism something diametrically opposed to any kind of restrictions on private sector work and social spending. The enivitable happens and the states are slowly shifting to a liberalisation of capital and eventually there will be laws safegaurding the free movement of capital (already seen in organisations like the WTO).
So if the current system is doomed what are we supposed to do? The first instinct of every descent socialist is to say "replace it". But we should remember that although in some situations this is possible (such as the 3rd world) we cannot have revolutions in the "west" simply because people do not respond well to them. In the developing world it is possible for revolutions to happen as they have the exploited masses. In the west we must do all we can to help these organisations - with mony or anything else.
But what of us? Are we to wait until to Liberalism goes to Capitalism then swoop when the time is right? Possibly but that does not mean that we can do nothing. We must always apply pressure, always be hurting the capitalists and always making sure that we are the voice for the oppressed in our country or elsewhere.
We must embrace internationalism just as the large corporations have. I'm not suggesting world revolution or trotkyism. Just simply that we must be aware and involved in the international situation. The corporations have shaped the world situation since the 90's and now it's our turn to start shaping it for people world wide.
Will this century be any better/worse? Well my magic 8 ball is on the blink so I'm not going to predict either way. What I will predict is the changes that are going to need to happen to the left and the church in the 21st century.
Firstly we in the left have held the same idealogy since the 19th century and that's not a bad thing. Despite conflicts on how to implement this the overall goal has remained the same: to create a society with egalatarian principals, where economic forces don't decide the fate many.
The Russian revolution tried to do this and in the beginning it took massive strides in making Russian society a better place (the Soviet Union was in a period of growth during the great deppression for instance). However, one sneaky man called Joe took that dream and made it a nightmare. He twisted and deformed the revolution and turned it into a system that would mean people like Kruschev could get into power.
The sweep of communist revolutions never happened in the world that many had hoped for - owed partly to the fact Stalin led a total islolationist policy who's legacy lives on in Parties all over the world.
So what now for the left thats left? Well we need to adapt a little. Not change the aims but to follow the advice of Fidel Castro - realise that different situations need different methods. We in the west are basically shafted. We have no method of revolution and a lack of disfranchised people. We have no large oppressed agricultral mass nor do we have any large numbers of workers being exploited. We do have the exploited just not in the preportions we used to. This is down to two factors, the first being globalisation the second being social liberalism.
Globalisation means that the system that Marx described hasn't simply gone (as if you simply looked at the UK on it's own you would think) but merely gone into a stage people 80 years ago, let alone Marx or Engels could have predicted. The phenomona accosiated with capitalism haven't gone. They have merely shifted into an international scale. Wheras before it was relatively easy to identify the working classes within a country it is now harder because a good preportion of the workers for a country may be "outsourced" to another country. This is seen in the shift in manufacturing to the far east (the most notable example recently being Dyson). Thus, in a country they may recieve the goods they not have the organised mass of workers on their doorstep. Also, with this globalised labour market there are far more workers than jobs. So of course we end up in the familiar position of having competing areas working for less and less.
Social Liberalism is what we in the UK and Europe (as well as the US to a far less extent) live in today. It is a combination of liberal ideals of liberalism with a small social conscience. In such systems we have public health care, public services in general as well as a welfare state. This helps to not only pacify workers but serves to indoctrinate their offspring into social liberalism. For example a worker (say, in the service industry) who would otherwise be badly off and angry with the system now is pacified becuase they recieve well fare benefits. They of course adopt the idealogical system (conciouslly or not) of Social Liberalism and the system remains safe. However, in developing countries such a system is not in place which means we do have workers without welfare.
Where does this leave us? Well we should factor the above into this final point - that social liberalism is doomed as a system. This is simply because it is based on capitalism something diametrically opposed to any kind of restrictions on private sector work and social spending. The enivitable happens and the states are slowly shifting to a liberalisation of capital and eventually there will be laws safegaurding the free movement of capital (already seen in organisations like the WTO).
So if the current system is doomed what are we supposed to do? The first instinct of every descent socialist is to say "replace it". But we should remember that although in some situations this is possible (such as the 3rd world) we cannot have revolutions in the "west" simply because people do not respond well to them. In the developing world it is possible for revolutions to happen as they have the exploited masses. In the west we must do all we can to help these organisations - with mony or anything else.
But what of us? Are we to wait until to Liberalism goes to Capitalism then swoop when the time is right? Possibly but that does not mean that we can do nothing. We must always apply pressure, always be hurting the capitalists and always making sure that we are the voice for the oppressed in our country or elsewhere.
We must embrace internationalism just as the large corporations have. I'm not suggesting world revolution or trotkyism. Just simply that we must be aware and involved in the international situation. The corporations have shaped the world situation since the 90's and now it's our turn to start shaping it for people world wide.
