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This essay will proceed by critically analyzing three of the most influential anti-socialist ideologies which claim to speak to a renovated left and propose an alternative socialist approach. This will be followed by a discussion of the militant road to socialism and a critique of the illusions surrounding electoral politics. The final section will focus on a discussion of the current world-historic context and the challenges and opportunities that confront the Left, in the face of Washington’s world wide imperial offensive.

What is Not Socialism

The Left confronts essentially three bogus alternatives to socialism: (1) “The Third Way” promoted by Tony Blair, (2) European and Third World Social Democracy and (3) Chinese style “market socialism.

The “Third Way” proposed by the British Labor party leader Tony Blair, claims to define a “third way” between public ownership of the means of production and social services and the unregulated liberal market. In fact it combines the worst of both worlds, a large and expensive state bureaucracy at the service of powerful financial institutions and bank and authoritarian legislation violating individual freedoms. In practice Blair’s “Third Way” is a one-way to war, crises and the deepening of privatization at the expense of consumers, the environment and workers.Blair’s regime has been an active junior collaborator to Washington’s savage bombing of civilians in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and conquest and occupation of Afghanistan, Kosova and Macedonia. The Third Way promoted the de-industrialization of England, the speculative telecommunications bubble and its collapse, precipitating the ongoing recession. Blair’s privatization program has undermined the national health program, perpetuated the worst transport and infrastructure system in Western Europe, and put English workers in last place in Europe with regard to social rights. Clearly the “Third Way” is simply a euphemism for authoritarian neo-liberalism and militarism.

The second bogus version of socialism is Social Democracy. Over the past 20 years European and Latin American Social Democratic and populist parties have abandoned their reformist, social welfare programs, in favor of neo-liberal policies, subordination to U.S. imperial hegemony and in Latin America the adoption of IMF structural adjustment programs. In brief the Social Democrats and populists have converted to neo-liberalism, redistributing income to the upper classes and foreign capital. They are no longer reformist working class parties, they are reactionary pro-imperialist neo-liberal parties. The best examples of this conversion are Cardoso’s PSDB in Brazil, and the Peronist party in Argentina.

The third example of bogus socialism is the so-called “market socialism” practiced in China. The political reality in China is the subordination of social property to the capitalist market. There is absolutely nothing left to Chinese socialism: the workers have the longest hours, worst pay and least social rights of any workers in Asia. Chinese capitalists and their overseas partners extract the highest profits and illegally send overseas between $30 to $40 billion a year - creating the greatest inequalities in Asia. The state socializes the debts of private firms and corrupt state elites rob billions from the public treasury to finance their investments, their overseas accounts and their obscenely luxurious life style. “Market socialism” is an ideology to justify the transition from collective ownership to savage capitalism.

What is Socialism Today

Against these examples of “bogus socialism”, real socialism today first and foremost involves the socialization of the means of production, the transformation of ownership and control of banks, factories, land, social services, foreign trade and the transfer of power from the capitalists to the direct producers, consumers and environmentalists. Socialism means opposition to all imperialist wars, military interventions and support for the self-determination of nations and national liberation movements. Under a socialist regime representation and elections would take place in the workplace, the barrios and the cooperatives, leading to a national assembly directly responsible to the worker, peasant and consumer organizations.Socialism will promote comprehensive reforms in family, workplace and social services to facilitate gender equality. Public spending will shift from subsidizing capitalists, and paying the foreign debt to providing free, comprehensive, quality healthcare, education and recreational facilities on a mass scale.

The differences between bogus socialism and true socialism are fundamental and unbridgeable. There is no basis for alliances or “co-habitation”. The social antagonisms between classes is expressed in the conflict between bogus and true socialism. The distinctions are not only intellectual; they are practical.

La Via militante al socialismo

The road to socialism involves a set of practical activities which put socialist militants against the elite practices of the political bosses of bogus socialism. In the struggle for socialism militants engage in several levels of action:(1) direct involvement in everyday struggles in the neighborhood, workplace and marketplace; (2) they organize mass movements, not political sects, to carry out an integral agrarian reform, the socialization of factories, public ownership of banks and state control over foreign trade; (3) militants organize for political power - they do not spend all their time in international forums, meeting other left-wing tourists who have no social base in their own countries; (4) militants meet to resolve questions of the day, to resolve the problems of the masses and to study the political processes, structures of power and the creation of revolutionary alternatives; (5) they combine mass struggle with creating socialist forms of organization and assembly style of participation; (6) militants reject leaders who cultivate a “cult of the personality” and who subordinate struggles and popular organizations to their personal power; (7) militants and movements invest time and resources educating leaders and organizers capable of making hard decisions, discussing strategies and tactics in assemblies; (8) leaders always share the same risks as the people they lead - in the front lines of the struggle, not designing strategies from “under the bed”. To inspire resolute action in the mass struggle it is important to “show face”.

March 3, 2002